Things can change in less than a year's time with the "gitans" from France's Midi-Pyrenees. Not that older posts on this thread are invalid, but they cannot contain the flux and shifting that goes on in multiple generations of these musicians and their families.

José Reyes, with much musical ability and very little formal education (illiterate), would sing years ago with the Baliardo/Ballardo family guitarist with the nickname Manitas de Plata, who over the years has had Mudcat members who enjoyed his recordings. Both men are deceased now, singer Reyes dying at a tragically early age due to lung cancer.

The children of José Reyes included sons, by birth order, Paul/Pablo, Francois/Canut, Patchai, Nicolas, and André. The sons initially sang with their father toward the end of his life; with his passing, they continued, using his family name, Los Reyes, which happens to be Spanish for The Kings. This family unit was strikingly cohesive for several decades, while these brothers had young families to support. The decision to leave their children at home while the brothers toured the world, following the international success of "Bamboleo," did not come easy for these musicians; but the tours and recordings allowed them to raise their sons and daughters in greater ease than they themselves had been raised.

In the meanwhile, the extended families under the name Baliardo experienced matters a little differently; it seems that Manitas de Plata was not the cohesive force to his sons and nephews, to unite them professionally and keep them together and bonded, that José Reyes was. So Los Reyes persevered in and around Arles, while the numerous Baliardos centered around Montpellier.

Diego Baliardo, the oldest of three brothers, is not a direct descendant of Manitas de Plata, although there is a blood connection; of his father, no one cares to speak in detail, except to allow that the father -- a different Baliardo -- was indeed a decent player of the guitar. But somehow, the father let the family down, and it was the older son who essentially brought up his siblings under straitened circumstances, ignored and disregarded by closer relatives of Manitas de Plata, and -- perhaps not shunned -- but regarded, among the "gitans," as just another struggling, somewhat broken family unit. Diego ("Maurice" on the papers) had a minimal education and performed whatever unskilled labor would support the household; with his two younger brothers, he was determined that they would complete schooling and was paternally strict. All three played the guitar, and it was the youngest, the soft-spoken, quiet Tonino, who would lock himself in a room for hours at a time, practicing his music so as to develop and master his guitar in private.

Today, Nicolas Reyes and Tonino Baliardo, both with grown sons who also make music, remain an intact unit, and they continue as The Gipsy Kings. However, it was inevitable, with the strong personalities and talents of their other brothers and especially those of their young adult nephews, that at some point, one musical group simply was not big enough to contain everyone.