The veteran Jerez guitarist Manuel Morao will receive a well-deserved tribute tomorrow, Saturday, at the Festival de Cante Jondo Antonio Mairena, where he also performed a while ago. On this occasion, he’ll be at the festival to receive a lifetime achievement award and, above all, for being an ardent and uncompromising mairenista, defender of Antonio Mairena’s points-of-view and basher of whoever thinks otherwise. As a guitarist, Manuel Morao never crossed the threshold where the great artists dwelt, that is, artists such as Ramón Montoya, Niño Ricardo, Sabicas, Manolo Sanlúcar or Paco de Lucía. As accompanist, he soon achieved certain notoriety, taking part in historic recordings of great cantaoressuch as, among others, Fernando Terremoto, and in dance companies such as the great Antonio Ruiz Soler’s. Manuel Morao has always been, from the time he became famous, the exponent of the Jerez toque, a style closely related to Javier Molina Cundi. Listening to Morao playing is like travelling in time to those neighbourhood backyards in Barrio de Santiago, always full of compás and art.

Being one of the leading guitarists of Spain, one with the utmost gipsy flavour, the master of Nueva Street wanted to go further in his career and he became an entrepreneur, discovering new artists and showing a Jerez that was still unknown to the world at the time. He was never a media-savvy artist, a popular term nowadays. Not everyone likes his personality, but when his name is mentioned in any flamenco gathering, jondoshivers appear as if by magic. His complicity with Antonio Mairena was absolute. It was Morao who introduced the Alcores master to Jerez, as he himself confesses in his memoirs (Sinelo calorró), edited last November by Juan Manuel Suárez Japón. Mairena found in the Santiago guitarist the perfect partner, a gipsy guitarist with clear gipsy convictions, just like Antonio himself, and he helped him know in depth the Cádiz world of cante, without which flamenco cannot be understood. Thus, it’s only fair that Mairena del Alcor recognize don Manuel Morao’s work in behalf of flamenco, and especially his work in behalf of the Mairena school, of mairenismo and in behalf of the work of the master of gipsy cante. What seems strange is that this recognition has been so belated, although it’s never too late for great things. Thanks to artists like Manuel Morao (with whose opinions about the origins of the arte jondo I haven’t always agreed) flamenco has not ended up disappearing among other commercial music styles, and that deserves praising. This guitarist hasn’t received many awards or prizes, but surely this tribute at the Mairena Festival will make him immensely happy. Those of us who live in Mairena (myself included, even as I’m not quite a mairenista) greatly appreciate it. Tomorrow Mairena will have a special colour.