• Home
• News
• Local

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Ronald Radford's mother bought a record at a grocery store that changed his life.

"I discovered Flamenco when I was a teenage rock 'n' roller," Radford said in a phone interview from his home in St. Louis. "I was somewhat of a creative musician even at 17 years old - a poor kid growing up in Oklahoma. We were out on a fishing trip and my mom brings this record home from a grocery store of flamenco music by Carlos Montoya. I'd never even heard of flamenco music in my entire life."

Radford was a self-taught musician who started his career on the ukulele and later switched to piano and cello.

"The minute I heard this music," he said, "it changed my life. I spent all summer listening to this music."

It was the passion of the sounds that moved him.

"It seemed to awaken within me feelings and a sense of connectedness with the world and with other people that I had not felt before," he explained. "It just resonated with me as being something very true and very exciting."

Radford, 65, has made a career of performing flamenco guitar. At 7 p.m. Monday he will present a solo concert at the Robert M. Merryman Performing Arts Center.

Music had always been an important aspect to his life, Radford noted. He felt it was his "native, God-given gift."

"It wasn't until I heard flamenco that I knew how I needed to apply that gift," he said. "I dedicated myself wholly, 100 percent, to doing flamenco. I never played any more rock 'n' roll or anything else."

Flamenco is a Spanish musical genre known for its intricate, rapid passages. The music grew from the interplay of Arabic, Sephardic Jews and gypsy cultures in southern Spain.

Radford explains flamenco as "an unwritten traditional folk lore that includes both guitar, singing and dancing."

The coming together of the three cultures created a synergy in southern Spain about 800 years ago.

"Flamenco is quite unlike any other style of written music, be it jazz, classical or any other," he added. "It is similar to jazz only in that it is highly improvised."

Flamenco also employs elements of composition and harmony found in classical music.

The individual pieces of flamenco music are called forms instead of songs. A performer plays the forms adding personal touches and ideas to the melody and the rhythm as he or she feels at the moment.

Said Radford: "Flamenco has the fun of being an improvised, spontaneous kind of music. It also can sometimes have the beauty, in terms of composition, as classical music. It also has the depth of emotion and passion found in the Gypsies."

Part of the allure for Radford is the complexity of the art form.

"It is difficult music to exactly peg," he said.

When he was still 17 Radford had the opportunity to meet the musician on the record purchased by his mother.

"It was at the end of that year that I met Carlos Montoya backstage at a concert in Tulsa," he said. "They arranged for me to take my little $15 pawnshop guitar. I had enough nerve to play for him. He immediately invited me to come to New York City. Thus I became one of only two students Carlos Montoya took."

Radford continued to study the guitar. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study flamenco in Spain. He also studied classical guitar with Andrés Segovia.

Some of the most valuable education Radford received came from his encounters with Gypsies. He was working with a man named Diego who taught him music and life lessons.

"Diego was showing me some variations on a particular flamenco form," he recalled. "He was regaling me with incredible creative variation after variation. I stopped him and said, 'Diego, show me the best variation you've got.' He said, 'Hombre, every variation I play is the best because it is the one I am playing now.' The message from Gypsy philosophy is that every moment in life is the best because it is the only one you have. It is a chance to shape your life and you can only do it in this moment - not the past and not the future."

e-mail to:

rick.brown@kearneyhub.com

WHEN and WHERE

Ronald Radford in concert presenting solo flamenco guitar 7 p.m. Monday at the Robert M. Merryman Performing Arts Center, 225 W. 22nd St., Kearney. 698-8052; www.merryman.kearneypublicschools.org. To learn more about Radford visit www.ronaldradford.com. Tickets are $15 for general admission or $10 for students.