Camarón de la Isla
Who is Camarón de la Isla?
José Monje Cruz, Camarón de la Isla, was born on December 5, 1950, in San Fernando (Cádiz), at number 29 Calle del Carmen. He was the second of eight children in a canastero family, traditionally devoted to basket-weaving, and from childhood showed a natural gift for cante. By the age of eight he was already singing spontaneously at the Venta de Vargas in his hometown, where his brother Manuel used to take him, and who was the first to encourage him onto a stage.
In those years he struck up a friendship with fellow cantaor Alonso Núñez, “Rancapino,” and at barely twelve he appeared in the film “El amor brujo” (1963), directed by Rovira Beleta and starring Antonio Gades, one of his first public appearances outside his closest circle.
Career
At sixteen he won first prize at the IV Festival de Cante Jondo de Mairena del Alcor, an endorsement that pushed him to move to Madrid, where he performed at the tablao Los Canasteros under the wing of Manolo Caracol. It was in the capital that he met, in a billiard hall, guitarist Paco de Lucía, with whom he recorded his first joint album in 1968 and with whom he maintained an artistic partnership that would shape much of his career; later he would find an equally decisive partner in guitarist Tomatito. His recordings also benefited from the hand of producer Ricardo Pachón, and he collaborated on occasion with artists such as Joan Manuel Serrat, Raimundo Amador, and Kiko Veneno.
His artistic evolution is usually divided into three stages: up to 1968, a period of absorbing tradition; between 1968 and 1978, one of expansion and renewal of the repertoire; and from 1979 onward, the most groundbreaking and personal phase of his cante. In his final years he settled in La Línea de la Concepción with his family, and continued performing at major festivals, including several in France in the late 1980s.
Palos and discography
He mastered bulerías, tangos, fandangos, soleás, saetas, martinetes, and alegrías, among many other palos, and over the course of his career recorded 176 different cantes, of which only twenty-seven bear his own credited authorship as composer, a detail that would spark disputes after his death. He released nineteen albums in total, among them “Como el agua” (1981), “Calle Real,” “Viviré,” “Te lo dice Camarón,” and, in his final period, “Soy gitano” and “Potro de rabia y miel” (1992), his last work. But it was “La leyenda del tiempo” (1979), an album that brought rock, jazz, Middle Eastern sounds, and orchestral arrangements into flamenco, that marked a turning point for the genre: despite selling only around six thousand copies on release, it is now considered one of the most transformative works in the history of cante.
Legacy
In early 1992 he was admitted to the Quirón clinic with an initial diagnosis of pneumonia; on May 2 it was confirmed that he had inoperable lung cancer. He died on July 2, 1992, in a hospital in Badalona, and more than a hundred thousand people accompanied his funeral in San Fernando. In 2001, nine years after his death, the Junta de Andalucía posthumously awarded him the Llave de Oro del Cante. His memory is preserved today in statues erected in San Fernando, La Línea de la Concepción, and Badalona, as well as in the house-museum in his hometown, opened in 2016. Nearly three decades after his passing, Camarón remains the essential reference for understanding contemporary flamenco.