Since Vicente Zumel discovered the blues 40 years ago, he has made it his life’s calling. He began as a performer in the early 1970s, establishing one of Spain’s first blues bands, the Ancora Blues Band. In 1981, he launched one of Spain’s first radio shows, La Hora del Blues, a weekly one-hour show. Today, it can be heard over the internet. He also brought the blues around Spain with the Harmonica Zúmel Blues Band. He was also a founding member and first president of Spain’s first blues society, the Barcelona Blues Society. As a journalist and critic, Zumel’s writings have appeared in Living Blues, Big City Blues, Il Blues, Real Blues, Blues Matters and many other international blues magazines. He has also contributed to the huge ‘Encyclopedia of the Blues’ by Edward Komara. In his website, La Hora del Blues there can be found about 2,400 blues CDs reviews he has written in the last eight years. The Blues Archives at the University of Mississippi has a collection of his photographs and writings. In addition, he has been instrumental in bringing leading blues artists to Spain. With a guiding hand in all things blues, Vicente Zumel is exactly who the International KBA was meant to honor.
