Flamenco - The Spain Of Manitas - Manitas de Plata

 

Andalucia: Fandangos del la Malasuerte

Andalucia: Fiesta Andaluza

Andalucia: Fandango por Soleares a Dos Guitarras

Flamenco 

The Spain Of Manitas

Manitas de Plata

Cover Design: Ron Coro

Columbia Records CS 9891

1968

From the back cover: Manitas' Spain has always been the reflection of the traditional "cante condo," those lively intimate songfests which animated the late-night Spanish get-togethers. Manitas sensed even more deeply than an Andalusian the grace of Seville, the severity of Cordoba, the purity of Granada, the charm of Jerez.

The strange irony of his intimacy with Spain lies in the fact that Ricardo Ballardo (Manitas de Plata, meaning "little hands of silver," is his professional name) was not born in Spain, but in Séte, in the south of France, and did not set foot in the land of his heritage until he was forty-seven, at which time he finally set out to trace the fountainhead of his flamenco inspiration, and to see with his own eyes the Golden Tower and the Triana quarter in Seville, the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra and the Sacromonte in Granada, and to witness the frenzied gait of the Jerez festival.

But his dreams were always his strongest inspiration and, for once, fact was not greater than fiction: the Andalusia of 1968 was something of a disappointment to the nomadic Manitas who, along with the byways of Provence, would listen enthralled to the sometimes animated, sometimes nostalgic tales of the mysteries of Andalusia. For Manitas was a gypsy, and essentially remains one to this day, not knowing how to read of write, having received no musical education, and yet enjoying a reputation as the greatest living exponent of flamenco music, and he is considered by some to be the greatest guitarist alive today.

And so it is that his nostalgia for those early legends of Spain, recounted by the gypsies gathered around the brightly colored caravans, comes through with greater poignancy and force, under this agile silver fingers floating over the strings of his guitar, as we listen to his improvisation whose appropriate collective title might well be "Andalusian Suite," than any later impression he many have received in the Spain of today.

In the Arabesque de I'Alhambra all the convolutions of the Moorish architecture of the palace are graphically conjured up for us under his fluid finger; wheres La Ciudad de Don Pablo recalls his second meeting with Picasso (born in Málaga, hence the title of the improvisation based on a malagueña rhythm) at which time Picasso decorated his guitar. In the third piece he calls upon his son Manero to sing the Malasuerte or lament of the gypsy, but immediately sounds of the Fiesta Andalusia, based on the thryhms of the bulerias. 

His son Manero joins him again at the end of Side I to play on his guitar (instead of singing), and together they give us their own interpretation of the classic, Fandango por Soleares.

On side II Andalusia and Aragon are set in contrast, the one through the evocation of Ronda, Seville's sister city nestled in the mountains, the cradle of the art of bullfighting, and the other Zaragoza, on the road between Barcelona and Seville, where the jota is danced.

Manero returns to sing the Seguiriya, a kind of saeta, accompanied by the guitar, which ends in a typically gypsy way with a fandango.

But Seville outshines them all, in her unforgettable grace, as Manitas makes all too clear to us, through the expressive tempos of the Sevillana.

Finally, the last improvisation Manitas offers us evokes "Cordoba, the Morrish Woman," with this Morrish dance drawn from an ancestral rhythm which his fingers enkindle like an artist's brush painting who brilliant blue of an Andalusian sky.

Granada: Arabesque de I'Alhambra

Malgaga: La Ciudad de Don Pablo

Andalucia: Fandangos del la Malasuerte

Andalucia: Fiesta Andaluza

Andalucia: Fandango por Soleares a Dos Guitarras

Ronda: Por el Camino de Ronda

Aragon: Danse Aragonaise

Andalucia: Seguiriya por Fandangos del Hijo

Cordoba: Tientos por Tres