SPECIAL FEATURE. CAMARÓN: EXCERPTS FROM HIS OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY

Camarón: “With fondness and affection from one who is now free”

Flamenco-world.com, December 2008
Translation: Joseph Kopec

‘La chispa de Camarón: La verdadera historia del mito contada por su viuda’ (‘Camarón’s La Chispa: The True Story of the Myth Told by His Widow’). That is the title of the mythical flamenco cantaor’s first official biography. The author of the book, which is illustrated with photos from the family album, is reporter Alfonso Rodríguez. He has spent two years compiling the memories of La Chispa, his wife, and of other family members, as well as testimonies from other personages close to him like Raimundo Amador and Pansequito. The edition is accompanied by a record with a previously unreleased concert from 1988.

La Chispa and Camarón. From Book 'La chispa de Camarón'

Los Monge

Camarón de la Isla’s father, Juan Luis Monge Núñez, was born in Conil de la Frontera, a little fishing village in the province of Cádiz, in 1910. A blacksmith by trade, as the employment situation in this town wasn’t the best, he decided to leave to go and live in San Fernando, la Isla: “He got there when he was really young with the good gypsy intention of forming a family, getting married, having children and raising them as honest, hard-working people. They say he used to sing the anvil cantes better than anyone, that he used to do the sainete perfectly. He used to have duels with another aficionado called El Toribio”.

Juana Cruz Castro, the artist’s mother, was a native of San Fernando. When she was just three months old, she was orphaned by her mother and she was raised by her aunt Isabel. The family’s fragile economy was the reason why Juana had to work from a very early age for a young lady known as Delfina. During her marriage, and despite the fact that it was frowned upon by gypsy people, she carried on with that work, which she had to intensify later on when she became a widow.

“My parents-in-law got married in 1934 at the Church of San Francisco”... After getting married they went to live in a really small rented house in the neighborhood of the market square, in the streets behind the center of town. Their first son was born in that house. A few months later, my father-in-law’s parents died and Juana and Luis went to live in the house on Carmen Street, in Las Callejuelas, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city”.

The Monge family soon has offspring: Manuel, Juan, Juan Luis, Curro, Jesús, Remedios... although they suffered the loss of two of their children when they were very little.

“On December 5th, 1950, the most handsome gypsy in the world is born. A boy with perfect facial features. My brothers- and sisters-in-law remember him as the most beautiful one in the family. Blond like the fires of the forge”. Camarón de la Isla was born.

The genius’s early years

In his first years of life, José had but one passion: bullfighting. Many remember that when he was just three years old, he used to stand before an imaginary bull and bravely faced it, doing courageous passes. He was really sure of what his calling was: to be a bullfighter.

“José never liked blacksmithing. He felt like a gypsy blacksmith and rover. A blacksmith on his father’s side and a rover on his mother’s side, but he didn’t like... bending iron very much”.

Excerpt from 'La chispa de Camarón'

Despite his shyness, he became a real personage at the age of five or six, a leader for his friends, and he was admired by all. “The one who became his lifelong friend was from Amargura Street. The one who is still a close friend of his son’s, of my son’s, today... If José had to trust anyone to stash away money, it was him. And he told him his innermost thoughts... his secrets. That boy was Manuel Luque”. And José named him Manuel “the one with the mole”.

Blond and minute... like a ‘Camarón’ (Shrimp)

The aunt and uncle who brought up Juana Cruz, Isabel and Joseico, were another part of the Monge family. José really loved his uncle, “he always used to remember him, whether it was for the lyrics of the cantes he used to do”... “or telling the so flamenco things his uncle used to do, like dancing por bulerías with a kerchief on his head”. Joseico made a living by selling brilliantine and cologne. José would always sarcastically ask him for a little cologne and one day Joseico, who always used to avoid a direct answer, told him “José, you’re blond and minute ... like a ‘camarón’ (shrimp)”. Until that moment, José was known as Pijote Chico, because he looked a lot like his brother Jesús who was called that, but Camarón was the name that marked him for all his life and beyond his death.

In those years when the young Camarón grew up, education was a privilege, but the Carmelite priests of the Convent Church del Carmen in San Fernando created a school for poor children in the afternoon. To lure children from the area, they used to hand out chocolate sandwiches, “but José didn’t want a chocolate sandwich or a jug of milk or anything. He didn’t want to go to school even if his life depended on it”.

However, thanks to their enthusiasm for bullfighting, both José and Manuel “the one with the mole” were able to learn some minimum notions of reading and writing. Die-hard followers of Felipe Romero, a young matador from La Isla, they contacted his agent, Antonio Caraballo, who let them try out the bullfighter’s capes, in exchange for them previously having taken some little classes in culture. “The more José grew, the more he caught bullfighting fever. He only used to talk about bullfighting, about being a novice matador, about going to the bullpens, about triumphing in Madrid, in Seville...”

But José also started to be drawn to music. When a christening or a wedding was held in the neighborhood, he used to attend with some friends to sing at the reception and earn a few coins. “And then he used to share out the coins. Because my husband was never interested in money; he used to give it all away since he was little. If he sang and he earned something, that money belonged to him and to his friends”.

He learned the cantes from everyone who surrounded him. Besides witnessing his father’s duels at the forge, Juana Cruz, or ‘Juana la Gitana’ (Juana the Gypsy) as she was known, used to gather at their house many artists who were passing through San Fernando and who had references of her art. “The gypsies would talk about Juana’s art and in that room full of beds with straw-stuffed mattresses, all the greats used to sit down to enjoy the music which Juana Cruz had in her throat: Caracol, Pepe Pinto, Lola Flores, El Sevillano...”

Excerpt from 'La chispa de Camarón'

First performances

Back in that era, a civil servant from San Fernando Town Hall, Pepe Barrera, used to put together shows with kids from La Isla. In 1962, he proposes for José to perform together with other young artists at La Salle School. That was the first public performance by Camarón that is recalled. “He got to the courtyard of La Salle and he didn’t have clothes for the show: Barrera put a polka dot shirt on him tied at the waist and a pair of black trousers and he went out on stage”... “He sang fandangos and bulerías, finished and the people wouldn’t let him go: he broke out por cantiñas, por tientos... and he got down off the stage while hundreds of people kept on asking him for more...”.

Shortly thereafter, he takes part in Carnival with the ‘Comparsa’ (Group) “Currito y sus Churumbeles”. But a memorable event occurs on the occasion of the performance by Enrique Castellón Vargas, the Gypsy Prince, in San Fernando. José and several friends attend to see him and every time the artist approached where they were, they told him: “This guy sings better than you”. They told him that so many times that finally, Enrique Vargas stopped the orchestra and prompted José to get up on stage. “They sang several fandangos and José made it harder and harder for him... he got louder and louder and even the guitarist was trembling. The audience cheered on the boy who didn’t lose face next to the monster of song, and the Gypsy Prince accepted the defeat, took off his hat and put it on the boy, calling for applause for José”... “That night José caused a commotion in La Isla”.

“It was curious to see how the local artists in that period, the carnival choirs and the rest of the groups used to have their photo taken with José, an unknown boy, as if he were a great artist. Since he was little, his personality and his musical qualities caused musicians to draw up to him in order to get a snapshot, as if they could sense that that blond kid was going to become one of the artform’s greats”.

Juan Luis Monge dies on January 9th, 1964. The patriarch’s death supposes an extremely important change in the family’s life. “Juana, just a few weeks after her husband died, had nothing to feed her children”.

Moreover, after working for Delfina for 27 years, the latter moved to Cádiz and she became unemployed, so she “had to go and clean bars and cafeterias in La Isla”.