Antonio Fernández Díaz known as Fosforito, (b. Puente Genil, Córdoba, Spain, 1932) is a flamenco singer and winner of the gold key of flamenco singing.
Fosforito. Something to do with matches, or fire? Love the coopers, wonder if Shepheard Neam still make barrels as nicely as this?
For anyone out there who has followed my new found passion for Spanish music I think this one is a treat. This is something new and the girls voice is amazing. I heard her on the radio and assumed she was a husky sounding ‘Sevilliana’, but no. Her family is from Equitorial Guinea but she was born and brought up with Gypsies in Palma, Mallorca. Clearly there, her musical talent heard the ‘Canta Sevilliana’ sound and my goodness she does it well, which is not easy.
Her name is Concha Buika and her album is called Nina de Fuego. This isn’t my favourite track but it still fab in my opinion. Go and buy it. Oh, and if you wonder what that lovely word ‘corazon’ is it means heart and it is a pre-requisite in all Spanish music to include it. And quite rightly so.
P.S Don’t be put off by the Spanish ‘Saga Louts’ in the audience. I think this is a great performance. Ole.
On nights like these, sometimes I wish I were part of a tight knit Gitano clan living with my extended family in some Barrio of Jerez. It’s hot and it’s intense and a gig I will probably search for for the rest of my life.
The singer is Manuel de los Santos Pastor or El Agujetas, (the ’stiff’ one) and yes he is super cool in my opinion…
Sorry, more Flamenco, but Juan Valderrama is just one cool dude…. and I just love the colour of the old footage.
It’s suddenly very hot here, even the breeze is hot. And you can hear the sounds of Andalucia in the resinous perfume of the pine trees and from the heat of the sun on your face.
Listen to Carmen Linares singing and see if you can hear a Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer aloft a minaret across the Straits of Gibraltar.
Otherwise known as ‘Camaron de la Isla’. This is a new passion for me, so I am no expert, but I wonder sometimes if the ‘Gitanos’ really represent ‘counter culture’ here in Spain. ‘Camaron de la Isla’ was an enormous talent singing at the creative limits of a music form (flamenco) which (and contradict me if I’m wrong) is the only popular and contemporary music form that exists, though traditional, in the west.
Like a lot of creative people he crashed in flames on a roll of drink and drugs dying of cancer, I think, in his early forties. But my goodness what an artist.
We have here in Spain what I always longed for in the UK, a national radio station that plays eclectic, interesting music all day and night. And before anyone should protest, my argument is that the kind of radio I like in the UK is marginalised into specific programmes within radio stations.
Radio National d’Espana 3 is just fab.
http://www.rtve.es/rne/audio/RNE_Envivo_emision/index_r3.html
Castilian is spoken at a speed I can understand and the music is diverse, often fascinating and often hard to listen to. For example, one Sunday afternoon, three hours of late sixties to seventies synthesiser music, lyrics in English, and I have never heard any of it before. This will be followed by a set of existentialist country music. Speaking of which, I have never heard Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on UK radio.
And then one day I was moved to tears (nearly) by the gravelly voice of one ‘El Chocolate’ a ‘Cantaor’ (flamenco singer) being accompanied by what sounded like a triangle occasionally hit with a soup ladle. I later found that this was the song of the blacksmith.
Now a new world of music has been opened up to me and finding more and more out is a journey well worth taking.
