Male flamenco singer |
| Name:José Tejada Martín |
| Birth: 1903 Marchena (Sevilla) |
"On one hand, he renews the repertoire of song lyrics, always looking for an effect that is more lyrical than it is tragic, in accordance with the sensitivity of the majority of the public. On the other hand, it leaves aside the pure scream, exchanging it for pure and exquisite melody. To this, he adds the personalisation of everything that he sings". Eugenio Cobo.
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Pepe Marchena (known as Niño de Marchena in his beginnings) stands out in the history of flamenco for receiving as much furious criticism as passionate praise. According to his admirers he was one of the great innovators of flamenco who introduced the recitales (musical composition that include narrative poetry or dialogues), crossing styles and even created a new cante, the colombiana. On the other hand, his detractors saw him as having ruined flamenco singing through his excessive use of falsetto singing, intricacy and trilling, that is, of dragging away flamenco from its roots, and the earth.
It cannot be disputed that Pepe Marchena was a very prolific artist. He participated and organised numerous shows that took him all over Spain, Europe and America. At the same time, in his busy artistic career he shared the stage with the great flamenco figures from every period. Another of his merits (or faults) was that he was deeply heterodox, his contribution to the success of flamenco opera, and marchenismo, as the tradition that follows his style is known, which is bulging with followers.
He starred in several pictures: Paloma de mis Amores (1936), Martingala (1939) and La Dolores (1940). He carried out a substantial amount of divulgative work: in 1952 he gave conferences on flamenco all over Spain; two years later he gave demonstrations of all the different styles on the radio; he talked in four conferences in Karachi (Pakistán) in 1961 and he took part as an invited guest artist in the Festival Mundial del Arte Popular Español (World Festival of Spanish Popular Art) in Israel in 1962. He also recorded his Memorias Antológicas del Cante Flamenco (1963), which became a gold record. Many tributes have been held in his honour, both during his life and posthumously. He is even known as a "master of masters". |
Pepe Marchena
