Belén Maya Illuminates Archidona Like the Sunset That Crowns Its Most Celebrated Festival

The first two days of the Cabildo Flamenco de Archidona have far surpassed expectations. This is saying a lot, given that the magnificent promotional poster —designed by José Luis Solís— had already promised top-tier flamenco artists and distinguished scholars united to explore the forgotten figure of Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara through conferences and avant-garde flamenco performances. Part of the experience has undoubtedly been shaped by the picturesque landscapes, sublime sunsets, local gastronomy, and historic landmarks of a stunning village nestled in the mountains of Málaga: Archidona.

Everything began with a speech by the mayor, Juan Manuel Almohalla, who emphasized the importance of a festival that is truly unique in Spain’s cultural landscape. Then, Professor José Luis Nuevo gave a brilliant lecture dedicated to the biography of Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara and the cancionero popular he published in 1865. He recited several of the compiled verses and highlighted the importance of rescuing oral traditions from the shadows of oblivion.

After the conference, we walked from the Municipal Exhibition Hall down to the Municipal Theater to listen to some of the verses from the cancionero in the voice of Sebastián Cruz, who had to substitute for an ill Rocío Luna. He didn’t disappoint in the least. This extraordinarily versatile flamenco singer collaborates with the avant-garde project Frente Abierto and also sings traditional flamenco with exceptional mastery —which is exactly what he did for us. He was accompanied by the exquisite José Luis Medina, whose name I heard for the first time at this Cabildo. José Luis Ortiz Nuevo summarized the talent of the guitarist in question in the following way as we shared a few beers after the event: «This guitarist is a machine —like all of them nowadays. The level of play nowadays is extraordinary».

The second day began with a masterful lecture by Ramón Soler, attended by nearly two hundred students from the high schools IES José Navarro y Alba and IES Luis Barahona de Soto of Archidona, during two sessions held in the Carmen Linares Auditorium. In a way, his words responded to Antonio Banderas’s recent call to bring culture closer to young people, to offer them something that forces them to put down their addictive phones. His presentation, Flamenco in the Popular Songbook of Lafuente y Alcántara, included videos that captured the attention of the teen audience, who enjoyed seeing how the coplas and seguidillas from that 19th-century songbook surfaced in the repertoires of great flamenco masters: Chano Lobato, La Perla de Cádiz, Pepe de la Matrona, Antonio Mairena, among others. We also discovered that same cancionero popular in the voice of Lolita Flores in her famous song Saradonga:

When I had money,
I was called Master Tom.
Now that I don't,
They just call me Tom.

"Belén Maya needs no introduction or any adjective to describe her excellence, because what she does is beyond words. Her dance movements seemed to explode on stage in millions of colors, like a sunset in Archidona."

But it wasn’t until the night of the second day of the Cabildo that the identity of the festival revealed itself fully before all attendees through the dance of Belén Maya, in the surreal performance Morente cantó Lafuente. Belén Maya needs no introduction and no adjectives that pretend to measure her excellence, because what she does lies beyond language. Her movements seemed to burst onstage in millions of colors, like a sunset in Archidona.

Those colors also became musical notes thanks to the guitar of a rising flamenco star whose mastery is rarely found in someone barely twenty-one years old: David de Ana. The singing of Antonio Campos was also exquisite from beginning to end.

The performance was directed by Dr. José Javier León, professor in the Inter-University Master’s Program in Research and Analysis of Flamenco at the University of Granada, best known for authoring a dozen books, several of them on flamenco. This time, he took the stage as director and actor of a play that explored the intersections between the cancionero of Lafuente y Alcántara and the singing of Enrique Morente in an innovative way, revealing his own theatrical talent in the process.

What inspired that 19th-century young man from Archidona to collect the song lyrics that he later published in a cancionero popular? No one can say with absolute certainty, but I imagine that he discovered a part of himself in those verses —something that captivated him and that he wanted to explore and share with others through the publication of a songbook that some publishing house really ought to reissue. Thanks to his work —and to that of the organizers of the Cabildo Flamenco de Archidona— we took part in the dialogue that flamenco maintains both with other artistic expressions and with its own past, which is, in my view, the best way to glimpse the paths ahead for an art form in full effervescence. ♦