Raimundo Amador
Who is Raimundo Amador?
Raimundo Amador Fernández was born in Seville, according to sources sometime between 1959 and 1960, and grew up in the Las Tres Mil Viviendas neighborhood, into a Roma family with a long tradition of musicians. His father taught him to play guitar at age twelve, and from a very young age he earned a living playing on the streets of Seville in exchange for money or food, a street apprenticeship that permanently shaped his free-spirited approach to the instrument.
Career
At the Seville tablao Los Gitanillos he met Camarón de la Isla and Paco de Lucía, with whom he would collaborate shortly afterward on the album “La Leyenda del Tiempo”, one of the most revolutionary records in contemporary flamenco. In 1977 he formed the group Veneno together with Kiko Veneno, the seed of much of the Andalusian music that would follow, and later took part in the Arrajatabla project.
In 1981 he founded the group Pata Negra together with his brother Rafael, taking flamenco toward blues and rock and deliberately moving away from orthodoxy, in search of a distinctive, eclectic sound that turned the band into an essential reference in Spanish popular music. Since 1995 he has pursued a solo career in which he has shared stages and recordings with Andrés Calamaro, B.B. King, Remedios Amaya, Tomatito, Antonio Carmona, Rosendo and Björk.
Style and discography
His work is defined by a constant fusion of flamenco and blues, territory in which he has openly rejected the “pure flamenco” label. His solo albums include “Gerundina” (1995), featuring collaborations with Calamaro and B.B. King, “En la esquina de las Vegas” (1997), “Noche de flamenco y blues” (1998), “Isla Menor” (2003) and “Mundo Amador” (2005), followed later by “Medio hombre, medio guitarra”, with songs as popular as “Blues de la frontera” and “Un okupa en tu corazón”.
Legacy
Raimundo Amador is, together with his brother Rafael, one of those chiefly responsible for bringing blues and rock into the vocabulary of Spanish flamenco, opening a path of fusion that many other Andalusian musicians would go on to follow.