He's won Latin Grammy awards, toured the world and played with flamenco's superstar "gods" Camaron de la Isla and Paco de Lucia. But at 58, Spain's famed gypsy guitarist Tomatito, who drew a standing ovation at Seville's Flamenco Biennial this week, remains modest and almost shy, wrapped up in his passion for an art form he learned early on as part of a musical family. "My mother would tell me 'stop it now, don't play more, shut up', as I was playing all day long," he says.
He was an introverted teenager playing in a tavern in Malaga when Jose Monge Cruz -- otherwise known as Camaron de la Isla, considered the greatest flamenco singers of modern times -- got wind of his talent over 40 years ago. He hired him as his guitarist, and Tomatito -- whose real name is Jose Fernandez Torres -- stayed at the side of the "Picasso of flamenco" for 18 years. Both of them were self-taught and never learned how to read a partition. "Listening to Camaron sing was like a dream," he recalls, sitting in a hotel in Seville, one of the birthplaces of flamenco, an art-form born centuries ago among the poor gypsies of southern Andalusia. But then in 1992, "the dream shattered" when Camaron de la Isla died of cancer at the tender age of 41, ravaged by drugs.
Tomatito -- which means "little tomato", a nickname that follows in the footsteps of his grandfather and father who were both known as El Tomate -- was forced "to come back to earth." He reluctantly went solo, launching a career that took him around the world, blending flamenco and jazz in an echo of the new style of famed guitarist Paco de Lucia, with whom he also played. More than two decades after his death, Camaron de la Isla remains a part of the lives of Tomatito, his six children and seven grandchildren. "Even if he died before I was born, he is still present at home where we listen to him, talk about him," says Jose "Tomatito junior," who at 18 is following in his dad's footsteps and is set to bring out his first album as a guitarist. The family house in Aguadulce on the Mediterranean coast is "full of souvenirs of Camaron and Paco," he adds. It is also the home of some 60 guitars, he says, including the one with which he plays, "made for Camaron who then gave it to my father."
Tomatito's daughter Mari Angeles also sings. While Tomatito says parents cannot force their offspring into music, he adds genes do play a part. "If you see your grandfather playing guitar when you're tiny, your father playing music at home, then it's all a game for you." That's exactly how it happened for him, at a time when kids learnt flamenco "on the street... bunched together at the door of a house." His grandfather El Tomate played the guitar, his father was in the military brass band of Almeria in the southeast and his uncle was also a guitarist who achieved belated fame.
In October, he starts a tour in the United States and central America -- a firm cornerstone of Spain's flamenco scene. But he bristles when journalists try to label him as Paco de Lucia's successor. "All of us put together can't hold a candle to Paco," he says.
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What is flamenco?
• Flamenco history has only been documented for the past two hundred years or so, and anything before this time is open to debate and speculation. It is particular to Andalusia in Spain
• Much of what we know from before this time comes from stories and legends that have been passed down through family dynasties, in a similar way to the flamenco song itself.
• Flamenco is made up of four elements, Cante-Voice, Baile-Dance, Toque-Guitar, and the Jaleo, which roughly translated means “hell raising” and involves the handclapping, foot stomping, and shouts of encouragement.
• The addition of the guitar is surrounded in apparent mystery as the exact date is not known, but gradually the guitar was introduced as an accompanying instrument for flamenco.
