Innovative as well as orthodox in flamenco, the author of the rumba ‘Caballo negro’ and the symphonic ‘Tauromagia’ had retired from the stage in 2013 but continued his educational work
He still played por soleá, in which his essence was found, like a rumba fused with pop percussion and a guitar with effects below his theme, like in ‘Caballo negro’, which he published on a 45 rpm vinyl in 1975 , four years before Camarón’s ‘The Legend of Time’ appeared. Manolo Sanlúcar, who began in the tablaos and continued in the great symphonic theaters with orchestras in the background, has died at the age of 78, and leaves behind a monumental work dedicated to flamenco guitar. The teacher suffered from kidney disease and was undergoing dialysis.
On the B side of that revolutionary vinyl of ‘Caballo negro’ that inaugurated the “new flamenco” and that appeared after the three rigorous albums of ‘Mundo y forma de la guitarra flamenca’ that he composed at the age of 16, was ‘Losphantasmas of the war’, with which he did not shy away from his ideological positions. He also dedicated the album ‘Y Volverte’ to Miguel Hernández and ‘Locura de brisa y trino’ to Lorca. Baptized as Manuel Muñoz Alcón, who would take the name of his native population as his surname, he went without fear of innovation and with respect for tradition.
He learned the guitar with Isidro Muñoz, his father, who in addition to being a guitarist and singer was a bullfighter, and he began to show him the virtues of the frets at the age of seven. Josefa, his mother, when she wanted to punish him as a child, vetoed the instrument. By then, the great flamenco settled in the Sevillian estate of El Pinto. Married to La Niña de los Peines, Pepe Pinto called his father and told him that he wanted to listen to that young man who would then have been less than 15 years old.
That day changed his life. A “meeting that ended up being a party”, recalled Sanlúcar, made him leave the amateur field. His first tour was in 1957 with Pepe Marchena and he continued with other companies, of different flamencos, when the division between gypsy and payo was still very marked.
With Paco de Lucia and Enrique Morente
Student of the musical possibilities of his instrument, although he never relegated flamenco and defended the canons against transgression, he made the mixture of tradition and avant-garde his own. A style that he developed in complicity with musicians like Paco de Lucía and Enrique Morente. He defined himself as “orthodox” against “libertinism” and “heterodox” against the criticism that arose from the search for art. «The guitar is not generous, it is demanding. But at the same time it is fair. If you study it deeply and dedicate your attention to it, it doesn’t give you everything, it gives you what belongs to you. If you abandon it, it doesn’t give you anything », he defined his instrument in a documentary of the same name on Canal Andalucía. Today, the day of his death, Sanlúcar de Barrameda decreed three days of official mourning.
Halfway through his life, already recognized as one of the most important flamencos of his time, he began to study music in a self-taught way, in order to make the orchestral arrangements of his compositions himself, dissatisfied with the turns they took when he commissioned them. to others. In this way he created ‘Tauromagia’, in 1988, one of the great flamenco symphonic works, together with ‘Medea’, the orchestral work that preceded it and which was danced by the National Ballet.
a wise life
Born in 1943, a flamenco prodigy who won 50 pesetas at his first concert in Malaga and was married to Ana for six decades, he was proud of that Andalusian “own music” born of folklore, as he said. For a career that exceeds twenty records and retired from the stage since 2013, he received numerous awards during his lifetime, from his first contest, the World Guitar Festival of Campione in Italy, to the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2015. and the National Music Award in 2000. Once he gave up concerts, he continued giving master classes, out of “responsibility.”
In his last published interview, conducted by Paco Sánchez Múgica in 2021, he reviewed his legacy: «Have I lived consistently or have I lived, as we say around here, to the tuntún? And what’s up, what’s up I have lived with an awareness that I am surprised at myself and my decisions. I said, when I began to travel and became fully aware of the guitar: this is what I give my life to».
A myth of the guitar goes away and leaves not only his music. Also a study to which he dedicated his last twelve years, which he calls an «encyclopedia» on flamenco, with two thousand pages of theory and several hours of audiovisual content, so that it can be understood by other cultures. Jondo, as he would say before strumming the strings.
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