Gipsy Kings by André Reyes

Arles, exile and the family trade

The music reached France before the name did. The Reyes parents left Andalucía during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, passed through Catalonia and settled in the south of France, where the Catalan rumba they brought with them stayed a working trade rather than a memory. André Reyes's father, José, spent years in a duo with the guitarist Manitas de Plata. When that partnership came apart at the end of the 1970s, the sons and cousins started their own group in Arles in 1979 and called it Los Reyes.

Nothing much happened for the best part of a decade. Allegría, in 1982, and Luna de Fuego the year after were barely registered outside the circuit of weddings, ferias and private bookings that had always paid the family's bills. The third album, issued in 1987 under the name Gipsy Kings, did what no French-Romani record had managed: it spent forty weeks on the American charts, pulled along by Bamboléo and Djobi Djoba. Reyes, in the group since the late 1970s, was part of that run and of the albums that followed it through the 1990s. The shorthand attached to the band ever since — Catalan rumba crossed with flamenco, salsa and pop — was more or less accurate, and it travelled.

Two clans, the same songbook

Attrition set in early. Pablo Reyes left in 1988 over hearing damage. Chico Bouchikhi, one of the founders, went in 1991 after financial disagreements and has toured under his own banner since. By the 2010s the group trading as the Gipsy Kings had narrowed to two permanent members, Nicolas Reyes on lead vocals and Tonino Baliardo on lead guitar, with hired players around them. Savor Flamenco, released in 2013, took the Grammy for Best World Music Album in 2014 — a credit that André Reyes's own website still lists among the band's achievements, which gives some idea of how contested the lineage has become.

Reyes himself describes the parting without drama. Speaking to El Comercio in Lima in November 2022, he said that since October 2014 he and his brother Nicolás had run separate ensembles: each had chosen to carry on with his own clan, he said, without any quarrel, and both sides keep the right to perform the old repertoire. That is the reason two touring acts now carry versions of one name and much the same set, and the reason his is billed as Gipsy Kings by André Reyes rather than plainly as the Gipsy Kings. The promotional copy leans on a figure of more than 60 million records sold, which belongs to the whole catalogue rather than to this formation.

Records under his own name

The output since the split has been small. Nací Gitano, an album of new material with writing contributions from across the family, appeared in 2022 and gave that year's tour its title, including a date at the Anfiteatro del Parque de la Exposición in Lima on 17 November 2022. The single La Negra came with it, which Reyes called a gypsy rumba that brings a lot of joy. A single called Atardecer followed in 2025 and remains the most recent release under the name. Nobody is pretending the studio work is the point; the band earns from the stage.

His own listening sits further from pop than the set suggests. In a Songlines question-and-answer published on 21 February 2025, a week before a London show, Reyes named Paco de Lucía as the player he rates above all others, chose Friday Night in San Francisco and Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo as the records he keeps returning to, and pointed to the flamenco guitarist Antonio Rey as the one worth following. He also talked about cooking paella, which is where most interviews with him end up.

Standing now

The London date on 28 February 2025 was the clearest recent measure of where this formation stands. El Ibérico reported a full Royal Festival Hall — 2,700 seats — with ten musicians on stage, seven of them guitarists, and an audience that spent much of the night out of its seats. For a band whose name is legally shared with a rival act, filling a hall of that size on a Friday is the relevant number.

The year since has been a run of large rooms and new markets. The group played Fiestas del Pitic in Hermosillo, Sonora, on 25 May 2026, its first appearance in that city; the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai on 21 June; Gijón on 27 June; and the Golden Nugget's event centre in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on 7 August. Asked in Hermosillo about artificial intelligence and streaming algorithms, Reyes said the band does not think about either — it makes the music it likes and shares it afterwards.

The next step is an orchestral one. On 22 October 2026 the group plays Dubai Opera with the UAE Philharmonic Orchestra, its first symphonic theatre production, with Bamboléo, Djobi Djoba, Volare and Un Amor rescored for full orchestra; the show starts at 8pm and tickets open at AED 395. Strasbourg follows on 24 October, then seven British concert halls through November: Symphony Hall in Birmingham on the 4th, Cambridge Corn Exchange on the 5th, the Glasshouse in Gateshead on the 7th, York Barbican on the 8th, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on the 9th, Bristol Beacon on the 11th and the London Palladium on the 12th. Prague's Lucerna Great Hall is booked for 29 November and Doha Golf Club for 3 December. Two listed dates have fallen away: Frankfurt on 30 November and Razzmatazz in Barcelona on 1 December are both marked cancelled.

What the show is now

The stage arrangement is the oldest thing about it. At the Royal Festival Hall the band ran ten strong with seven guitars across the front: André leading, his brother Canut, his son Tomás, his cousin Mario and his nephews Kakou and Jordan, with Léo Chazallet on bass, Joseph Cortes on drums, Guilherme Alves on percussion and Fred Bretón on keyboards behind them. Handclaps and massed downstrokes carry the rhythm rather than anything programmed, and the vocals are shared around rather than fronted by one singer all night.

The set mixes the family's own material with covers that need no introduction — A mi manera, Volare, Hotel California — and makes room for a solo passage from Mario Reyes, who played a flamenco reading of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez in London that the Spanish press singled out as the most interesting thing in the evening. Bamboléo and Djobi Djoba are held for the end. No support act is listed at any of the November venues, and the halls give start times of 7.45pm at York and Liverpool. The British rooms are all seated, which tends to push the dancing into the aisles.