…That I cannot do it with my soul. I can't come up with better verses than those sung by the Mexican. Oscar Chavez —that “this is the story of a good Mexican chano…”—. I search and search, and find nothing. The only thing that comes to mind is a farewell of white handkerchiefs on the platform of the station of Plaza de Armas, from which one morning in the eighties she departed for Madrid to turn them all upside down, like a goat, as they say SilvioAsk the producer. Mario Pacheco placeholder imagewho was “blown away” by him and his stuff. He even went so far as to say that “rock flamenco As a chimera, it is a mythical animal that has never existed, except in the case of the Amador family.”
Has died Rafael Amador Fernández And Seville has awakened to a crack in the air. It wasn't just news. It was a tremor. A Gypsy—a true Gypsy—a musician, the son of The Three Thousand HomesA child expelled from Triana when the Roma were uprooted from the river as if memory could simply move from one neighborhood to another. He grew up in a humble territory, mortally wounded by drugs, poverty, and institutional neglect, but also full of rhythm, hidden courtyards, and ancient wisdom. He grew up with a guitar... palo in the hand, like someone born already marked by a musical destiny that is not learned, but inherited, suffered and honored.
“Rafael didn’t play the guitar, he awakened it.”I once heard a guitarist say flamencoAnd that's not a metaphor. His sound wasn't technique, it was blood. Rafael himself was beauty. The dark, moonlit beauty that he could have written LorcaThe impish rock and roller. The dark beauty, the jondo and the truth. Before Sabina While the bowler hat was becoming popular, Rafael already wore it naturally, as if style were a consequence rather than an intention. When Rafael sported a bowler hat, the man from Úbeda was still wearing leather jackets. Amador's genius walked with artistry on his sleeve, without pose, without pretense, without showmanship. He himself was the show.
Someone said of him that he was "a revolutionary without a speech". And that is perhaps his greatest truth: Rafael Amador didn't need manifestos to revolutionize. He amalgamated all flamenco and gypsy music and put it through the electric current like one puts their soul through lightning. He made the electric guitar a forge where the flamenco It became thunder. Where the blues found its borders. Where tradition learned to speak in distortion.
Pata Negra It wasn't just a music group. Pata Negra was a historic turning point. Border Blues It wasn't just an album. It was a new sonic territory, a musical homeland without borders. "That album taught us that the flamenco "I could look at the world without getting lost," he recalled. Ricardo PachonThe best album of the eighties in Seville, along with Western Fantasy de Silvio, like two columns supporting an invisible temple.
"Today I looked out onto the street and Seville is lonelier, more soulless, colder, sadder. More orphaned. More silent. But in our memory remains the sound of Rafael Amador, a sacred electricity. We have his eternal rhythm, because true musicians don't die, they become air, memory, and root."
Silvio died. We lost him too. The CakeRafael Amador has died. Three points of a sacred triangle where magic and truth reside. Three incomparable aces. Perhaps misunderstood. Three ways of speaking the truth without asking permission. Three artists who didn't fit into the system, because the system wasn't made for people like them. The system is a cash register, not a soul that needs art to get up every morning.
Rafael was not just a musician. Above all, he was a living memory of society. The sharp voice of those expelled from Triana. The echo of Las Tres Mil. The dignity of the humble neighborhood. The poetry written on the margins. His guitar spoke for those without microphones. He wept for those who couldn't weep. He sang for those who signed with their finger.
Rafael, in his lifetime, was greater than his biography. Greater than all the facts that could be gathered about him and all the records and concerts he's been exposed to. Because his life was hard, but his work was light. It was a wound, but it was also medicine.
Today I looked out onto the street and Seville is lonelier, more desolate, colder, sadder. More orphaned. More silent. But in our memory remains the sound of Rafael, a sacred electricity. We have his eternal rhythm, because true musicians don't die, they become air, memory, and roots.
Rafael Amador has slipped away from us little by little. And yet he hasn't quite left us completely. He was a legend before he died. Now, that legend will grow even larger, as often happens with geniuses who don't make too much of a fuss in life. Rafael is now a boundary. Rafael is now the eternal spirit of the indomitable rhythm.
And Seville, although it may not have realized it yet, has just lost the playful and beautiful part of its soul. That's why I sing "goodbye with my heart, because I can't with my soul."
Reflections on Rafael Amador
* Pive Amador (music producer, musician and writer)
"Together with his brother Raimundo and with the collaboration of Kiko Veneno, Rafael Amador spearheaded a revolution in Andalusian music whose effects are still being felt today. Flamenco and rock have never been more intertwined than when Rafael performed."
* Pepe Begines (rock singer)
"Rafael Amador is one of the greatest geniuses that Sevillian music has ever produced. From gypsy music to blues and rock, he knew how to fuse the wild with wisdom. And his skill with the guitar and with the..." cante out of the ordinary
* Rafael Riqueni (guitarist)
"Rafael Amador is a genius and ahead of his time. We have lost a very important pillar of flamenco music and guitar. And of fusion, where he broke new ground. I met him at a Seville fair. I was there with my father, and Rafael and Raimundo were passing the hat. I was lucky enough to share many moments with them, with Ricardo Miño, with Juanjo Pizarro. I learned a lot from both brothers. I even played a guitar solo on the electric guitar in the..." Children's Blues».
* Ricardo Pachón (music producer)
"Rafael added to his immense musical creativity a radical willingness to introduce factors never before rehearsed, a boldness to break down rules and styles, and a swagger in front of the public on stage that made him an almost cult artist, extraordinary, always unpredictable…".
"Like the unruly personality he was, his artistic work is written on glorious pages that stand on their own. But we are left with the question of what his legacy might have been if that unruliness hadn't been so self-destructive. May his example serve as a guide for all, and may he rest in peace." (Chemi López)
* José María Arenzana (journalist and writer)
"When I was recently asked who was more talented, Raimundo or Rafael Amador, the producer Ricardo Pachón replied that perhaps Raimundo demonstrated more talent as a guitarist, but that Rafael was 'the more of an artist' of the two. He's what is usually called 'an artist's artist.' More than just appealing to the general public, he's someone gifted with an innate ability to influence his surroundings and to capture attention and gazes when he appeared on stage."
* Félix Machuca (journalist and writer)
"For our generation, Rafael Amador meant listening to the blues on the other side of the border, the sanity of the lunatics, enjoying the best of his rock." flamencoTo discover Cayetano's rock written on the Boyeré sheet music of Las Tres Mil, the poison of youth that glimpsed a different time, the hands and mouths smoking, inspiring street guitars, the revelation of the key to the legend of time, the affirmation of staying in Seville until the end, like the sky and mud of our existence, the stoic reflection of the gypsy who sees life passing by and cannot stop the hands of the clock of affection, of youth, of glory, and of the years. It was the mischievousness of two managers from Huelva and the torn shirt of CamarónRafael Amador was all that and much more to those of us who, in the eighties, were young, happy, and undocumented. Today we carry in our souls a purple welt, a gift of his irremediable absence.
* Luis Clemente (musicologist and writer)
"The most successful fusion between flamenco and rock, via Veneno, since the days of Smash. They were the most intuitive, the inherent beauty of failure, the pinnacle of ruin."
* Chemi López (music producer)
"A round, swaying voice paired with a unique guitar sound, not quite perfect but absolutely lucid. And his unstable genius as the central axis of it all. Like the unruly personality he was, his artistic work is written on glorious pages that stand on their own. But we are left with the question of what his legacy might have been if that unruliness hadn't been so self-destructive. May his example serve as a guide for all, and may he rest in peace."
* Juan José Téllez (journalist and writer)
"Flamenco creation is usually the result of a confluence of memory, environment, and the time in which it unfolds. And undoubtedly, Rafael, along with Raimundo, were true flamenco artists, heirs to a family tradition but also to a neighborhood—in this case, Las Tres Mil Viviendas in Seville, where the Roma people of La Cava de Triana and many others were deported. Their talent was surrounded by another transformation, that of popular music worldwide, from the 60s and 70s, which gave rise to artists ranging from Smash to..." The Legend of Time"An atmosphere of complicity, of fusion without confusion, of which Rafael Amador was one of the leading figures."
* José María Arenzana (journalist and writer)
"Names like Dylan, Bowie, Prince come to mind... I mean, leaders, almost extraterrestrial, who when they appear on stage hold your gaze with a magnetism that makes unsuspecting producers, aspiring stars, and clueless girls ask: 'Who is that? Where did he come from?' His creative freedom and authenticity made him inimitable, although from his discoveries and reckless risks a multitude of spores emerged that continue to populate flamenco-infused blues and rock like a probiotic bomb that exploded in the core of an ecosystem to colonize the habitat in many different ways and for a long time."
* Luis Ybarra (director of the Seville Biennial)
"With the death of Rafael Amador, we lose one of the great bastions of Seville's counterculture, which ultimately won over a massive audience, especially through Pata Negra. Along with his brother Raimundo, Rafael is the creator of the gypsy rock and blues that we began to glimpse in Veneno, alongside Kiko. There had been important forays before, of course: from Sabicas with Joe Beck to Smash. The Amador brothers didn't sing with an accent, but with flamenco intention and a gypsy touch. Their lyrics, their melodies, their essence, their cadences… They were the catalyst for a new expression that remains intact to this day. How modern the recordings now circulating so widely on social media sound. Life goes on, but the works remain."
"He is what is usually called 'an artist's artist'. More than for the general public, he is someone gifted with an innate ability to influence his surroundings and to capture attention and gazes when he appeared on stage" (José María Arenzana)
This is so badly translated. It makes me sad.
This is so badly translated it makes me sad.😢