Paco de Lucía
Who is Paco de Lucía?
Francisco Sánchez Gómez was born on 21 December 1947 in Algeciras (Cádiz), into a Roma family steeped in flamenco tradition. His stage name pays tribute to his mother, Lucía Gomes, nicknamed “la Portuguesa”, as a way to set him apart from the many other “Pacos” in the neighborhood. His father, Antonio Sánchez, and his older brother Ramón gave him his first guitar lessons in a household entirely devoted to music, where learning to play was almost a family obligation rather than a choice.
From childhood he showed an almost obsessive dedication to the instrument, to the point that his youth was marked by the long hours of practice his father demanded of him. Out of that early discipline emerged a highly personal picking technique, the so-called “picado”, which, combined with an unusually rich harmonic language, would go on to transform both solo playing and traditional flamenco accompaniment.
Career
His most decisive collaboration was with singer Camarón de la Isla, with whom he recorded ten albums between 1968 and 1977 and with whom he completely renewed the way accompanied singing was understood; together they formed one of the most influential partnerships in the history of flamenco. Later, Paco de Lucía broadened his musical language by incorporating jazz, salsa and bossa nova, and took part in celebrated encounters with John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, with whom he recorded the live album “Friday Night in San Francisco” (1981), which sold more than a million copies and became a landmark meeting point between flamenco and jazz.
In his final decades he surrounded himself with musicians such as Niño Josele, Alain Pérez, Antonio Serrano, Piraña and Cristo Heredia, and continued exploring crossovers with other traditions, such as his participation in the “Vitoria Suite” (2010) with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, or his appearance as guest soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic at Madrid’s Teatro Real in May 2011. His last studio album, “Cositas Buenas”, was released in 2004, and after his death the live album “En vivo” (2011) was released.
Style and discography
His playing was marked by absolute command of the picado technique, a harmonic capacity uncommon in the flamenco guitar of his time, and a constant search for balance between traditional roots and openness to new languages. Among his most recognizable pieces are the rumba “Entre dos aguas” (1973), which stayed twenty weeks on the Spanish charts, as well as alegrías such as “La Barrosa” and “Barrio la Viña” and the soleá “Homenaje al Niño Ricardo”. Over the course of his career he recorded more than thirty albums and also worked as a producer, as with “Tú, ven a mí” (2005), by La Tana.
Legacy
Paco de Lucía received, among other honors, the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts in 1992, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2004, and an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, which he received in person in May 2010; he was also named a Favorite Son of Algeciras, a city that dedicated a statue to him at the roundabout by its waterfront and named its conservatory after him. He died on 26 February 2014, at the age of 66, of a heart attack on a beach near his home in Mexico, accompanied by his children.
Months after his death, Seville hosted the I Simposio Internacional Paco de Lucía, with the participation of figures such as Tomatito, Ricardo Pachón, Kiko Veneno and Rubén Blades, in recognition of a career that, with hardly any dispute among fans and scholars of the genre, marked a turning point for flamenco guitar on a global scale.