Like most – if not all – innovators, Paco de Lucía is not without illustrious precedents. And so, he also brought the politics of exclusion on which those canons rely under question. Paco de Lucía fully brought into effect a hybrid conception of flamenco that undermines any attempt to establish a stylistic canon.
This is only one example of many such developments. He mixed flamenco with jazz and other popular music styles and opened it up to the colourful charm of the electric bass, saxophone and flute, among other instruments.īy incorporating the Peruvian cajón, which is now a standard in most flamenco ensembles, he arguably payed tribute to the tradition of cantes de ida y vuelta (round trip songs) that emerged through commerce between Latin America and Spain during the 19th century.
This makes it very difficult to give his oeuvre a precise location in the complex constellation of styles that forms the universe of flamenco today.īut if one had to describe his contribution to this music in only a few words, it would be fair to say that he pushed its boundaries in unprecedented and innumerable directions. He brought into effect an enormous range of stylistic innovations and was involved in a huge number and variety of artistic collaborations. As I think of the recently deceased guitarist Paco de Lucía, there is one thought that immediately comes to mind: he has arguably brought about the most thorough transformation of flamenco in the second half of the 20th century.