Niña de la Puebla
Who is Niña de la Puebla?
Dolores Jiménez Alcántara, La Niña de la Puebla, was born on 28 July 1908 in La Puebla de Cazalla (Seville). She went blind a few days after birth due to an infection, something she herself would come to describe as a blessing, “to light up the paths of cante for us.” She inherited her love of cante from her mother, a native of Morón de la Frontera, while her father, a barber by trade, wrote much of the lyrics she performed.
Career
Her idol and mentor was Pepe Marchena, who discovered her and took her on tour, guiding her within his school. She made her debut at the Teatro Olimpia in Seville in 1931, and by the following year was already singing at the Cine Variedades in Madrid and at the Teatro Fuencarral, alongside El Carbonerillo and El Corruco. In 1933 she married the cantaor Luquitas de Marchena (Lucas Soto Martín) and starred in her first film, “Madre Alegría”; her children, Pepe and Adelfa Soto, later carried on the family line as cantaores. She set up her own company and organized tours across Spain for decades, with a particularly active period in 1978 through Madrid, Ciudad Real, Catalonia and Andalusia, and in 1986 she took part in a tribute in Málaga alongside Fosforito and José Menese. She retired temporarily, but returned to the stage in 1995, by then over eighty years old.
Palos and discography
She mastered soleá, campanilleros, petenera, fandangos, guajiras and colombianas, and was accompanied at times by guitarists of the caliber of Félix de Utrera, Manolo de Badajoz, Paco de Lucía and Manolo Sanlúcar. She recorded her first record for the Regal label in 1932, featuring campanilleros, and later took part in the compilation album “Los Ases del Flamenco.” Off stage she was a voracious reader: she traveled regularly to Madrid to obtain Braille books by authors such as Cortázar, García Márquez and Victor Hugo.
Legacy
She died in Málaga on 14 June 1999, at ninety years old, after suffering a cerebral embolism while singing a soleá at a tribute event in Huelva. She received the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes, which she never collected in person in Santiago de Compostela due to her death, and has streets named after her both in her native La Puebla de Cazalla and in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. She is remembered for the clarity and sweetness of her voice and for a mastery of flamenco styles that was extraordinarily broad for her time.