David Peña Vargas · 2020

David Peña Vargas builds in Jerez de la Frontera under the name Peña Vargas Guitarras Artesanales. He came to lutherie from the other side of the instrument. He began working professionally as a guitar accompanist at twelve, trained in construction, and turned to building later. That order matters. He knew what a player needed from a guitar before he made one.

La Frontera, The Border, takes its name from the city itself. Jerez de la Frontera, of the frontier, from the centuries when it sat on the border between Christian and Moorish Spain. The guitar carries the name of the place it was made. Label confirmed: Peña Vargas, Guitarras Artesanales, Jerez de la Frontera, Modelo Taranto, Año 2020, Nº 146.

La Frontera is the sole Jerez school representative in the archive. The label records the model, the year, and the instrument's number in the maker's own sequence. The maker played in Jerez before he built there.

Jerez de la Frontera is one of the historic centers of Roma flamenco culture in Andalucía, alongside Triana and Utrera. The bulería, one of flamenco's fastest and most percussive forms, is closely associated with the city. Flamenco is still taught aurally in Jerez today, passed within families before it ever reaches a stage. La Frontera was built inside that living tradition, not a historical reconstruction of it. The maker describes the Taranto as a cypress guitar whose character is flamenco throughout, with a timbre unlike the rest of his work.