Manuel el Agujetas
Who is Manuel el Agujetas?
Manuel de los Santos Pastor, known artistically as Manuel el Agujetas, was born in 1939 in the area of Jerez de la Frontera, although some sources place his birth in the neighboring town of Rota. He was the son of Manuel de los Santos Gallardo, “Agujetas el Viejo” (1908-1976), a blacksmith and cantaor who passed on to his children both the trade of the forge and the cante he sang while working the iron. Manuel was one of nine siblings in the family, among them Tomasa, Juana, María, Lica, Juan el Gordo, Paco, Diego and Luis Agujetas, several of whom also devoted themselves to cante.
He grew up, then, listening to and learning the deepest flamenco right in the family workshop, in a lineage where the anvil and the voice went hand in hand. That direct inheritance would forever shape his understanding of cante, far removed from any concession to commercial taste.
Career
Agujetas gave up the blacksmith’s trade for good in 1970, after recording his first album, to devote himself entirely to performing. His father had trained him in the school of great masters such as Manuel Torre, Tío José de Paula and El Marrurro, references that Agujetas always claimed as the source of his most primitive, unadorned cante.
From then on he performed in tablaos and flamenco peñas in Madrid and toured stages across Spain, the Americas, Europe and Asia, with documented performances in cities such as New York, Paris, Vienna, Mexico City and Tokyo. His persona—that of a cantaor who refused to soften the roughness of his voice to make it more pleasing to the ear—made him a reference point for flamenco purists. Married to the dancer Kanako, he had with her a son, Antonio Agujetas, who carried on the family’s cante tradition.
Palos and discography
His voice, broken and raw, became synonymous above all with seguiriya and soleá, though he was equally masterful in martinete, tientos, bulería, fandangos, alegrías and romeras. Over the course of his career he recorded a discography of thirteen titles, among which “Viejo cante jondo” (1972), his first album, and “Agujetas en la soleá” (1998) stand out, along with the later “VORS Jerez, al cante” and “Agujetas: historia, pureza y vanguardia del flamenco,” both from 2012.
Legacy
In 1977 he received the Premio Nacional de Cante from the Cátedra de Flamencología, recognition of a career built apart from passing fashions. His figure was immortalized in the documentary “Agujetas, cantaor” (2000), directed by Dominique Abel, and he also appeared in Carlos Saura’s film “Flamenco.” Rota dedicated a bust to him in 2013 in recognition of his legacy. Manuel el Agujetas died on 25 December 2015 at the Hospital SAS in Jerez, at the age of 76, leaving behind the image of one of the last guardians of the most primitive, uncompromising cante jondo.