Who is Miguel, el gitanillo de bronce.....?

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
I've been mentioning Miguel for a number of blog entries, but until now never had anything that I could show you of his art. For the moment, if you go back about three entries to the one called "Fiesta en Chipiona", you will find a sample of his singing por bulerias. He and others from his family have been several times to fiestas on our boat and finally we have some video footage from our own camera. In the meanwhile, you can see the other video.

But who is this Miguel? (This will be of interest to only the hard-core flamencos). Well, he is from one of the most famous gypsy families. There are a group of famous singers all decended from Agujetas el Viego (for whom the local peña is named) - they are Manuel, Gordo (father of Negro Agujetas who is featured in a previous blog), Diego, Luis, Juana and Anglica - the last two girls married US sailors from the base at Rota and now live in the States. All the family of Agujetas el Viejo have are named like Manuel de los Santos Pastor. Well, Miguel's mother was the sister of Agujetas el Viejo and she married into the Pastor family, so Miguel is Miguel Pastor de los Santos. The same two families, but married the other way. So Miguel is from famous bloodlines and has the same family background - gypsy singers learn most of what they know in the beginning from their families.

But not only is Miguel a fabulous singer, but a really fine person. He has lots of afición and is always learning new things. At this minute, he is in Japan where he will sing for 4 days and then come back. He is mostly retired from singing, but given the current economic conditions, is thinking of going back out onto the peña circuit. He has asked me to be his guitarist. Talk about died and gone to heaven!!! So check out the previous video and here are some new ones.