Oscar Peñas - Almadraba (2022)

A musical spark can come from many sources—a special person, a certain poem, a particular place. On the album Almadraba, the Catalonian guitarist and composer Oscar Peñas draws inspiration from a fishing tradition that has been part of Andalucian culture for thousands of years. Filled with Iberian, Classical, and flamenco flavors, and with the sensitive support of keyboards, percussion, and strings, Peñas’s twelve-track suite is a deeply evocative celebration of man and nature in struggle and harmony.

“Almadraba“ is an Arabic name,” Peñas explains. “It’s a sustainable fishing method first practiced by the Phoenicians and brought to Andalusian Spain about 2000 years ago. It’s still in practice today in fact on the coast of Cadiz. Schools of bluefin tuna travel from the North Sea to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean to spawn. On the first full moon in May the fishermen there set up this labyrinth of nets to force the fish into a center area and then pull them out, very dramatically, and take only the biggest ones. The rest are returned to the sea.”