Category Archives: Flamenco

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Duquende – Rompecabezas

Duquende is a cantaor from Barcelona who made his début at the age of eight with none other than Camarón de la Isla on guitar duties. Camarón had heard him sing and was adamant that he should reach a wider audience. He has since worked with all the leading guitarists and Paco de Lucía has invited him on innumerable occasions to take part in his shows. His recording career is not exactly prolific but everything he has done has been well received. His new album Rompecabezas, produced by Pepe de Lucía, is no exception.
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Niño Josele – El Mar de Mi Ventana


Niño Josele comes from a long line of Flamenco guitarists and has played with the best of them. His accompaniment on Diego “El Cigala”‘s Teatro Real live album from 2002 is quite sublime. Like many Flamenco artists of late, he has broadened his horizons and has played in recent years with artists as diverse as Lenny Kravitz, Alicia Keys or even Elton John. He started out many years ago accompanying the great Enrique Morente but had spent some time away from the strictly Flamenco. Questions were being asked. “When are you coming back, Josele?” Well, he came back in June this year. And how!
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José Mercé – Mi Única Llave

A true embarrassment of riches in the Flamenco world this month! Still getting my breath back after Estrella’s having broken her six year silence and José Mercé comes along with a new album.

There was me thinking that 2012 was shaping up to be something of a fallow year – how wrong can a man be? Dorantes, the Flamenco pianist, has also come up with the goods. I was too busy to share it with you but keep an ear out in this year’s Festive ‘Spill – there’s at least one on that album that is going to take a lot to be relegated out of my top three for the year. But back to the matter in hand.
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Estrella Morente – Autorretrato


Almost two years after Enrique Morente’s untimely death and a whole six years after the last release, Estrella Morente has released her third album, Autorretrato. There is no way I can be objective about this album: I love her music and I was lucky enough to get tickets to the show in Madrid where many of the tracks were showcased.
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El Aperitivo in Madrid – Part 2

The second in this very intermittent series (wouldn’t even be intermittent if this hadn’t appeared – ed).

Last Sunday we had a big family day out and ended up in a garden centre just off the Plaza Santa Ana that had a Flamenco show on in the patio. Managed to grab a short video of the last bit. It isn’t brilliant but the whole show was a lot of fun and it was great to see the kids enjoying the music and dance too. This is shared in the spirit of “things ‘Spillers enjoy and the music that makes them happy”. We had a great time and hope some of you will enjoy seeing the sort of thing we get up to on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

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Worth Waiting For !

The 1993 overall winner of the Lámpara Minera (as well as in the categories of La Cartagenera, La Malagueña and La Soleá), Miguel Poveda, didn’t figure too strongly in last year’s Friday Night Flamenco series. Not so much an oversight on our part as a (subjective) feeling that whilst being a truly talented artist, his more recent work had lacked a certain bite and edge that we had come to expect from him. We’d also heard rumours that something special was on its way and decided it would be better to wait. We wanted to talk about him in all his glory, not offer some random clips of performances that we were only half enthusiastic about. Well, that “something special” has arrived: his new album, arteSano (a play on words between “artisan” and “healthy or straightforward art”) is a profound and at times highly entertaining trip through some of the key palos of pure, traditional Flamenco.
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Friday Night Fingers


A short play list. Some fine Flamenco guitar you might want to listen to over the weekend. Sabicas, Tomatito, Serranito, Manolo Sanlúcar, Pepe Habichuela, Juan Habichuela and Paco de Lucía. Hope you enjoy it!

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Friday Night Fun – A Happy Playlist

Apropos of absolutely nothing. A happy play list. All flamenco (or almost) and all songs that are happy, upbeat and just fun. Enjoy. You might even try having a dance. Mrs Maki says it isn’t that hard!

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Enrique de Melchor RIP

The Flamenco guitarist Enrique de Melchor died yesterday at the age of 61. He was one of the best of his generation, as highly regarded as both Paco de Lucía and Manolo Sanlúcar. Born Enrique Jiménez Ramírez in Marchena, Seville, he was the son of the guitarist Melchor de Marchena from whom he took his stage name. A brilliant accompanist, he played with the likes of José Mercé, El Lebrijano, José Menese and Carmen Linares amongst others. He “understood the secrets of el cante” better than any other of his generation according to those who were lucky enough to sing with him.

Here are a couple of performances, by way of tribute:
First off a “Soleá“:

And here’s a “Rondeña“:

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Friday Night Flamenco – The Origins

Carretas Gitanas

We can’t end our exploration of Flamenco without going back to the beginning and talking about the music and cultures that have come together to make Flamenco one of the best known artistic and cultural movements in the world. So we’re going to take a short trip through time trying to find out a little about all the factors that over the ages have influenced and contributed to what today we know as Flamenco. The origins are hard to trace and pin down – a lot of what has been written is based on oral tradition and tales handed from generation to generation (no doubt getting embellished and twisted over the years) – but this is what we’ve found out and we want to share it with you.
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Christmas Eve Flamenco

Today’s the day in Spain. Christmas Eve, Nochebuena, is when we get together with all the family, have a slap up meal, drink a little more than is customary and maybe even exchange the odd present. Although if we’re being strictly traditional the presents should wait till the Magi bring them on twelfth night. My family’s lucky we get Santa and The Magi. Double pressies!

FELIZ NAVIDAD FROM THE MAKIS
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Friday Night Flamenco – A Few More We Couldn’t Leave Out

This is the second of our posts highlighting the work of a number of artists we felt we had to mention before we bring the series to a close. We hope you enjoy it.
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Friday Night Flamenco – A Few We Couldn’t Leave Out

As Friday Night Flamenco draws to a close we are going to round it off with a couple of posts in honour of the artists we have perhaps only mentioned in passing or missed out altogether. It doesn’t feel right to finish without mentioning them. Some of them are artists from a long time ago and despite being an integral part of the history of the genre have only a limited presence on-line. Others are still active. This is the first of two posts, the second will be next Friday (16th December). We will be doing a special post for Christmas Eve and finish the series the following Friday (30th December) with a look at the history and origins of the genre. We hope you have enjoyed the series and thank you all for the interest shown and the informative, inquisitive and challenging comments we have received. We’re currently toying with a few ideas for further posts about music in Spanish
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Friday Night Flamenco – Enrique Morente and family

There is so much we could say about the subject of this week’s post but we’ll keep it short. Enrique Morente, who passed away earlier this year, was a true giant in the Flamenco world in his own right: a Cantaor of no little talent and one of the bravest when it came to experimenting both with form and cross-genre fusion. For that alone he would be remembered with respect and admiration. But there was so much more to the man than that. His investigation of the history of Flamenco, of the roots of the lost forms or palos and the work he did both with his own recordings and those of others to bring them back into the public consciousness and revive their popularity was a major and totally decisive contribution to the resurgence the genre has enjoyed in recent decades. Simply put, without Enrique Morente Flamenco would not have traveled as far as it has in the last thirty years and the debt aficionados such as ourselves and many of today’s most successful performers owe him is immeasurable.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Arcángel


This week we’ve decided to have a look at the career so far of one of our favourite contemporary Cantaores, Francisco José Arcángel Ramos “Arcángel”. Arcángel has worked his way up through the ranks and now enjoys considerable success and respect in Flamenco circles and beyond. This is, perhaps, in many ways the not entirely surprising story of the rise and consolidation of a surprisingly remarkable talent.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Different routes to recognition

This week we are going to take a look at two more cantaores who are enjoying considerable success both commercially and, in our opinion, artistically. Two very different artists who have won Grammy Awards this year. Both of whom have deep Flamenco roots but, like so many of our favourite artists, have looked beyond traditional horizons and tried their hand at other genres. Niña Pastori’s brand of light, pop-tinged Flamenco has made her famous and led to her being invited to feature on many more mainstream artists’ projects but she still conserves a fine Flamenco voice and considerable “duende” when singing some of the more traditional palos. Diego “El Cigala” draws on a deeper Flamenco heritage and both his voice and delivery have at times been compared favourably with the great Camarón himself and yet he has been involved in at least two of the most memorable cross genre projects of the last decade. We hope you enjoy finding out a little more about them or revisiting their work.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Breaking the mold

This week we’re moving back a little to take a look at the careers so far of two artists who have been willing to assume change and new challenges, looking for new paths and byways for Flamenco to explore.
We’re going to have a more detailed look at the work of the great Cantaora Mayte Martín (who we have already seen singing a Vidalita in our post on Cantes de Ida y Vuelta 3) and that of Belén Maya the Bailaora: two brave women who, with an open mind and no little talent, have challenged and pushed the limits of traditional Flamenco.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Favourites this year

After last week’s post in the company of Los Farrucos, we thought we’d slow things down a little this week and spend some time in the company of a couple of young singers who have a lot to offer and are causing something of a sensation this year. The first, Sandra Carrasco, we have seen before in our post on Fandangos: the second, Pablo Alborán, is a young singer-songwriter from Málaga whose work probably falls more into the category of Latin Popular Music or Flamenco Pop, but whose voice (especially the quiebros) betrays a deep rooted Andalusian heritage and whose collaborations with Flamenco artists will hopefully make him one to watch over the next few years.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Los Farrucos: My dance is my legacy

Today we are going to talk about a family whose prowess, art and Gypsy heritage begin with the grandfather and have been handed down through subsequent generations. A family that reflects and embodies many of the elements of the true ethnic pride and identity that have always characterised the Gypsy race. In this post we are going to get to know Los Farrucos, whose name, as we have mentioned before, comes from the Arabic “Farouq”, which means “brave”. This is a long post (we have tried to trim it down but couldn’t leave anything else out) so please take your time over it.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Two Rocíos

Rocío Márquez

Rocío Molina



















After last week’s trip through time in the company of the castanets we’re coming back up to date this week with a look at two of the brightest talents on the current Flamenco scene. As well as sharing enormous and exciting talent they share a name: Rocío. Rocío is a common girl’s name in Andalusia. There is an annual pilgrimage, known as El Rocío, to the shrine of Nuestra Señora del Rocío in Almonte in Huelva. The Sevillanas that are sung and danced along the way are known as Sevillanas Rocieras. So, maybe it isn’t so surprising that they share a name. What is surprising is how much both have achieved whilst still in their mid-twenties. We hope you enjoy this post, in which we will try to explain just why we are so excited by these artists – by what they have done so far and by the prospect of further treasures to come.
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Friday Night Flamenco – ¡Castanets!

Today we’re going to jump back in time to speak about las castañuelas (castanets), an instrument that has a strong influence not only in Flamenco but also in the most traditional and classical forms of Spanish Dance. As we are going to do an overview of the use of castanets in general, we’ve tried to keep it short and at the same time to avoid leaving out the most relevant examples of the extremely broad variety of musical styles this instrument is used in.
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Friday Night Flamenco – Paco de Lucía

It’s a real challenge to write about Paco de Lucía because, although he’s a household name well beyond the realms of Flamenco, the range and variety of styles he has covered is so wide that it’s impossible to condense it all into one post. We are going to do our best, however, to make sure that this week’s offering reflects at least the essence and central pillars of his incomparable body of work.
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