Looking at the lineups of some of the summer festivals, particularly the more traditional and established ones, we can’t help wondering who comes up with them. The town’s peace officer? The mayor? Sometimes it’s argued that it’s not possible to have lineups like in the old days, “because there are no longer stars like in the old times”. There is some truth to this, for sure. However, there are good cantaores and cantaoras who could be included in the lineups of festivals such as La Reunión de Cante Jondo, in Puebla de Cazalla, Gazpacho de Morón, in Morón de la Frontera, or La Caracolá in Lebrija.

Why does the Reunión de Cante Jondo hire Montse Cortés instead of Manuel Cástulo or José Canela? It’s not that this cantaora from Barcelona should be banned from singing in La Puebla, but if they want to be coherent with the philosophy of Moreno Galván and Menese, founders of this festival, wouldn’t Cástulo or Canela hijo be more suitable? Perhaps they think that these artists are not famous enough for La Reunión. Yet, if that’s the case, what about Manuel de la Tomasa and Pepe el Boleco, who are just teenagers? We at ExpoFlamenco have analyzed the lineups of the summer festivals in the last few days, and we could write hundreds of pages about this topic.

Clearly, the town’s flamenco festivals have had to evolve and adapt to our days, but veritable barbarities are being committed. Our colleague Manuel Bohórquez wrote years ago about this same topic, concluding that “a festival lineup cannot be put together but just anyone”. This is obvious, but keeps happening every year and we can see what happened with events such as the Juan Talega and the Reunión festivals.