Spanish singer Rosalia exports flamenco... with a twist
a genre she fell in love with as a teen as she heard it blasted from MADRID: At 25 and with just two friends’ cars. albums, Rosalia has converted From a non-g ypsy backher groundbreaking fusion of g round in the northeaster n flamenco with urban and elecre gion of Catalonia — far tronic music into a sensation from the cradle of flamenco in in Spain. southern Andalucia — her first, Next up, the world. minimalist 2017 album never“This is a dream,” said the theless drew praise, attracting singer as she won two Latin millenials to a genre that isn’t Grammy awards in Las Vegas mainstream. on Thursday, including Best Then early this year, she Alter native Song for her hit announced she was going to ‘Malamente’ which she perperform at Sonar in Barcelona. formed in a white bodysuit with Flamenco at an electronic female backup dancers in a slick music festival? Something was up.choreography.stillrelatively
T unknown abroad, the brunette hen she posted a photo on is already a superstar in Spain Instagram of her and Pharrell where she earned acclaim for Williams, with whom she said her diligent study of flamenco, she was working.
Rosalia and the global pop superstar? Something was definitely up. At Sonar in June, she unleashed ‘Malamente’, a blend of flamenco with trap, a style of hip hop, and other tracks on her yet-to-be released second album.
“Sonar really shook things up because the next day, the media... praised her as a new star, and an exportable one at that,” says Yeray Iborra, a jour nalist at Spain’s Mondo Sonoro music magazine.
This month, she finally released the album ‘El Mal Querer’ (‘Bad Loving’) — a bombshell of flamenco fused with trap, electro, pop and R&B that has critics hugely excited.
Some in the gypsy community, though, have cried foul, accusing her of appropriating a genre that emerged as a cry of pain of their long-suffering people.
No matter. In just one day, the album’s 11 songs that tell the story of a toxic relation- ship accumulated more than 2.3 million hits on Spotify.. The video clip of ‘Malamente’ has drawn close to 33 million hits on Youtube.
Wi t h S o n y b a c k i n g h e r, Rosalia has performed at the MTV Europe Music Awards, given a free concert in Madrid to launch her album and promoted it on New York’s Times Square.
Rolling Stone magazine gave the album four out of five stars, saying the singer has “even attracted attention from the English-language press, which rarely engages with Spanishlanguage music.”
Rosalia decided to study flamenco in Barcelona aged just 17, says Jose Miguel Vizcaya, her teacher.