Flamenco guitarist Manolo Sanlúcar
publishes his autobiography, ‘El alma compartida’
Flamenco-world.com, December 2007
Flamenco’s bibliography
is enriched with a nearly previously-unseen experience:
an autobiography. The one facing the challenge of writing
his personal and artistic experiences by his own hand
is guitar maestro Manolo
Sanlúcar. The book, published by Editorial
Almuzara, is entitled ‘Manolo
Sanlúcar. El alma compartida’ (‘Manolo
Sanlúcar. The Shared Soul’).
Manolo Sanlúcar (Photo
Daniel Muñoz)
Camarón, Paco de Lucía,
Cristina Hoyos, Sordera de Jerez, La Niña de los
Peines, Tomás Pavón, Perico el del Lunar...
are the stars of recent biographies written by scholars,
researchers, journalists, flamencologists or analysts.
But it had been a long time since a flamenco artist, perhaps
since José Greco published ‘Gipsy in my soul’
in the United States in 1977, had opened his heart in
a book in first person.
The one tackling this challenge is guitar
maestro Manolo Sanlúcar, who publishes his autobiography
with the title ‘Manolo Sanlúcar. El alma
compartida’. Throughout its five hundred pages,
the Cádiz-born musician “recalls his childhood,
his friends, his relatives, his love for bullfighting
and his learning of guitar, the memory of the youngster
precociously stuck in the nomadic cohorts of the companies
and theaters, accompanist of the greatest flamenco artists
of the second half of the 20th century and from there
to his plunge into the deep world of music and art, his
international projection, his incorruptible defense of
authenticity in life and in the business, and finally,
his life in the shadows of the worst kind of drama; that
which nothing nor anybody prepares us for”.
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Manolo Sanlúcar
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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But it’s not the first time Manolo
Sanlúcar has faced writing. Coming out back in
2005 was his essay ‘Sobre
la guitarra flamenca. Teoría y sistema’,
published by the Córdoba Guitar Festival and Ediciones
La Posada. And also available to guitar students is the
sheet music of his great work ‘Mundo y formas de
la guitarra flamenca’, published in three volumes.
A new title by Almuzara
‘Manolo Sanlúcar. El alma compartida’
enlarges the flamenco collection by the Córdoba-based
publisher Almuzara. Since it was founded in 2004, it has
fed the bibliography specialized in this art form so hungry
for literature nearly monthly. Standing out among the
latest titles published is ‘De
Jerez y sus cantes’ by José María
Castaño, ‘La poesía del flamenco’
by Francisco G. Carbajo, ‘Pepe Marchena y Juanito
Valderrama’ by Eugenio Cobo and ‘Figuras,
pasos y mudanzas’ by Eulalia de Pablo and José
Luis Navarro, among others.
