The 7 best Flamenco tracks of all time
Flamenco
Andalusian song, guitar and dance built by Roma and rural poor communities in the nineteenth century, organised into palos — forms with their own metre and mood, from the near-unaccompanied grief of siguiriyas to the party of bulerías.
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Paco de Lucía / Entre Dos Aguas
A rumba recorded to fill space on an album, which became the record that made flamenco guitar a world instrument. De Lucía plays it as though the difficulty were beneath mentioning.
Camarón de la Isla / La Leyenda del Tiempo
Lorca's words, an electric bass, a sitar, and purists burning the record in the street. Flamenco's most consequential act of vandalism, by the greatest singer it produced.
Camarón de la Isla / Como el Agua
Camarón and Paco de Lucía at the height of a partnership that reorganised the whole art. A voice with sand in it against the cleanest guitar in Spain.
Antonio Mairena / Seguiriyas
The keeper of the orthodoxy doing the hardest palo there is. No guitar for long stretches, no rhythm you can tap, and it is the deep end of the whole tradition.
La Paquera de Jerez / Bulerías de Jerez
A voice that could carry across a courtyard without amplification. Bulerías is the party form, and La Paquera makes the party sound like a confrontation.
Ramón Montoya / Rondeña
Montoya invented the flamenco guitar solo — before him the instrument accompanied and did not speak. Everything Paco de Lucía did later starts here.
Kiko Veneno / Volando Voy
Written by Veneno, made immortal by Camarón, and the point where flamenco admits pop into the room. Light, and far more subversive than it sounds.