‘A lot of people don’t know, but the Bay Area has quite an extensive following of flamenco,” says veteran performer and educator Andrea La Canela. “In the United States, it’s one of the centers where a lot of guitarists and dancers and singers are. We’re really lucky that way.”

Raised in Santa Cruz with a background in ballet and modern dance, La Canela began studying flamenco more than 30 years ago. Now based in Marin, she regularly performs and teaches classes locally, though her flamenco career has taken her across the globe, including a two-year sailing journey to Spain in 2006.

“We took off for Spain and performed wherever we went,” says La Canela, who embarked on the trip with her musical partner at the time. The pair sailed down to Mexico and Costa Rica, crossed over to the Atlantic and made their way back up the eastern seaboard to New York, then shot across the Atlantic Ocean on a 19-day sail before seeing land again. Eventually, they settled in Rota, Spain, and immersed themselves in flamenco culture for over a year.

“Music is a wonderful way to travel,” La Canela says. “Everybody relates to music, if you don’t speak the same language.”

Describing the music of flamenco as both haunting and beautiful, La Canela brought her passion and lifetime of experiences with her when she returned to the Bay Area in 2008.

“Flamenco is very ancient, and it deals with all the emotional scale that a human being has. It’s the blues of Spain,” she says. “You don’t need a stage to do flamenco. This is a lifestyle, and you can do it in the living room. It’s so accessible.”

In addition to performing at parties and wineries throughout the North Bay, La Canela hosts a regular flamenco show at the Sausalito Seahorse on the third Thursday of the month, and teaches dance classes at venues like Marin Ballet in San Rafael and Knights of Columbus Hall in San Anselmo, on her own and through Marin County’s Parks and Recreation department. Her next session of kids classes begins
Sept. 19.

“The teaching has really started to take off,” she says. “Right now, I’m teaching Sevillana, a folk dance that has all the elements of flamenco in it. You can’t get past junior high school in Spain without dancing Sevillana. It’s a great beginner dance.”

It does not take long for San Francisco Gypsy-rock band Diego’s Umbrella to hook an audience. In fact, it took all of two notes for the five-piece outfit to turn HopMonk Tavern’s session room in Novato from a casual crowd into an ecstatic dance party when they headlined the venue last month.

“That really just comes from years and years of touring and playing as many shows as our bodies will allow,” says percussionist Jake Wood.

After more than a decade together and with nearly a thousand shows under their belt, it’s obvious that Diego’s Umbrella have mastered the craft of performing live, and the group has an unspoken connection onstage when they dive into musical medleys that cross genres between heavy metal riffology, Croatian folk and Klezmer music.

“Pretty quickly, people realize that we’re onstage having fun, and it’s just really infectious,” says Wood. “We have sentimental moments and songs that range from different emotions, but overall, if you put a song like ‘Hava Nagila’ into your set, you’re setting a tone that you can’t really deny. The aspect of having fun is very real. It certainly is for me.”

Wood is joined under the umbrella by guitarists and vocalists Vaughn Lindstrom and Kevin Gautschi, violinist Jason Kleinberg and bassist Johann Hill, aka Red Cup.

“It’s a very special group of people,” says Wood. “I think we all really appreciate the camaraderie we have.”

Before joining the band, Wood was a freelance drummer. Last year he took advantage of some Diego’s Umbrella down time to get back into that world. He landed his first professional theater gig as a percussionist with the touring company of Hamilton: An American Musical.

“The level of musicianship in the orchestra blew me away every night,” says Wood. “It was pretty humbling.”

Diego’s Umbrella is back in full force this summer. There’s a new album in the offing and a performance under the afternoon sun at the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol on Aug. 11. There they will be joined by the likes of Sonoma County folk trio Rainbow Girls and blues powerhouse Wendy DeWitt.

“Our latest touring motto is ‘thrash responsibly,'” jokes Wood. “We want to have a ton of fun, but we’re not 23 years old anymore, so we’re exercising some levels of precaution.”