December 11, 2006The music of Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero (a.k.a. Rodrigo y Gabriela) attempts to reconcile their love of heavy metal music with their traditional style of Mexican guitar playing. Their self-titled debut combines Sanchez's intricate fingerpicking with Quintero's smooth melodic style — and works wonderfully. The combination is most easily recognized in the pair's simultaneously elegant and rollicking cover of Metallica's "Orion," but most of its music is original, and all of it is instrumental.

Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero were both born in Mexico and are now based out of Dublin, Ireland. They moved there without speaking much English, and soon found music as their sole means of support. They persevered, playing on the street to earn money in places like Denmark and Barcelona, but they developed support back in Ireland, so they returned to Dublin. Their music has been extremely successful in Ireland and elsewhere, topping the Irish charts this past spring. The duo's self-titled album was released in October in the U.S. This segment originally aired on Oct. 31, 2006.