El Carbonerillo
Who is El Carbonerillo?
Manuel Vega García, El Carbonerillo, was born in Seville in 1906, the son of a traveling coal seller, a trade that gave him the nickname under which he would pass into the history of cante. He showed extremely precocious talent: he made his debut at just eight years old, and shortly after formalized his presentation at the Café Novedades in Seville, one of the city’s leading flamenco venues at the time.
Career
His career took off quickly thanks to a highly personal style in the fandango, to the point of creating his own school that would shape later performers. He recorded his first records in 1930 accompanied by the guitarist Niño Ricardo, and throughout his career he was also accompanied on guitar by Miguel Borrull, Manolo de Badajoz, Antonio Peana and Niño Sabicas. He performed on leading stages such as the Teatro Fuencarral in Madrid, the Salón Ortega in Algeciras and the gardens of the Reales Alcázares in Seville, where on 12 December 1929 he was filmed performing a taranta de Linares in what is considered the earliest surviving moving-image record of the cantaor.
Palos and discography
His specialty was fandangos, but his repertoire also extended to soleares, seguiriyas, tarantas, tangos, colombianas por bulerías and media granaína. It is said that he never repeated a lyric, all of his own creation, which gives an idea of his ability as a performer and the depth with which he expressed each cante, drawn, according to those who heard him, “from the deepest part of his soul.”
Legacy
He died very young, in 1937, a victim of pulmonary tuberculosis that cut short a career that seemed set to become one of the great ones in Seville’s fandango tradition. In 2021 a 1929 video was recovered that confirmed and expanded knowledge of his filmed record, reviving interest in this fundamental figure of cante from the early decades of the 20th century.