Seville's guitar story

Torres in Seville

Wikipedia names Antonio de Torres Jurado, born in Almería in 1817, as the most important guitar maker Spain had in the 19th century. His first building period, from 1852 to 1870, was in Seville, where he opened a workshop on Calle de Cerrajería, number 7, shared with Manuel Soto y Solares. He made guitars larger, with thinner, lighter soundboards and a symmetrical fan bracing. Wikipedia says his designs produced the first recognisably modern classical guitars.

One maker, two kinds of guitar

Wikipedia's article on the flamenco guitar says luthiers such as Torres made guitars at a range of prices for all classes in Spain, and that Torres did not distinguish between flamenco and classical guitars. The split came later. Today's flamenco guitar is lighter than its classical cousin, with thinner tops and a tap plate, but it grew from the same workshops. That shared ancestry is worth keeping in mind in a house that displays guitars of both kinds.

The first singers' café

Wikipedia's article on flamenco says that Seville got its first café devoted to flamenco singers in 1881, opened by Silverio Franconetti, and that rivalry between such cafés helped shape the professional singer and the art itself. Franconetti's own article gives his dates as 1831 to 1889 and calls him the leading figure of the Golden Age, the period when most palos were created and defined. A café of that kind needed guitarists as much as singers.

Niño Ricardo

Wikipedia gives Niño Ricardo's birth as 11 July 1904 in Seville. It says he began accompanying La Niña de los Peines in 1924 and started recording under his own name around the age of twenty, and that his style gave rise to a school called Ricardismo. According to the same article he taught Paco de Lucía, Enrique de Melchor and Serranito, and a monument in the Plaza del Cristo de Burgos in Seville marks his birthplace.

Montoya and the solo guitar

Ramón Montoya, born in Madrid in 1879, formed a partnership with the singer Antonio Chacón in 1912 that lasted more than a decade. Wikipedia says he was one of the first to challenge the guitar's supporting role and to perform as a solo or lead act in concerts, and that historians widely credit him with establishing the flamenco guitar in that role. His story belongs beside Seville's, because it is what turned a supporting instrument into a concert one.

Paco de Lucía and what followed

Paco de Lucía was born in Algeciras in 1947 and died in 2014. Wikipedia says he collaborated with the singer Camarón de la Isla from 1968 to 1977, that the sextet's 1981 album Sólo quiero caminar brought the Peruvian cajón into flamenco, and that he won the Prince of Asturias Award in Arts in 2004. His 1991 performance of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez carried the flamenco guitar into the classical repertoire, a long way from the café stage.

What this means for one evening

A one-hour show in a small house is the modern descendant of that café stage. The guitarist sets the key and the rhythm, answers the singer and drives the dancer, much as the players of Franconetti's day did. You do not need any of this history to enjoy the hour, but it explains why a Seville house can devote a whole collection to the instrument.

Read next: Flamenco guitar basics