portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

CHUNGA'S REVENGE . . . . . ?










La Chunga and Salvador Dali, summer of 1957. Salvador Dali invited Micaela Flores Amaya, aka La Chunga to make art while performing for himself and friends. She danced on a blank canvas, while Dali applied paint. During intervals she would stop and he would add more paint.

I always admired flamenco artists and saw Paco Pena at the Oxford Guitar Society with my brother Steve Swapp, and being an intimate concert we sat in the front row and no less than 4 to 5 metres away and we also saw Manitas de Plata at the New Theatre who was an early childhood hero and that caused us to go see Segovia at the Sheldonian Theatre  all of whom I will never forget and if I had to choose it would go to Paco Pena who was sublime and this surprises me as I expected it to be in the reverse order if anything he went on to perform mostly with singers and dancers and quite a large troupe which I often had difficulty with (the singing is difficult to this untrained ear) but the solo guitar performance was simply exquisite and I bought a few albums by him . . . . . . that Salvador Dali was influenced (and vice versa) by Flamenco and all things Catalan was a part of his mystique that I admired the great master for as well.

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