zata -> RE: RAMÓN MONTOYA & CARLOS MONTOYA (Apr. 8 2014 11:45:50)
|
quote:
If the books and biographies say one thing about the flamenco families and the families themselves have no consensus, how do we know if anything is accurate? In fact, we don't...it's common in flamenco, especially earlier generations when birth records were not scrupulously kept, children were often born at home or "on the road", and parents, sometimes illiterate and/or suspicious of government officials were in no hurry to do paperwork. There are many examples... Before he died, guitarist Antonio Arenas, born in 1929 in Ceuta (Spanish city located in North Africa), told me he remembered when Camarón was born...not in San Fernando, but in Ceuta! He knew the mother well, as she had been working in Ceuta at the time. According to Arenas (this appears in his autobiography as well), Camarón's mother took her newborn boy back to the mainland because she feared he would be discriminated against as a "moro" if his birth certificate said he was born in Ceuta. To this day we don't know exactly where Diego del Gastor was born...in Arriate, El Gastor or on the road somewhere near Ronda, regardless of what documents show. Another friend of mine in Jerez was born under a bridge...he knows the location of the bridge, but it's not information that can figure on a birth certificate, so well-meaning but overly concrete academics insist he was born in Jerez, which infuriates him. According to family members, legendary singer Juaniquí "de Lebrija" was born in the fields of Las Cabezas de San Juan, but his mother, a migrant field-worker at the time, had to conceal the child's existence so as not to be sent home to Lebrija and lose her only means of survival.
|
|
|
|