Sitar meets Andalusia: echoes of India in Gualberto’s music during the late Francoism and the Transition

Abstract

This research focuses on the impact of Indian music on Spain’s phonographic production during late Francoism and the Transition (1971-1979). While raga rock and the influence of Indian culture were breaking through Europe in the sixties, it was not until the next decade that Spain had a sonic reference to this imagery through the sitar of Gualberto García in the record We Come To Smash This Time (Smash, 1971). This album serves as a starting point to delimit our study, whose theoretical and methodological foundation is the musical analysis of recorded songs. We also take into consideration the phonograms A La Vida Al Dolor (Gualberto, 1975), Vericuetos (Gualberto, 1976), Contracorriente (Vainica Doble, 1976), and La Leyenda Del Tiempo (Camarón de la Isla, 1979). Even though Gualberto kept experimenting with the imagery of Indian music in later recordings with the flamenco guitar player Ricardo Miño (Puente Mágico, 1983; Contrastes, 1998), in collaborations with other artists or in his improvisations, we reckon “Nana Del Caballo Grande” (included in the Camarón iconic album mentioned above) has such a mediatic and historical impact that it can be understood as a door towards a new experimentation stage.