Flamenco legend remembered with passion
Spanish guitar legend Paco de Lucia, who died 10 years ago this past Sunday, couldn’t read music but his talent revolutionised flamenco, making it popular around the world.
Wherever he played, he filled theatres and concert halls, from London to New York, Paris and Moscow, San Francisco and Tokyo, shattering the image of flamenco as only of interest to a fringe audience.
“Flamenco was marginalised in Spain because it was the music of gypsies, of Andalusians, of poor and working-class people,” he once said, referring to the southern Andalusia region where was born and raised.
But his virtuosity brought the dramatic rhythms and passion of flamenco to the most prestigious music halls and this week the main tribute event was held in New York’s Carnegie Hall.
The secret of De Lucia’s success was his capacity “to make beautiful melodies and then dress these up with the best harmonies”, guitarist Jose Carlos Gomez said in the southern port town of Algeciras.
Gomez’s latest album Las Huellas de Dios (God’s Fingerprints) is a tribute to his idol.
Born Francisco Sanchez Gomez to a Portuguese mother and a Spanish father, he was known as Paco – the short form of Francisco – “de Lucia” meaning “of Lucia”, his mother. Growing up in a gypsy neighbourhood, his father, also a guitarist, introduced him to music and urged him to practise for hours.
When he was eight, his father put a guitar in his hands and told him: “I can’t send you to school, I can’t teach you a career, the only thing I can give you is this guitar,” he once said.
De Lucia took to it so well it was as if he had “been born to play the guitar”, said Gomez. By the time he was 12, he was earning at flamenco bars that are home to the authentic form of the tragic gypsy lament and dancing.
By 18 had released his first album. He was the first flamenco artist to obtain a chart topper with his instrumental rumba Entre dos aguas which was released in 1973 and saw him bringing flamenco closer to jazz with a sextet, including wind instruments and an electric bass, in a major break with tradition.
Also revolutionary was his introduction of a cajon, a Peruvian box drum, instead of two or three rhythmic clappers which made flamenco “more acoustic”, said top percussionist Paquito Gonzalez. When De Lucia “became a global star, almost without realising it, he created what is now the flamenco industry”, said guitarist Jose Quevedo. “It was a turning point.” –