With the year racing inevitably to its closure, I ought to be reviewing the main events of the last 12 months, to communicate important and profound observations, despite this feeling of emptiness. Since the people who run Expoflamenco allow me a lot of slack (God bless them), I\u2019m pulling the flamenco thread that holds things together in a particular way for us ardent followers of the art-form, to propose for a few minutes that we remember loved ones and admired artists we\u2019ve lost this year, each one of us with his or her particular list.<\/p>\n
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A very dear friend in Utrera has taken the train of never-ending comp\u00e1s, and I wasn\u2019t even able to wish him a good trip. An amateur singer all his life, with a tasty buler\u00edas dance, he defended the most traditional sort of flamenco. What was his name? Like so many millions of Spaniards: Manuel. Surname, Requelo. I met him 52 years ago in the wee hours of Holy Friday as we were singing buler\u00edas to the Gypsy Virgin of Utrera who was carried down the Calle Nueva where Pinini, according to the famous verse, would cause such a sensation whenever he came around inebriated.<\/p>\n
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Poor Manuel, he wouldn\u2019t attend funerals, said they brought bad luck, but even that couldn\u2019t save him. We were in our twenties, and every weekend someone was getting married or baptized with corresponding fiestas or spontaneous get-togethers held in warehouses or garages with bare light-bulbs hanging, and the aperitif would most likely be potato chips. With all the singing and dancing, you barely noticed the lack of heating\u2026or air-conditioning, as the case might have been. Glorious bare-bones scarcity, typical of the era, worn with dignity and served \u201ccomo la sal al guisao\u201d, (\u201clike salt for the stew\u201d), another well-known line of flamenco verse.<\/p>\n
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Manuel had a way of knowing how to seat people at gatherings in order to optimize the atmosphere for those who would sing. One unspoken \u201crule\u201d was that each person present would do something, a bit of singing, a buler\u00edas bit, even recitation (which used to be fairly common), a moment for each individual so that there were no spectators, and no applause. I remember on one occasion, in the intensity of a buler\u00edas moment, Manuel approached a fragile elderly lady in a wheel-chair, lifted her up and had her \u201cdance\u201d without touching the floor, causing her to laugh until she cried, as I now cry remembering the moment.<\/p>\n
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When I began to write, Manuel loved to suggest possible topics. I confess I paid little attention until one day he says \u201cLa Zangarriana\u2026you have to write about the fiestas there used to be at the Zangarriana!\u201d, which was a large finca where labor was always in short supply, and many people from Utrera and elsewhere went to work the fields. After asking around, and at the insistence of investigator Luis Soler, I wrote about the life and flamenco atmosphere in field-workers\u2019 primitive barracks of the post-war, thus filling in a chapter of the recent history of the art-form.<\/p>\n
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We can never know who may contribute their instinctive wisdom, or allow us to understand certain episodes of life. I\u2019m now seeing many messages in Facebook honoring the memory of Manuel Requelo, and understand he managed, in his way, to enrich the flamenco life of the present generation.<\/p>\n
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Every flamenco follower has had to assimilate the loss of admired individuals who lovingly paved the way for the rest of us. Let\u2019s remember them right now with the joy of knowing that no, flamenco is not \u201cbroken\u201d, not even out of order, it\u2019s always there to fill in the empty spots of the soul. Happy flamenco fiestas to everyone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A very dear friend in Utrera has taken the train of never-ending comp\u00e1s, and I wasn\u2019t even able to wish him a good trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":38700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-estela-flamenca"],"yoast_head":"\n