Bernardo el de los Lobitos
Who is Bernardo el de los Lobitos?
Bernardo Álvarez Pérez was born in 1887 in Alcalá de Guadaira (Seville), into a payo family with no ties to the Roma world. He began his artistic journey under the name “Niño de Alcalá,” making his debut at the famed Café Novedades in Seville before moving on to the café cantante Magdalena in Madrid.
His definitive nickname, “Bernardo el de los Lobitos,” originates from a bulería he used to perform on that theme, learned from a cantaor from the mountains; the nickname ended up identifying him for the rest of his career.
Career
Bernardo became one of the regular voices of the Ópera Flamenca tours, the great mass phenomenon of cante in the first half of the 20th century, sharing bills across Spain with figures of the caliber of Antonio Chacón, la Niña de los Peines, Niño de Medina, Manuel Vallejo, José Cepero and the guitarist Ramón Montoya. That sustained contact with the great names of his time established him as a complete cantaor, capable of moving comfortably between the most popular styles and the ones hardest to sustain on stage.
Recognition came late but resoundingly: on 12 June 1965, already nearly eighty years old, he won the II Concurso Nacional de Cante Flamenco in the cartageneras category, a particularly demanding palo.
Palos and discography
His repertoire spanned bulerías, seguiriyas, soleá, tientos and sevillanas corraleras, but what truly set him apart was his determination to rescue cantes at risk of disappearing, such as the trilla, nanas, verdiales and mariana. In 1954 he left a record of that recovery work in the historic “Antología del Cante Flamenco” released by Hispavox, where he recorded precisely sevillanas corraleras, verdiales, nanas, trilla and mariana.
Legacy
He is credited with having founded a school of his own within flamenco thanks to a refined technique and a recognizable personal expression, qualities he applied both to the most traditional cantes and to those that, without his recovery work, would probably have been lost. He died in Madrid in 1969, leaving a singular mark as one of the great conservators of minority cante in the 20th century.