Manolo Caracol Grabaciones Discos Pizarra Año 1930-40-50
Discmedi DM 642 02, 2002
Manuel Ortega Juárez. Sevilla, 1909 - Madrid, 1973. Singer. The last genius of a fabulous Gypsy dynasty that gave flamenco and bullfighting legendary names. To quote but a few, Enrique Ortega (father and son) los Gordos, Curro Dulce, los Gallos; and before, probably El Planeta and El Fillo. "You are born singing - he used to say, - but you then need to perfect the cante to have a spirit of your own. One must live the atmosphere of cante and learn the good things other people have". He had always lived it, and very intensely: "The rich revelers and morning performers, after touring the ventas in the outskirts at night, used to go to the Alameda de Hércules to end the revelry with churros and aquavit. As my father was a performer, I used to go with them. Due to that, when I went to school in the morning, I was among the performers and rich young men who were winding up the fiesta. Sometimes my father called me, and other times I went along, and y stayed in the doorway to listen to them singing". He triumphed as a child at the Cante Jondo Competition in Granada in 1922. Manolito Ortega, who began to be known as Niño de Caracol, from then on, went to Granada and won a first prize, of a thousand pesetas, ex aequo with an old man, Tenazas de Morón. He was immediately hired for same shows, but he lived out that first stage almost exclusively at private fiestas, which may have lasted more than a day. During the Spanish Civil War, the fiestas practically disappeared, and Caracol mainly worked in the theater to survive. That is how the staged scene arose, due to his heterodox genius and his taking his highest expression along with Lola Flores as of 1943, when the two exceptional performers met and began to work together. Such titles as La niña de fuego or La salvaora toured the world. He also acted in several films. Caracol and Lola separated due to a millionaire contract they were offered by Cesáreo González to make some films in America, which he did not wish to accept and she did. The singer set up other shows and attempted to form a new great couple, starting then with his then very young daughter Luisa Ortega, although in none of the cases was it the same. He was an outstanding singer, but irregular, as inspired singers generally are. He put his personal, unique touch to almost all the genres he approached, provoking overwhelming passions among followers and detractors. He emphasized his own personal style of cante. "I have not copied anyone. I have made theater, I have created a school, and what I sing is my own and I do not seem like anyone. Bad, good, regular, worse, it is by Manolo Caracol... My school is a very ... very strange school. I have created very difficult things, like, for example ... , who would have told Enrique el Mellizo, or Silverio, or Chacón, or Tomás el Nitri, that I would sing to the piano and that I would sing La salvaora at the end of cante por malagueñas..." He had a reputation as a heterodox performer, because he did things the purists would not forgive him - singing with the piano, for example, or with an orchestra, which is done so often nowadays -, but he passionately defended his own criteria and never backed down. "You can sing with an orchestra and you can sing with bagpipes! You can sing with everything, with a violin, with a flute ...!" Some of his thoughts about the jondo art could almost give rise to a theory of cante: "When I sing, I do not remember Jerez, or Cadiz, or Triana; nor do I remember anyone. I try to sing half voice, which is how it hurts. That is the profundity; because cante is not about shouting and is not for the deaf. Cante must be performed with a deep caress, the small pinch. Whoever starts to shout, he will not survive ...".320 kbps mp3; including full booklet scans
Part One
Part Two
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