Forced by his parents to play American football while growing up in Mexico City, musician El Javi (who goes by the single name) bailed on the sport when his family relocated elsewhere in the city and he could no longer play on the team. “I literally got into music because I was too lazy to do a sport,” he says, laughing. “When we moved, my parents said I needed to find something else. My middle school was offering guitar lessons and as soon as I put it on my lap, I just knew.”
The Flamenco-fusion guitarist, now based in Denver, instantly became a “metal head,” a development that did not initially endear him to his parents, both environmental engineers. “My mom was more supportive but it was a battle with my Dad, who was worried about what I was going to do as a career. My sister plays piano and it was my metal competing against her classical piano. I had a band and we were loud. My parents actually built an extra room to keep me away.”
After graduating from high school in 1998, El Javi attended music college in Mexico City. “I did three years but it was mostly jazz and not really speaking to me,” he says. He then moved to Los Angeles to attend the Musician’s Institute. “I realized I was just one of the bunch playing rock music but it was eye-opening training in showmanship and professionalism.”
Overwhelmed about what to do following graduation, he grew depressed. “I was just receiving money from my Dad and doing literally nothing,” he recalls. “But I fell in love and got married, and my Dad would not send money anymore. That’s when life got real and I started teaching guitar because [at least] I knew I never wanted to do anything not related to music. My parents taught me if you’re going to do something; go all the way.”
While teaching, he sold his equipment and used the cash to purchase an acoustic guitar. “It was a Flamenco guitar,” he says. “I only bought it because the sound was so beautiful but, a few months later, a friend and I started listening to the album Friday Night in San Francisco by Al di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, who is a Flamenco artist. It changed my life. I started playing the new guitar and felt I could express myself and write my own music. I found a voice with Flamenco I didn’t have before.”
The instrument appeared to revive a kind of dormant blood-soul connection. “My great uncles are all very Spaniard and loved Flamenco, bull-fighting and wine,” he explains. “I remember being at my uncle’s house, listening to Flamenco and thinking—whoa! It was so intense and passionate but I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.”
While continuing to teach, write and play music, he found himself unexpectedly inspired by a student. “He was eight years old when I started teaching him and I had maybe 30 individual students at the time. At the beginning of each lesson, I always asked them what they wanted to learn and he was the first one that said: ‘I want to write my own music.’” El Javi likens the ensuing relationship to that of a martial arts master and disciple. “I was teaching him but also realizing who I was [as a musician]. I taught him until he was 16 and was like a big brother. I saved up the money from his lessons and used it to go to Spain. It was a symbolic thing where he was changing my life and I wanted to honor him on that trip.”
The trip to Spain enabled El Javi to experience Flamenco music’s roots. He enrolled in the Flamenco institute called Taller Flamenco in Seville where he studied guitar while immersing himself in the gypsy lifestyle. “I didn’t have a lot of money and was on the streets with my guitar, drinking beer, just like them. I met a homeless gypsy woman on a park bench drinking beer and crying. She told me her life story and I took her out to eat. She was so grateful that she introduced me to all the gypsies in the area who told me their stories. To them, I became ‘the Mexican.’”
"...a friend and I started listening to the album Friday Night in San Francisco by Al di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, who is a Flamenco artist. It changed my life. I started playing the new guitar and felt I could express myself and write my own music. I found a voice with Flamenco I didn’t have before."
Those stories fired his imagination. “In Flamenco there’s something called ‘duende,’ which is like an elf, a muse. It comes from suffering and hardship, the gypsy experience of being cast out.” El Javi found he could relate, both as an artist living outside the mainstream and as a Mexican now living in the States. He returned to L.A. and funneled the feelings into the demo Memoirs of Sevilla. He also began performing and produced the album Gypsy Muse, gradually developing a show with a percussionist, bass player and Flamenco dancer. But he missed “rocking out,” and experimented with mixing rock and Flamenco, reflected in his next album, Self-Portrait, while performing throughout L.A. and beginning to travel.
Following a divorce, El Javi’s ex-wife relocated to Denver with their three-year-old daughter, Olivia, and he began visiting a lot. “I was sitting at my computer one morning and realized I wanted to create a new life,” he says. He booked a flight to Berlin. “I had no shows scheduled, no contacts, I just wanted to venture, gypsy-style,” he says (a period later captured in his next project, The Gypsy Journey).
Before embarking, he stopped in Denver to visit his daughter (and later New York), where a chance meeting during an impromptu performance at a bar resulted in a stranger in the audience handing him $500 toward his journey. “She loved my music and wanted me not to worry and just do it. That became a constant through my trip. I always received help and a place to stay or people buying me food. It helped me believe I could really do this.”
He later ended up staying six weeks just west of Berlin where he “took over the town,” he says. “I had shows weekly and everybody knew me.” On a layover on his way back, he performed in a famous venue in Amsterdam, bringing down the house with his version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody," "a magical moment."
Back in L.A., after return stops and performances in New York and Denver, his belongings now in storage, and once more uncertain about the future, he decided to return to Mexico City to regroup. There he met Barcelona native Jordi Marin, his current drummer and collaborator. “I felt this instant connection, like this is my brother.” The pair performed in Mexico City and Cabo before returning to L.A., where El Javi realized he needed to relocate to Denver for Olivia, then about to start kindergarten. “I wanted to be there for her, so we moved here at the beginning of 2015.”
The duo now performs throughout the Denver-metro area, has been producing music videos for a new album and expanding its presence online and will likely begin touring again in the spring of 2018. “Denver is a much smaller city than the others I’ve lived in, but that means everything happens for you quicker here,” he says. “We’re doing very well and just got picked up by Coors Light’s marketing campaign to represent Latin music in Denver. It’s giving us a lot of visibility.”
El Javi considers himself a lifelong learner whose music reflects both his changing environments and ever-evolving understanding and sensibilities. “More and more, I’m tapping into the Latin grooves in me,” he says. “On the latest album (A Gypsy Journey Part II) I’m exploring the sounds of Colorado. There’s a song actually called “Colorado” that even has a little bluegrass. I don’t always want to sound the same. I know there are artists who—once they’ve found a formula and people like it—continue to do that. But it feels limiting to me. I always try to keep learning new techniques, listening to new music and then allowing my brain to just do what it has to do.”
For more information about El Javi, visit eljavi.com.
Author Susan Dugan’s wide range of work includes newspaper and magazine articles, personal essays and fiction. An active volunteer in local schools, she has taught creative writing and brought authors into classrooms. If you know a member of our community who is contributing in extraordinary ways and might make a good subject for this column, email Susan at sadugan@gmail.com.
