Juanito Mojama
Who is Juanito Mojama?
Juan Valencia Carpio, known artistically as Juanito Mojama, was born on August 23, 1892, on Calle Honsario in Jerez de la Frontera, in the area of the Roma neighborhoods of Santiago and La Plazuela. The nickname “Mojama” was given to him by the guitarist Miguel Borrull, referring to his dark complexion and slender build, and it was under that name that he went down in the history of cante.
His nephew, the equally celebrated cantaor Terremoto de Jerez, would extend the family’s artistic line decades later, evidence of this lineage’s deep connection to the Jerez school.
Career
Antonio Chacón, a fellow townsman and the most influential cantaor of his era, took him in and guided him once in Madrid, a city where Juanito Mojama spent nearly all his adult life earning a living in venues such as Los Gabrieles and Villa Rosa. Even so, he preferred the intimacy of private cabales gatherings over exposure on public stages, a choice that defined his profile as a reserved cantaor with little taste for fame.
In 1929 he recorded eight 78-rpm shellac discs for the Gramófono label together with guitarist Ramón Montoya, sixteen cantes in total that constitute his most important recorded legacy. In 1949 he was honored at the Teatro Alcalá in Madrid, with the participation of numerous artists, but in his final years, already ill, he had to sell tobacco to get by, an end far removed from the recognition his talent deserved.
Palos and discography
His repertoire was extremely broad: seguiriyas, soleá, bulerías — where he is considered unmatched, especially in the bulería por soleá — tientos, tangos, granaínas, caracoles, alegrías, and taranta. Those 1929 recordings were partially reissued in 1988, when the Fundación Andaluza de Flamenco released seven cantes on LP, and again in 2002, when the Sonifolk label included ten cantes on the CD “Esencia Flamenca,” directed by José Blas Vega. In 2015 the “Flamenco y Universidad” series published a new CD coordinated by Rafael Infante.
Legacy
He died in Madrid in 1957. Ahead of his time, he did not enjoy in life the popularity he deserved, but his figure began to be reclaimed starting in the 1980s, when the extraordinary intonation and musicality of his cante came to be appreciated. In 2015 the I Congreso Internacional de Juanito Mojama was held in Jerez, under the theme “La Modernidad Cantaora de Juanito Mojama,” and in 2017, coinciding with the 125th anniversary of his birth, a commemorative plaque was placed on his birth home on Calle Honsario.