![]() ![]() ![]() “When I started out, back when I was 17, it was a magical time, but I was also broke and hungry a lot of the time. In charge of dance is another living legend, who like his fellow teachers, also learned his craft the hard way: Antonio Canales. Ojesto will be supplying students with the theory, while Guadiana and Habichuela will be on hand to explain the finer details of flamenco singing and guitar playing. And anybody who wants to learn flamenco will have to come here,” adds Guadiana “You can have a natural gift, but you still have to learn. “I learned my art by playing, playing anywhere and everywhere, but now, with all the experience we have accumulated, we have to help the younger generation with a passion for flamenco, we have to give them all we can,” says Habichuela. ![]() That’s why it’s been so important to get official recognition for what will be an innovative program that integrates dance and music,” adds Ojesta. “We’re going to attract students from around the world. “We are going to create a sensation here,” says Habichuela, looking round the empty rooms, smiling. “We are going to attract the best here, and provide students with the highest level of training possible,” says Ojesto, who a decade ago published Las claves del flamenco (The fundamentals of flamenco): “The first book to codify every flamenco style in a format that music students can understand, using the same approach as at Berklee, with the goal of providing an understanding of every aspect of flamenco, both musically and technically.” We are going to attract the best here, and provide students with the highest level of training possible” Along with the Carmonas and other partners from Spain’s leading music schools, Ojesto has been a driving force behind Uflamenco. With him is Pedro Ojesto, composer, performer, and founder of the Escuela de Nuevas Músicas, one of Spain’s most-respected private music colleges. Waiting for us inside is Pepe Habichuela, one of Spain’s finest contemporary flamenco guitarists, and patriarch of the Carmona family, from which sprang the three members of the now-defunct group Ketama, which played a lead role in reviving and popularizing flamenco three decades ago. Uflamenco, or the University of Flamenco, has taken more than a decade to get off the ground, explains Antonio Suárez Salazar, the 59-year-old cantaor, or singer, better known as Guadiana, as he leads us into the welcome cool of the four-story building that in October will open its doors to around 400 students of flamenco dance, singing and guitar from around the world. On a sweltering late August afternoon in the center of Madrid, workers are putting the finishing touches to what will be the first educational institution anywhere to offer an undergraduate program in that most Spanish of art forms, flamenco. Guitarist Pepe Habichuela in the future university. ![]()
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