"I sadly recall a great and universal kind of flamenco". The words of don Antonio Núñez Montoya cut like a knife to defend the supreme innermost truth. And how true it is. He is becoming the last of his kind, alone and unsupported in the annals of this art. Seventy years after letting out his first cry, Chocolate, the youth who started out evoking the fandangos of El Calzá, El Bizco and El Camas, pronounces a prophecy that will go down as basic and unquestionable when time finally catches up with him.

His way of warming up for seguiriyas, opening the portal of his record to the most indescribable depth, is becoming a lost art. Nowadays few people find cause to get inspired and embellish the lines of Manuel Molina’s legacy almost to the vanishing point, saving their breath for just the right moment. “Yo no soy de esta tierra ni conozco a nadie” [‘I’m not from these parts and I know no one’] the maestro declares. His cante is not of the normal here and now, the macho of Curro Durse is not conceived in the waters of the present. In fandangos, whether concise or drawn out, there is no one else in the world who can turn them into cante grande right from the opening ‘ay’, like a lance piercing the very heart of Mairena’s exclusionist doctrine. Anyone who thinks they can do the same, come and try. The soleá of Tomás, weaving between Alcalá and Jerez, opens the door to an awesome malagueña strung together with the golden threads of Chacón and El Mellizo.

Antonio pours his heart out in the studio with a desire to pass down a major document to posterity, a paradigm of the other flamenco which is expiring. It is impossible to describe the classy way Chocolate descends into the mines and lights the most painful taranto with his own energy, taking liberties with the compás, but tuned into that special nasal placement of his voice that opens the wounds which in memory hurt the most Sounds of the old levante. Then El Loco Mateo returns, not por seguiriyas, but por penas, and in the voice of Antonio we can sense where cante is headed today, and where it used to be going. With tran-tran-tran superimposed over the sound of hammering on an anvil, the toná finishes out the record. This forge no longer works metals. But before we lock the door on an era, here is recorded proof of past greatness, backed up by a singer who at the end of his career has decided to leave the legacy of a soleá alfarera from Triana, born in the very neighborhood of Zurraque, making use of the low tones with a sovereign majesty, and maneuvering the high points with unusual subtlety. May the almighty touch the shoulder of don Antonio as it touches the pillars of cante.