Ramón Montoya
Who is Ramón Montoya?
Ramón Montoya Salazar was born in Madrid in 1880, into a Roma family. As a child he would stand transfixed watching the street musicians of the capital play, and years later, already a teenager, he acquired his first guitar at a flea market. Soon after he became a regular at the Café de la Marina, one of Madrid’s cafés cantantes, where the guitarist El Cañito taught him the rudiments of playing and the traditional flamenco rhythms.
That street-level training was rounded out with the study of scale fingering alongside the Seville player Rafael Marín and, according to the oral tradition surrounding him, by observing the technique of classical guitarist Miguel Llobet, heir to the school of Francisco Tárrega. Out of the fusion of those influences came a note-by-note plucking style that departed from traditional slurring and gave his sound a brilliance previously unknown, along with a particular mastery of the toque por Levante.
Career
Montoya spent more than eight years at the Café de la Marina accompanying some of the most important singing figures of the era. His closest association was with Antonio Chacón, who always considered him his finest guitarist, though he also accompanied and recorded with other leading singers such as Manuel Vallejo and Pepe Marchena.
His decisive contribution was lifting the flamenco guitar out of the role of mere accompaniment. In September 1936, spurred on by promoter Marius de Zayas, he launched a brilliant international career as a concert performer that took him, between 1936 and 1938, on tours across Europe and the Americas, playing in some of the most prestigious concert halls of the time. In February 1938 he even gave, together with the dancer La Argentinita, a private recital for the queen consort Elizabeth of England. That international momentum was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.
Style and discography
As a soloist, Montoya recorded seven pieces in Paris in October 1936 that rank among the earliest flamenco guitar recordings conceived as independent works, without singing or dance, and which became a reference point for the generation of guitarists that followed.
Legacy
Ramón Montoya died on 20 July 1949, at the age of 69, at his home on Calle Santa María de la Cabeza in Madrid. His legacy as a pioneer of solo playing and the first great international star of flamenco guitar remains the essential starting point for any history of the instrument in the twentieth century.