Male flamenco singer |
| Name:Juan Agustín Fernández-Vargas |
| Birth: 1891 Dos Hermanas (Sevilla) |
"That voice, as warm as olive trees burning, deserves an auditorium and a thousand poems, a psaltery of songs, because he (...) distributed his popular wisdom when it was necessary for him to do so (...) to ensure that the sounds of a race, the ancestral feelings of a unique lineage were not lost". Manuel Ríos Ruiz, writer and flamencologist.
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In flamenco the essentially oral transmission of the cantes ensures that many styles, especially the older ones, are lost. However, some great figures have emerged, who are drenched in this tradition within their families, and who have made it possible for this heritage and history to become known. This is the case of Juan Talega, who passed on the cantes trianeros (from Triana, a Seville neighbourhood) and alcalareños (from Alcalá, a town in the province of Seville), that can almost be referred to as ancient.
Juan Talega's artistic trajectory has another distinctive feature: he did not become a professional until he was seventy, under Antonio Mairena's guidance. Until that point he had only sung in family feasts, where he learned the old cantes, inherited from his dynasty, the one of the Gordos de Alcalá. After he was discovered, he performed in important festivals, displaying this heritage, and he made recordings that are indispensable to learn about these cantes. On more than one occasion Antonio Mairena acknowledged that he was greatly indebted to Juan Talega for his help in the reconstruction of cantes that were about to disappear.
In only ten years during which he sang professionally, he obtained a great recognition from all sectors of flamenco, which remains intact to this day. In 1959 he obtained the first prize in the Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco (National Flamenco Art Competition) in Córdoba, and while he was still alive he received a massive tribute in which the most important figures in all the fields of Spanish culture took part, not just flamenco artists: Enrique Morente, Juan Varea, Merche Esmeralda, José Menese, Camarón de la Isla, El Lebrijano, Fernanda de Utrera, Pilar López, Manolo Sanlúcar, Miguel Funi, Vicente Aleixandre, Luis Rosales, Rafael Alberti, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, José Caballero, Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, Adolfo Marsillach, Antonio Mairena, Antonio Saura, Fernando Quiñones, Francisco Almazán, Blas de Otero and Ángel Acal (and many others). |
Juan Talega
