PORT ANGELES — The man, hailing from the green, windswept north of Spain, has been called the Jimi Hendrix of the gaita.
Which suits Carlos Nunez just fine.
He’ll bring his band and his instrument, a Spanish version of the bagpipe, to the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center for a concert Saturday night.
In keeping with its world-music bent, the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts is presenting the show.
“The gaita was the electric guitar of the Middle Ages,” Nunez quipped in an interview from Grass Valley, Calif., where his West Coast tour stopped last week.
In his arms, the pipes have a powerful sound, one that commands the attention of listeners around the globe.
Nunez comes from Galicia, the Iberian province on the same latitude with Boston —“the Celtic part of Spain,” he says, “with a lot of beautiful music and a lot of seafood.”
Galicia is also home to the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route since the Middle Ages.
Travelers come from near and far to walk the Camino.
They bring music with them, just as the Celtic people migrated, with their instruments and melodies, across continents.
Nunez seeks to make his concerts a buen Camino.
His companions are “amazing people,” he says: his brother Xurxo Nunez on percussion and bodhran; Pancho Alvarez on guitar; step-dancer and fiddler Jon Pilatzke, a performer with the famed Irish band the Chieftains.
“He is like a rock star,” Nunez adds.
The piper has also toured with the Chieftains as an honorary member, and won two Grammy awards for his music with them.
A speaker of Spanish, French and Portuguese, Nunez credits the Chieftains for teaching him English on the road.
On this tour, Nunez says, “we are making connections between people,” no matter their countries’ borders.
When he walks onto the stage, three things are on his mind: “harmonies, good vibrations, and making the people happy.”
