Antonio Mairena
Who is Antonio Mairena?
Antonio Cruz García was born on September 7, 1909 in Mairena del Alcor (Seville), into a Roma family of blacksmiths. It was beside his father’s forge that he first shaped his voice and sense of compás, in an environment where cante was part of everyday life. His earliest stage names were “Niño de Rafael” and “Niño de Mairena,” before he settled on Antonio Mairena, the name under which he would pass into flamenco history.
Career
He trained as a disciple of Joaquín el de la Paula, creator of the soleá de Alcalá, and of Manuel Torre, two of the most influential figures in Roma-Andalusian cante, whose imprint marked his singing forever. From that dual schooling he built an extraordinarily broad repertoire spanning tangos, cantiñas, soleares, seguiriyas, bulerías, tientos, garrotín and Huelva fandangos, among many other palos. He toured internationally, at times accompanied by the dancer Antonio “el Bailaor,” and in 1962 reached one of the central milestones of his career by winning the Golden Key of Cante in a professional competition held in Córdoba, worth a hundred thousand pesetas. That same year he drove the creation of the National Cante Jondo Competition that bears his name. From 1959 he also served as honorary director of the Chair of Flamencology and Andalusian Folklore Studies in Jerez, a platform from which he championed his view of flamenco as an essentially Roma-Andalusian art.
Palos and discography
He left an extensive discography, with anthologies recorded for the leading labels of his time, regarded among the most important ever made about flamenco cante. His last recital took place at the Peña El Taranto in Almería on February 26, 1977, later reissued under the title “Así fue…” while in 2008 “El corazón por entero” was reissued, a recording of his final performance with Pedro Peña on guitar. Together with the writer Ricardo Molina, he published in 1963 the essay “Mundo y formas del cante flamenco,” a key work setting out his thinking on the purity of cante.
Legacy
Antonio Mairena died in Seville in 1983, having received during his lifetime honours such as the Medal of Merit at Work (1981) and the Gold Medal of Fine Arts (1983), and was posthumously named Favourite Son of Andalusia. His legacy combines a landmark recorded body of work with a theoretical contribution that shaped, for decades, the way flamenco cante of Roma roots was understood and classified.