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FLAMENCO WAS THE SOUNDTRACK IN THIS ARMENIAN FAMILY


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#1 Yervant1

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Posted 18 September 2015 - 09:35 AM

FLAMENCO WAS THE SOUNDTRACK IN THIS ARMENIAN FAMILY

KOSU (Tulsa)
Sept 16 2015

By Betto Arcos â~@¢ Sep 16, 2015

Flamenco guitarist Vahagni was 6 when he and his family landed at
the airport in Los Angeles.

"I remember when we got to LAX I was kind of disappointed because
I thought we were literally going to land into Disneyland, or
something like that," Vahagni recalls. "After a while, I think my
first impressions were just constantly having to adapt because I
didn't speak the language. I didn't know anything about America,
I was 6. It was the transitional period that I remember a lot."

Vahagni's father had been a guitar soloist for the National
Philharmonic Orchestra of Armenia. But he had loved flamenco ever
since he saw a performance of Paco de Lucía on TV in the early 1980s.

He says a flamenco album even played a part in his parents getting
together.

"When he met my Mom, she happened to really like the music. So I guess
maybe he had too much wine to drink or something, he gifted it to her
as a present and then I think the next morning he woke up and said
"Jesus, what did I do." And so he was kind of forced to marry her to
get the disc back. That's the anecdote in the family, that's how they
got together."

When Vahagni began playing the guitar at the age of nine, he listened
to three types of music: classical, Armenian and, of course, flamenco.

"That was the soundtrack of my growing up," he says. "I was already
so exposed to it, it was something very normal for me. It wasn't
like a decision I made: 'Oh, I want to learn more about flamenco and
I want to play flamenco.' It was just, that was part of life from a
very young age, it was that music."

And when he was 18, Vahagni moved to Andalusia to learn from the
source. "I got to study with some amazing guitarists. Besides that,
just living there, just being there and going out and having a beer
in Andalusia, you learn a lot from that as well."

Last year, Vahagni got a chance to work with the Spanish singer Buika.

While they were on tour, he played some Armenian melodies for her. And
he asked her to record an Armenian folk song "Hov Arek Sarer Jan." The
song is on his new album titled Imagined Frequencies, which just came
out last week. Looking back at his life and career, Vahagni says he
didn't choose to become a Flamenco guitarist.

He never thought he'd do anything else.

http://kosu.org/post/flamenco-was-soundtrack-armenian-family#stream/0

 

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#2 Yervant1

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Posted 18 September 2015 - 12:31 PM






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