Rodrigo y Gabriela: The rise and rise of R&G

How did the Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela go from busking in Dublin to a world tour? Robin Denselow hears their story

As improbable but deserved success stories go, the rise and rise of Rodrigo y Gabriela is a textbook case for the rewards of sheer hard work, determination and a refusal to listen to other people's advice. Seven years ago, they arrived in Dublin as a penniless if good-looking young duo from Mexico, and ended up busking on Grafton Street to pay off their debts. This month, their latest album simply entitled Rodrigo y Gabriela, went straight to the top of the Irish charts - the first instrumental album ever to do so.

And this despite the fact that they refuse to fit easily into any musical category ("In some shops, we're stocked under both rock and world music," says Rodrigo), and ignored all those who said they would never get anywhere as a duo just playing guitars. "They tried to make us sing," says Gabriela, "and I said that we didn't want a hit record. Now, we're even played on commercial radio stations in the mornings!"

They succeeded, with help from the producer John Leckie, by sounding as exhilarating and unusual on the new album as they do on stage. They chose him, they say, because he's a rock producer not a world-music one (though his credits include Baaba Maal and Radiohead), and he aimed for "the same sound we have playing live" rather than adding in "10,000 guitars and violins".

Quite right, too, for the Rodrigo y Gabriela style is thrilling, and impossible to categorise. They swap, almost intuitively, between bursts of rapid-fire, single-string playing and rhythm work, and their influences range from Latin to jazz, acoustic treatment of heavy metal riffs, and their own very Mexican take on flamenco.

They say that they only started playing like this when busking in Dublin. Back in Mexico City, their only interest had been in thrash metal, playing Metallica or Slayer covers in a band called Tierra Acida. Rodrigo was taught by his brother while still at school, and Gabriela says that she "refused to go to high school. I just wanted to play guitar. I loved Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page and all the British heroes, and I wanted to play like them". She worked for a while in a government building and did "absolutely nothing". Why was that? She laughs. "It was a government building in Mexico!"

But Rodrigo and Gabriela failed to take the Mexican music scene by storm. Their band lost money, they hated living in Mexico City, and they failed the exams for the Mexico City conservatoire (though now, says Rodrigo, "the director of the school has sent us an e-mail, saying, 'I've heard of you and have written some pieces I'd like you to play'!"). So they moved out, selling many of their possessions and moving to the little town of Ixtapa, on the Mexican west coast.

"For a month", says Gabriela, "we did nothing. We didn't even play, and we ran out of money. But we promised ourselves that we would do nothing except music, and so we went to a hotel asking if we could play background music for them. They said, 'Yes, you can start today', and that's when we realised that we only had three tunes of our own, so we started playing acoustic versions of Metallica songs..."

Then they started travelling. A girl that they met told them that Ireland is small and the people nice, "so we decided to go there. The idea was to stay there for 15 days, then go to London for another 15 days, and then on to Spain. But we ran out of money and stayed for a year!" explains Gabriela, laughing again.

The aim, as in Mexico, had been to find work playing in hotels, but they found, as Rodrigo says, "that it doesn't work like that". They had to earn money quickly, so they started busking "just with our cover versions of Metallica or Santana. But we soon got bored". They started writing instrumental pieces, and found that they got more money: "Every time we played like that, we got more. It was our way of surviving."

"We were under quite a lot of pressure," continues Gabriela, "because we owed lots of money. So we would busk, and then we'd write more material, and then busk again. It was both tough and great at the same time."

It was on the Dublin streets that Rodrigo and Gabriela began to use guitars as percussion instruments, "so that it sounded like the drums in a band", and they started developing flamenco and Latin rhythms along with the heavy-metal riffs: "As a middle-class kid in Mexico, you just like foreign music, and you don't want to do the home-made music. But once you travel abroad, you realise how good that music actually is."

And Dubliners appreciated what they heard "so we ended up in people's houses every night, drinking. It was crazy". Gradually, their reputation grew. They played at "parties, coffee shops or weddings", and then, once they had the money to move on, they continued their European tour. They went busking in Copenhagen "where it was winter, and even colder than Ireland - a stupid decision!", and then in Barcelona, where they saved up their money to get the best seats to see the flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia performing.

Returning to Dublin, they found that their busking days were over. One of the many people who had watched them when they started out playing in Grafton Street was Damien Rice "who was not famous at the time, and just sat, in a hippie kind of way, watching us play, and then asked us out for a coffee". Rice later invited them to support him at his shows and suggested that they should play "proper gigs" of their own. The duo say that they were initially against the idea "because we would lose our freedom", but went ahead anyway, "and shifted to what we do at the moment".

Now, after constant touring across Ireland and Europe, they seem set to take on the world. This year they plan to play in Australia and then the USA (where their album will be released in the summer), but they are still "not known" back home in Mexico "so it will be interesting to see the reaction there".

And how do they explain their success? "We are fresh, and not technology, and you can dance to it," suggests Gabriela, a lady whose English is peppered with Dublin expletives. "I don't care if you call it rock'n'roll or world music. It's music, and if you like it, fucking buy the album and go to a gig!"

The 'Rodrigo y Gabriela' album is out on Rubyworks

Rodrigo y Gabriela will be touring the UK in May ( www.rodgab.com)