Artist description Although the music was composed by me, I gave all of the musicians great leeway in playing their parts so that no one would feel stifled nor have to knoww too much about each others tradition which resulted in a spontaneous natural display of everyones talents.

Music Style Thats a tough one....you be the judge.

Artist History I heard the music in my mind and spirit during the mid 70's. At the time, I was living in Spain and pursuing my musical career; performing, recording, and touring. "Adelante" means "Go Forward" and this was what I wanted to do.I had become involved in a diverse musical scene in Spain and New York City and all of us were experimenting (musicians from the Middle East, India, South America, etc.). I had been studying the 'ud for a few years and felt the influence of the Middle East and Indian traditions through it and in 1978 I recorded an album in Spain ("Chocolate") where I played the 'ud with my group. No one had heard anything like this, but a few months afterthe album was released, Paco de Lucia released his album "Almoraima" where he did something similar. A friend of mine, Chris Carnes, was the first to record the 'ud on the flamenco album "Nuevo Dia" with Lole and Manuel. All of this happen within a year or two of each other (Paco, Chris, and I).In the fall of 1979 I was performing in New York City with Jose Greco, when Brook Zern took an interest in my ideas and lined me up with Lance Quin who was working at the Power Station at the time. Since no one had any money to finance this, Lance founf free time at strange hours to start the project. What a story it all is! Anyway, we were able to record about half an albums's worth of music over a period of a couple of months until neitherLance nor the rest of us could continue due to the sporadic and chaotic nature of evryone schedules.In the summer of 1980 I was contracted to play for Maria Benitez in New Mexico and was able to continue the recording project there in the studio of Baird Banner. Hugh Aiken, my best friend from boyhood came forth with financing to continue to complete the project. It took four more years to do it. I never had a recording project that took so long to finish and when I reflect upon it all-I see that the venture was almost impossible and my persistancewas what bought it fruition. How can you gather musicians from Pakistan, Egypt, Spain, North and South America and get them to play together and make sense of it all? I did it though and what you hear on the album is not contrived or commercialized.When the album was completed I gave tapes to all of the musicians and they came back saying things like, "My thought it was music from India with other things in it"-Arooj Lazewal (Sitar,Pakistan) "My friends thought the music was from Egypt with other thing in it"-Nagi Zaki (Nay, Egypt) And so on-everyone who had heard the album was excited, but of course the record companies didn't know how to categorize it. So nothing happened, but some of the tapes became underground ideasfor othe musicians in Spain, Egypt, India, etc. and today we hear musicians from all over the world playing together; fusing things, diluting traditions. Sometimes its good and sometimes its bad-but thats what is going on.I though about updating this album because of new ideas, but after reviewing the album countless times, I decided the "Adelante" should remain exactly as it was released in 1984Carlos Lomas, Sante Fe 1999

Albums Adelante

Press Reviews Audio CD available, email request to j.lajvort@gte.net

Location Santa Fe, AZ - USA

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