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MUSIC

Seven songs you didn’t know were flamenco

To mark the death of Spanish guitar great Paco de Lucía on Tuesday, the Local has put together a collection of songs that have helped break down the barriers between flamenco, rock, jazz and world music.

Published: 27 February 2014 16:01 CET
Seven songs you didn't know were flamenco
Malaga group Chambo are the latest in a long line of flamenco innovators. Screen group: YouTube

With Paco de Lucía's death Spain has lost one of its great flamenco ambassadors. 

But the guitarist from the southern city of Algeciras was far from being a flamenco purist. His experimental mixing of the Spanish music form with jazz and Latin music helped make flamenco a truly international art form.  

Here are seven songs highlighting the cross pollination of flamenco with other music forms.

They show that the uniquely Spanish music is far from static, but is instead constantly involving. Love them or hate them, they will make you see flamenco in a whole different way.

1) Diego el Cigalo (singer) and Bebo Valdes (piano)

This match made of heaven blended sweet Cuban rhythms and flamenco vocals.

Their 2003 album Lágrimas Negras (Black Tears) was an international success.

2) Sabicas and Joe Beck

Flamenco also clashed head on with rock music, including this 1970s collaboration between flamenco guitarist Sabicas and rock musician Joe Beck.

About two and half minutes into the song, Spanish-style guitar noodling gives way to a full rock out, screeching solos included.

3) Pata Negra

But perhaps the greatest meeting of rock and flamenco was in the form of the Seville group Pata Negra.

In the video below joint group founder Raimundo Amador performs their song Yo me Quedo en Sevilla (I will stay in Seville) with Antonio Carmona.

4) Radio Tarifa 

The world music band Radio Tarifa — named for an imaginary radio station in Tarifa, the southern most point on the Spanish mainland — ploughed their own furrow.

Their music was a unique amalgam of Arab influences, flamenco and rock. 

5. Ketama

To see what other directions flamenco has gone in, here is the Madrid band Ketama mixing salsa and funk in No Estamos Lokos (We're Not Crazy) from 1995.

6) Flamenco meets Senegal

Ketama also recorded two wonderful albums with top Senegalese musicians including the kora player Toumani Diabete.

7) Chambao

Present day flamenco is a many-headed beast. Representing flamenco chill is Chambao, from Malaga in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia.

Their blend of electronic and flamenco elements is as far away from traditional flamenco is at is possible to be.  

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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