Manuel Cano
Who is Manuel Cano?
Manuel Cano Tamayo was born on 23 February 1925 in Granada, into a middle-class family with no professional ties to flamenco. His introduction to the guitar came as a child, when his grandfather gave him his first instrument at age seven, and he grew up steeped in the musical and cultural atmosphere of Granada at the time, which would leave a lasting mark on the way he later understood and studied flamenco.
Unlike many guitarists of his generation, Cano was slow to turn professional: he did not dedicate himself to the guitar full time until 1959, by then already 34. That delay reflected a calling different from that of a mere performer, one oriented more toward the study, composition and research of flamenco than toward live performance.
Career
His academic profile led him to become the first professor of Flamenco Guitar at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Córdoba, considered the first official teacher of the instrument in the history of Spanish conservatories, and he also taught in Granada. He was additionally an academic at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Granada, a corresponding member of the Sociedad General de Autores de España and a UNESCO advisor, positions that reflect the institutional weight he carried both within and beyond Spain.
He was friends with Andrés Segovia, who encouraged him to keep flamenco “clean” from a musical standpoint, an influence that reinforced his calling as a scholar rather than a mere virtuoso. As a concert performer he traveled through much of the world, and his work was key to flamenco beginning to carve out a place of its own within Spanish academia.
Style and discography
Among his recordings, “Evocación de la guitarra de Ramón Montoya” stands out in particular, a tribute to one of the great pioneers of the instrument. In the field of research, in 1986 he published in Córdoba “La guitarra, historia, estudio y aproximaciones al arte flamenco,” a 320-page volume accompanied by two albums that sums up much of his work as a scholar of flamenco.
Legacy
Manuel Cano died on 12 January 1990 in Granada, at 65. He was posthumously awarded the Medalla de Oro de Granada and, on 25 February 1992, the Medalla de Andalucía; the city dedicated a plaza to his memory. His personal guitar collection was acquired by a Japanese foundation based in Tokyo that bears his name, proof of the international reach he achieved as a researcher and teacher of flamenco.