Melmerby via Spain and Morocco

But a taste of the warm south is present nevertheless in the sounds being made in a handsome farmhouse not far from the hurtling traffic on the A1. It comes from the fingers of a man from Andalucia. Eduardo Niebla has made this chilly northern spot his home, having arrived here by a tortuous route.

He admits he has no real compass, being driven mainly by the intensity he feels for the music he makes. But the girl he married comes from these parts and he is happy to have come north with her and settled in the area she calls home.

It has been a long journey and when at times it looked as if he was about to stall, something has always turned up. The most improbable of these chance events that have punctuated his life was being summoned from his London busking spot one afternoon to perform for the Royal Family.

Eduardo has built his own recording studio attached to the family home where he's in full creative flow, putting the finishing touches to a CD of music he has composed and preparing for a new national tour. In a break in the proceedings he switches from total absorption with his work to reveal a friendly and outgoing personality. Some of his guitars (made by the maker of Segovia's guitars) are to hand and he picks one off the rack. Fingers and thumb fly in an extraordinary two minutes of flamenco virtuosity.

It all began with an accordion. This instrument, plus a suitcase or two, was all his family possessed when they arrived in Gibraltar having fled from Morocco.

The family originally came from Andalucia but had long been settled in Morocco which in colonial times the French and Spanish had carved up between them. In the mid-1950s General Franco recognised the Moroccan independence and some time later, for reasons which don't seem entirely clear, Eduardo's father suddenly felt the family's position there was precarious and dangerous.

Eduardo was five when they quit Morocco in a rush for Gibraltar and then made their way across the straits to the mainland and took a train to Girona.

"We arrived with not much more than we stood up in," says Eduardo. There were eight children at that point and two adults.

Plus suitcases and the accordion. They had nowhere to go in Girona. "Bed and breakfasts would not take us. We were split up and sent to a convent. It was very tough. We knew no-one and no-one wanted to employ my dad.

"He was an impetuous man who left everything behind in Morocco. He was also a famous runner who had competed for Spain. He kept it quiet though. I only learned about it later from my uncle."

Eduardo's father worked to reunite the family and eventually put a roof over their heads with his own hands. "Dad made a shed – he had a job as a cleaner by then – it had no water or light. We started family life there."

Inside its walls things were pretty crowded. Eduardo's mother was pregnant 17 times in total. But he was the fortunate one because he had an escape. Music was his salvation.

"I spent hours in the dark creating a world for myself. It helped me get through the hardship. For that reason my brothers and sisters were more affected by that experience than me.

"My dad told me that when I was a toddler, I'd go up to the radio when classical music was on and put my ear against it."

Eduardo started playing music with the only thing to hand. "The piano accordion is such a heavy instrument for a five year-old, even though it was only a small one. I picked it up to correct my dad's playing. I didn't like what he did with the bass line – it was always the same one. I showed him how he could vary it."

By the age of six Eduardo was playing tangos at neighbours' dances. One day his elder brother bought home a guitar. "I was mesmerised by it. I was told 'never touch the guitar' – it was very expensive. But I couldn't resist. I saw what his friend did and memorised three shapes. I liked discovering what notes will work, or another phrase. I'm attracted to finding my own point of view.

"I started learning classical pieces from the radio. Once I had got the hang of the first 16 bars, I found I could go on and learn the whole piece. I had no teachers, I taught myself. You could say I learned by the natural approach."

In Andalucia that has also been the traditional way. It used to be that flamenco artists never received formal training but learned by using their wits, listening and watching how others did it. The word flamenco may originally have meant gipsy.

The gipsies first came to Andalucia from India in the 15th century, bringing with them song and dance strongly influenced by Indian styles. The guitar was a later addition to the voices and clapping and by the 19th century it had become an entertainment, timetabled for caf visitors, as much as a spontaneous event inside a gipsy community.

For two years Eduardo's family lived in the shed and then moved into a flat, thanks to the money that was now coming in. On Saturdays and Sundays, Eduardo worked in a patisserie, up at five in the morning, cleaning the pots then doing deliveries until mid-afternoon. By now, his dad had two jobs, working in a ceramics factory in the daytime and as a security guard at night.

"He wanted help from me cleaning the factory – I got a Coke or a Fanta, no money. At 14 he put me in a job making aluminium windows. He told them: 'This is my son,teach him the trade – don't pay him'. I got nothing, they taught me nothing. I was only the cleaner."

By now he was a veteran of school bands and with a couple of friends he started another called Atila which was good enough to be booked for hotel gigs. He must also have been doing something right at the aluminium job because they told him he could be the manager.

This was in 1974, when he was 17. "I said, 'I'm not going to be making windows and doors. I'm going to Paris'. I told my dad who said, 'you are choosing the hardest way'. He gave me all the money in his wallet."

The Atila trio took off to Paris where one of Eduardo's brothers was making a career as a painter. They looked round for somewhere to live when they arrived and found a basement in a hotel in Saint Germain des Prs. "It was the worst hotel in Paris. All the prostitutes used it. It was terrible."

They won a band competition and Atila's music was played on the radio. "But money-wise it was disaster. We ran out of food. Then something turned up. I had earlier bumped into someone in the Metro, a priest. He showed up out of the blue at our basement with two bags of food. From a chance meeting, it was a miraculous outcome because we had nothing."

They stuck it out in Paris for a year, then returned to Spain where Eduardo was called up to do his national service in the army. With that out of the way, he set off again, this time with a vague plan to head for America and a school of music in Boston where another brother, Salvador, had studied.

By 1978 he had got as far as London and was busking in Covent Garden. He and his partner powered their amplifier with a motorcycle battery and kept a watchful eye on the big bag of coins which accumulated from passers-by. One of them paused one afternoon and made an inquiry. "A man stopped and asked if we could do a performance that night. We said yes and he wrote an address on the back of his card. At the end of the day, we picked up our motorcycle battery and our bag of money, which was rather heavy, and found a taxi.

"We showed the driver the address on the card and when we arrived there were police everywhere. We told him this couldn't be it and he said, 'this is the address you've got mate'. We didn't know where we were, it was a sort of gallery.

"We played what we did in the street and the Queen Mother walked in. Then Prince Charles and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. They stood and listened to us and were there for some time enjoying it. Then they moved on. The two of us got 40 each." Didn't they think of asking for a bit more for a Royal performance? "We never thought

of it."

He met his wife Katherine – now also his manager – while working for a music charity and moved to North Yorkshire. They have a small son who already has a small, but perfectly formed, drumkit in the living room. "It's better to live in the countryside, although as a musician I can live anywhere. Katherine's parents live round here, they are a farming family. I fell in love with the people here.

"It's not Andalucia. Spain is wonderful, the people live outside, they are more relaxed – it's a lot to do with the weather – they like to celebrate, any excuse will do. Here in Yorkshire life is more introspective. For an artist that's a good thing. I don't go anywhere. My wife's parents take us out. I just work, really. When we are touring it's very intense.

"I'm not tied to any style like flamenco. I do gipsy jazz, classical, finger picking, all sorts." He has been playing with Indian musicians for more than 20 years, developing as a composer that strand which the first gipsy immigrants brought over to southern Spain. The Indian government has recognised Eduardo's work and invited him over to play at a major national celebration.

"There a lot of Arab and Indian influences in flamenco, the timings are very complex. It's the most complicated folk music in the world. It takes many years to be a master – you can spend your whole life trying."

Eduardo Niebla is at the Spa Bridlington, Wednesday, January 27.