10 years of solitude since the death of the great guitarist Paco de Lucia

Here is an original tribute. For the tenth anniversary of the death of the comet Paco de Lucia, an album titled “Pepito y Paquito” with 21 tracks tumbles like flaming palmas into what remains of the record bins. Pepe, the older brother by two years, is already a cantaor who asserts himself – but who can also be put off on this disc with his voice a little too present – and Paco, barely 11 years old accompanies him, already sweeping away all the codes of the genre, as if he had had the sound box of his guitar as a cradle. His father, also a guitarist, not having the means to send him to college, told him when he was just 10 years old: “You know how to read, write and count, that’s enough, it’s better to spend the time you waste at school playing the guitar because I can’t pay for college. »

Two brothers in short pants

The austere cover of the album, where we see the two brothers with their mother in the streets of Algeciras, their city of birth, although not an epicenter of flamenco like Jérez where Seville, has kept in memory of the escapades of the two brothers in short pants. Studious escapades if there ever was one. Paco studied during his 12 hours a day learning the arpeggios, scales and compasses of the different styles of flamenco. And too bad for the virtuous of the Music Conservatories, he never knew how to read or write notes on a staff. No need. Flamenco, the music of the Andalusian gypsies, the proles of this province, where cante jondo reigned supreme through this oral transmission, had no use for the so-called preacher-intellectuals-payos, who expounded on a style that did not appeal to them. not owned. Paco, like Pepe, his singer brother, non-gypsies therefore, lived, played and sang with them during family celebrations in their house in Algeciras open to all. This is how he met Camaron de la Isla, and how the legend was written in the ten essential albums that reinvented and dusted off the Tables de Loi of flamenco.

Music of the poor

More than a contribution, for this music dating back just over two centuries. Mixing Jewish, Arab and gypsy currents, it remained a music of the poor, despised by the wealthy, said Paco de Lucia in an interview for Télérama magazine in 2007. Too shy to be a good cantaor, he left this place to his brother Pepe and to his other brother at heart the admirable Camaron. Luckily for the guitar. Obviously, when we talk about flamenco mastery for the six-string, the names of Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, both knighted during the master’s lifetime, are still there to make us cry on an adamantine sole, but Paco de Lucia, remains the ultimate creator . The ten years since his death and the release of this UFO of 21 unreleased youth songs, impresses with the talent that is blossoming. We wait in vain for a new, equally inventive star weaver.