Male flamenco singer |
| Name:Vicente Soto Barea |
| Birth: 1954 Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz |
"Flamenco is a way of life. There are people who say that to learn how to sing all you have to do is sing, that you don´t need to live... This is like life itself: if you don´t live, what stories are you going to tell?"
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Vicente Soto Sordera represents orthodox flamenco, insofar as his singing is concerned, but he is deeply innovative when it comes to how he has got closer to the learned poets, who have traditionally been distant from flamenco. First of all he set verses by the great Fernando Pessoa to music in "Pessoa Flamenco" (1996), a record which represented his debut as a solo artist, then he composed the Cantata flamenca, based on writings by Bergamín, and finally he sang texts by the greatest writers of the Generation of ´98 from both sides of the Atlantic: Antonio and Manuel Machado, Valle-Inclán, Rubén Darío and even Miguel de Unamuno, in spite of the latter´s dislike for flamenco.
Vicente Soto is the son of Sordera, but he has earned his position among the leading figures in flamenco through his own merits. He started off in the Los Canasteros tablao in Madrid, and cut his teeth accompanying leading figures of dancing, like Carmen Rojas, Antonio el Bailarín, Antonio Gades and La Chunga, with whom he has travelled around Spain and a large portion of the world. He has also been in contact with new flamenco. As well as composing songs for Ketama, he was one of the driving forces behind the group since its beginnings in 1985. |
Familia Soto Sordera y El Zambo
