MUSIC

Paco de Lucía Legacy

TUESDAY – SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 – 24, 2024
Various Times

Various Venues, Manhattan

Various
TICKETS + INFORMATION

When I first encountered guitarist Paco de Lucía in the 1970s, I couldn’t stand his music (at least that I heard). He was mainly known in the United States for participation in Jazz-Rock Fusion bands, and he seemed as barrenly technique-driven as everybody else in the decadent period of that movement. He was promoted here as having come out of Flamenco — but who knew then that Flamenco was anything other a showbizzy form of canned folclórico? After I grew up, I learned the truth about Flamenco — and discovered the sensational string of albums de Lucía made with Camerón de la Isla in Spain at the same time de Lucía was doing that barren fusion stuff in the States. This wasn’t fusion, but an opening up of a great musical form to influences and inflections that nourished it. So simultaneously, de Lucía was helping create some of the most soulful music on the planet and some of the most soulless. Unfortunately (if predictably), this festival seems to concentrate on de Lucía’s fusion activities. Is it a coincidence that the one show that focuses on straightforward Flamenco (at the Cervantes Institute on Friday) is sold out?

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: These show are all over the place — but in Manhattan, so be careful.