A few weeks a ago we were honored to be featured on KCUR's cross currents. Suzanne Hogan produced a wonderful piece entitled "Fado Novato, Songs Of Heartache And Struggle." They worked on this piece for quite some time and really did their research. I had assumed when looking for a Portuguese guitar that there would certainly not be any of these strange instruments in Kansas City. Wrong. I had two people contact me because they heard the story on the radio. One person just needed to know how to string and tune their own guitarra and the other kind soul (Kerry Stanley of Kansas City) donated his instrument which had been hanging on a wall for some 20 years. Below are photos of the restoration done by Dave Bucher. Dave is the brilliant luthier that constructed my Portuguese guitarra using drawings, photos and famous Dave Bucher ingenuity. The guitarra, in the Coimbra style, is very bright sounding even though she hasn't been played is a very long time and surprisingly light in weight. Almost as light as my Turkish ouds. I read that the guitarra portuguese was once called the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar). Which i assume is referring to the Arabic style oud.
She comes from a music shop in Lisbon called Santos Beirão, Lda that seems to do a little bit of everything judging from the many topics covered on the label. She is sparsely decorated with no position markers on the fingerboard and simple banded circles for a rosette much like an old flamenco guitar.
Picking her up from Dave. KC jazz drummer Sam Wiseman in background with boy Jack.
Ready for the action.
Picking her up from Dave. KC jazz drummer Sam Wiseman in background with boy Jack.
Ready for the action.
No comments:
Post a Comment