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Went to late 60’s. Madrid was a melting pot for flamingo. El Corral de la Morería had been in operation for just over ten years, like Torres Bermejas, before, La Taberna Gitana. Figures had been passing through Villa Rosa for a few decades, sometimes locked in rooms for the most exquisite, or the wealthiest, and others dazzling a large audience from their seats, as happened in the Café de Chinitas.
The artists, says José Mercé, different from the type we see today, although almost the same, met at five in the afternoon at the Tulsa cafeteria. “‘Very well, ‘get dressed,'” he says, “otherwise you wouldn’t come in.” The shoe shiners, already friends, would remove the matte from the albero attached to the shoes to make them look their best on stage.
some young Paco de Lucia and Shrimp of the Island swarmed through the city. Farruco, Terremoto, Manuela Carrasco… Master Caracol inspired over there, in Los Canasteros, with María Jimenez making himself known and Los Del Río still far from the Super Bowl. Antonio Mairena from this other side. The children of Manuel Soto Sordera, the Habichuelas…
Everyone spent the afternoon between guitars, acted at night and spent what they had earned that same morning. That was the vibe. The hobby and the incipient international tourism crowded into the tablaos of the capital while the most outstanding artists, Fernanda and Bernarda, Mario Maya, La Perla de Cádiz… founded artistic emporiums for a city made, at that time, for them. Madrid, with creativity on the surface, led to the development of a couple of memorable trios simultaneously.
The first, presented at the Hotel Luz in Seville in 1969, was made up of three Sevillian artists, although one of them was born in Pozuelo de Alarcón: Farruco, Rafael El Negro and Matilde Coral. They revolutionized art in proximity. They brought disparate styles together on stage and caused a real sensation. The wild and bloody dance of some, highly lively and emotional, so full of gypsyism, contrasted with the femininity of the other, who changed muscle for cotton. And so in 1970 their new concept earned them the National Dance Award from the Chair of Flamencology.
Curro Malena and Barrilito they put the first voices to the trio. Martin Stir he was the singer, let’s say, official. Manuel Mairena also lent them his echo, as Paco Taranto, who watched over dreams evoking the Tardon. It seems that the small soundtrack of an event that caused a good sale of tickets and trouble at the door. Crazy por bulerías, oles in soleá compás and cakes to see those three pictures that at the same time were one. They toured numerous spaces with great success, nailing the first flag in the Show Garage, in Seville, where those over 18 years of age, who otherwise would not enter, were able to see Fernando Extended fire the triumphant trio in January 1970.
Los Bolecos, as they were called, was a formation led by three consecrated artists; two of them, Rafael and Matilde, husband and wife, and a Farruco who, without knowing it, with his twenty minutes of ecstasy, was inaugurating the most copied canons in male flamenco dance from the 90s to this part. And with several of his contemporaries building choreographic empires! In Madrid, the reception was extraordinary.
Madrid Trio: Mario Maya, Güito and Carmen Mora
But there was more in the city. Mario Maya, in 1970, got bored. Boredom led him to rack his brains and come up with an idea that Güito, the second involved, was somewhat lazy at first, as he confesses in his biography. The dancer from the caves of Granada proposed to the tablao Torres Bermejas a new role, with him, Güito and Carmen Mora at the helm. “If it doesn’t work out,” said the businessman, “you’re out.” Maya’s restlessness, that she was stronger than the convenience of doing the same thing and the threat of doing something else, introduced a piece for alegrías with a desire for the cathedral and music by Gustav Malher as the culmination of the soleá por bulerías that swept the box office at that and other tablaos. It was a hit on the table at La Pagoda in Marbella, at Madrid’s Teatro Calderón, where they were once, in France and, lastly, at Los Canasteros.
At the exit of Carmen Mora, Antonia Martinezfilled the vacancy. The Madrid Trio, which was baptized that way by word of mouth, won the national award in 1971. Fans are frantically searching the Internet for the few minutes that were eternalized in a video recorded at the Café de Chinitas for the series ‘Rite and Geography of singing’.
Pepe Beanwho accompanied them on guitar, worked there with El Vest and Jose Merce, who left his place to Turronero when he left with Antonio Gades to tour the planet. He also with Fernando Gálvez, Serranito and many other active artists of that time. Remember, it serves to revive the atmosphere of effervescence, escape from Torres Bermejas to go see Los Bolecos. “That was a hobby. Spending all the money we had earned to enjoy the competition, which was not competition, of course. We loved and admired each other.” Madrid was then a couple of trios that ended with many more added to the party.
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