Monday Music

This Monday Music is another introduction to something that I enjoy very much although it’s not part of my usual fodder.  Today’s featured artist is a national treasure of Spain:  the late, great, Camaron de la Isla.

 I was a freshman in college and expanding my musical horizons when my poetry teacher, a fellow guitarist and pharmacy school dropout that we nicknamed “Wild” Bill Thompson, gave me a tape of flamenco dubs.  One side was Paco de Lucia, and the other was Camaron de la Isla y Tomatito.  After falling in love with both, but particularly Camaron, I pimped it to everybody I knew.  It was different than anything I’d ever heard, certainly.  It was also fascinating, moving, and just plain great music. 

 I ended up loaning the tape to someone who never returned it.  I’m not even sure who I loaned it to.  And now I can’t even remember which albums were on the tape, although from looking at catalogs I suspect that the Camaron album was Paris 1987. 

It’s not terribly often that I think of it, but when I do, I really miss that tape.  I just had it pop into my head earlier this week, and thank the musical gods for YouTube so I can get a brief fix.

Here are Camaron y Tomatito in Malaga, 1990, performing “Fandangos.”

And if that appeals to you, check out Camaron and Paco de Lucia (Tomatito’s teacher) in the early 1970s performing “Bulerias.”  Gotta love the decade-appropriate pimptastic hair and clothes in both cases.