Tía Juana la del Pipa
Who is Tía Juana la del Pipa?
Juana de los Reyes Valencia, Tía Juana la del Pipa, was born in 1905 in Jerez de la Frontera, daughter of the cantaor Luis “el de La Maora,” and grew up steeped in the flamenco atmosphere of Jerez until she became a born bailaora, specializing above all in bulerías. Her stage name comes from her first husband, a seller of sunflower seeds (pipas); she remarried the bailaor El Bizco Guzi, and was mother to the cantaora Juana Fernández and the bailaor Antonio El Pipa.
Career
Despite her talent, she did not debut before the public until she was forty, at a tribute to Tío Parrilla held at the Jerez bullring. From then on she strung together notable performances: in 1964 she spent two months at Las Cuevas de Nerja in Madrid with the group “Los Viejos,” in 1969 she performed at Torres Bermejas and in 1972 at Los Cabales, in addition to taking part successfully in Andalusian flamenco festivals and in the Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco de Córdoba from the 1960s onward.
Style
Critics described her bulerías dancing as “highly personal and classical” at once, an unusual combination that marked her out as a performer of deeply Jerez roots, faithful to the family tradition in which she had been raised since childhood.
Legacy
She was honored at the Teatro Lope de Vega in Seville in 1982 and, in 1985, at the Fiesta de la Bulería de Jerez, the latter shared with Tía Anica La Piriñaca. She died in Jerez de la Frontera in 1987. She is remembered as one of the great masters of bulerías dancing from Jerez, who passed on that art to her own children and to the generations that followed her.