{"id":401557,"date":"2023-10-11T00:23:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T22:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/allflamenco.net\/biography-jose-menese-cantaor\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T11:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T09:49:48","slug":"biography-jose-menese-cantaor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allflamenco.net\/en\/blog\/biography-jose-menese-cantaor\/","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Menese: the Cantaor Who Sang Against Franco"},"content":{"rendered":"

A painter walked into the bar Central<\/strong> in La Puebla de Cazalla<\/strong> and heard the shoemaker’s son singing. The painter was Francisco Moreno Galv\u00e1n<\/strong>, a communist from the same village, and he urged the boy to take up cante for a living. The letter that opened Antonio Mairena<\/strong>‘s door came from someone else: Manuel Orellana Rivero<\/strong>, who had done his military service with the maestro.<\/p>\n

Mairena, the supreme authority on orthodox cante, listened to the boy and introduced him himself at the Cine Carreter\u00eda in Osuna<\/strong>, in 1959<\/strong>. Out of that improbable pairing \u2014 a left-wing painter and the guardian of purity \u2014 came Jos\u00e9 Menese<\/strong>: a cantaor who never moved a millimetre from orthodoxy and who spent more than fifteen years singing to Franco’s face.<\/p>\n

The Shoemaker’s Son<\/h2>\n

Jos\u00e9 Menese Scott<\/strong> was born in La Puebla de Cazalla (Seville) on 3 December 1942<\/strong>, the fourth of nine children. His father was a shoemaker<\/strong> and there was no flamenco in the family: it was not a singing household and he came from no dynasty. In the flamenco of his day that is not a biographical detail \u2014 it is what made him have to earn everything twice.<\/p>\n

He had been singing since the age of eight at village parties and local theatres, and as an amateur at the bar Central. That is where Moreno Galv\u00e1n found him.<\/p>\n

The Zambra, and an Idea of Seriousness<\/h2>\n

In 1963<\/strong> he joined Madrid’s Zambra<\/strong> tablao, where he stayed until 1968<\/strong> alongside Peric\u00f3n de C\u00e1diz<\/strong>, Perico el del Lunar, Rafael Romero<\/strong>, Juan Varea and Rosa Dur\u00e1n. It was not just any tablao: it was where the most serious cante in Madrid was to be found, and this is how he told it.<\/p>\n

\n

When I was a nineteen-year-old lad I went round every tablao in Madrid. There was one I took a particular liking to: the Zambra. It taught me a standard of seriousness I never abandoned after that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That same 1963<\/strong> he recorded his first album, with lyrics by Moreno Galv\u00e1n, and won the National Record Prize<\/strong> from the Jerez Chair of Flamencology. Two years later, in 1965<\/strong>, the Tom\u00e1s el Nitri Prize of Honour<\/strong> at C\u00f3rdoba’s National Flamenco Art Competition. He was twenty-two and already a festival name.<\/p>\n

The Lyrics Somebody Else Wrote<\/h2>\n

Here is what makes Menese unlike almost anyone. Most of his lyrics were written by Moreno Galv\u00e1n<\/strong>, and they were not love songs: they were texts with a direct social message, awkward for the authorities of the day, sung por sole\u00e1 and por seguiriya \u2014 that is, in the gravest and oldest forms in the repertoire.<\/p>\n

The trick, if there is one, lies in that combination. Menese broke nothing on the outside<\/strong>: he sang orthodox, called himself a mairenista and respected the form down to the detail. What changed was what the form said. An old cante saying new things gets through doors a protest with a megaphone does not.<\/p>\n

\n\"Red
Artwork from the documentary \u00abMenese\u00bb, available in full in the ALL FLAMENCO catalogue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Payo Mairenista, Which Was Almost a Contradiction<\/h2>\n

It is worth pausing here, because this is what makes him awkward and therefore interesting. Menese called himself a mairenista<\/strong>, a follower of the doctrine Antonio Mairena<\/strong> had set out in Mundo y formas del cante flamenco<\/em>: that there is a core gypsy-Andalusian cante, with fixed forms and a correct way of performing them, preserved from household to household far from any stage.<\/p>\n

The problem is that Menese was not a gypsy and came from none of those households<\/strong>. He was the payo<\/em> \u2014non-gypsy\u2014 son of a shoemaker in a village of the Seville countryside. By the letter of the theory he embraced, he was precisely the kind of singer who should not have been able to sing like that. And he sang like that \u2014 to the point that the phrase most often repeated about him is that he was \u00aba payo who sang like a gypsy\u00bb.<\/p>\n

That tension explains two things. First, his ferocious orthodoxy: someone who does not inherit a place has to earn it, and earns it by being stricter than anyone. Second, why his political commitment cost him so much inside the profession. In a world where authority rested on lineage, putting political words into a sole\u00e1 was doubly daring: not only was he touching what is not touched, he was someone many considered to be there on loan.<\/p>\n

Singing to Franco’s Face, and por Sole\u00e1<\/h2>\n

Moreno Galv\u00e1n’s lyrics were not allusive or coded. They spoke of day labourers, of prison, of hunger and of freedom, in a country where the censor read records before they were released. The alibi was the wrapping: an old cante, a grave form, a verse that sounded like tradition. Things got through there that a pamphlet would never have got through.<\/p>\n

It cost him anyway. Criticism rained down from his own colleagues and from much of the flamenco world for having taken sides, and his answer in 1978<\/strong> \u2014 with Franco already dead, when many had stopped taking risks \u2014 was an even more explicit record.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting what that meant in practice. A cantaor who sings at festivals lives off being programmed, and being programmed depends on organisers, town councils and juries. Taking a public side in that Spain did not close a door with a bang: it simply meant fewer calls, and no way of proving why.<\/p>\n

The Reuni\u00f3n de Cante Jondo<\/h2>\n

In 1967<\/strong>, Menese and Moreno Galv\u00e1n founded, with a group of enthusiasts, the Reuni\u00f3n de Cante Jondo de La Puebla de Cazalla<\/strong>. It was not one more of the festivals that filled the Andalusian summer: it was born with the explicit idea that cante should be heard in silence and without ornament, with the audience seated and attentive \u2014 the opposite of a fairground booth. It is still held every summer, and it is probably the most durable thing he left, because it did not depend on his being there.<\/p>\n

That same year he became engaged to Encarnaci\u00f3n Gil<\/strong>, with whom he had five children. And around then his voice began to leave Spain: a German short film took it to Germany, and out of that came a tour of the whole country.<\/p>\n

Paris, the Teatro Real and New York<\/h2>\n

In the seventies he went abroad, and he went high. He was the first flamenco cantaor to perform at the Olympia in Paris<\/strong>, in 1973<\/strong> and 1974<\/strong>. In 1974<\/strong>, Madrid’s Teatro Marquina with Manolo Brenes on guitar and Paco Valdepe\u00f1as on comp\u00e1s; and Barcelona’s Palau de la M\u00fasica.<\/p>\n

In 1975<\/strong> he sang at the Teatro Real<\/strong> with the RTVE Orchestra under Od\u00f3n Alonso<\/strong>, in an interlude from Falla’s La vida breve<\/em>. In 1985<\/strong>, in New York, at the United Nations Day Concert with Spain’s National Orchestra and Choir and Enrique de Melchor<\/strong> on guitar. And in 1991<\/strong>, at the Cervantes Institute in Paris, a tribute to Falla alongside Carmen Linares<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00abNobody Silences Jos\u00e9 Menese\u00bb<\/h2>\n
\n

Since I was getting constant criticism from my colleagues and from the flamenco world for having committed myself to singing for freedom, I wanted to show that nobody silences Jos\u00e9 Menese, not for money and not for anything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rafael Alberti<\/strong> described him in a phrase that has stuck to him: \u00abHis voice is solemn, it has sap, because it has a trunk and deep roots.\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n

The Records, and What Is Inside Them<\/h2>\n

He recorded a lot and early: between 1963<\/strong> and 1971<\/strong> he released more than a dozen albums, and almost everything that matters is there. The first, from 1963, already carries the house mark \u2014 Moreno Galv\u00e1n’s lyrics, orthodox cante \u2014 and wins him the National Record Prize. In 1964<\/strong> come the Saetas<\/em>, another of his specialities and no curiosity: the saeta is cante with no guitar and no safety net, and that bareness suited him. In 1967<\/strong>, Cantes flamencos b\u00e1sicos<\/em>, which is exactly what the title says: a map of the repertoire drawn by someone who had studied it. And in 1970<\/strong>, Renuevos de cantes viejos<\/em>, which sums up his whole programme in three words.<\/p>\n

He went on releasing records for forty years. In September 1997<\/strong> he presented A mi madre Remedios<\/em> at Madrid’s Conde Duque barracks, within the Veranos de la Villa, with Enrique de Melchor<\/strong> on guitar and Chano Lobato and Juan Habichuela as guests. That same year he received two of the honours most often cited about him: the Calle de Alcal\u00e1 Flamenco Award and the title of \u00abPatriarch of Cante\u00bb<\/strong> at the Murcia Flamenco Summit.<\/p>\n

BIO<\/h2>\n

Name and birth<\/h3>\n

Jos\u00e9 Menese Scott.
\nLa Puebla de Cazalla (Seville), 3 December 1942.
\nFourth of nine children. No flamenco family<\/strong>: his father was a shoemaker.<\/p>\n

Who discovered him<\/h3>\n

Francisco Moreno Galv\u00e1n<\/em> (1925-1999), a painter from the same village, heard him at the bar Central and interceded with Antonio Mairena. He wrote most of his lyrics.
\nAntonio Mairena<\/em> introduced him at his debut, at the Cine Carreter\u00eda in Osuna, in 1959.<\/p>\n

Milestones<\/h3>\n

1963: first album and National Record Prize. Joins the Zambra tablao.
\n1965: Tom\u00e1s el Nitri Prize of Honour, C\u00f3rdoba.
\n1967: founds the Reuni\u00f3n de Cante Jondo de La Puebla de Cazalla.
\n1973 and 1974: first flamenco cantaor at the Olympia in Paris<\/strong>.
\n1997: \u00abPatriarch of Cante\u00bb at the Murcia Flamenco Summit.<\/p>\n

Death<\/h3>\n

La Puebla de Cazalla, 29 July 2016, aged 73<\/strong>, at home, from a cardiovascular condition he had carried for years. (Many obituaries said 74, following the town council. He was four months short.)<\/p>\n

What He Left Behind<\/h2>\n

He died in the same village he was born in, and his coffin lay in the contemporary art museum that bears the name of the family who discovered him. There is a bandstand named after him in Madrid, and his village lists him among its distinguished residents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His position is an odd one, and that is why it is interesting: he was a payo singing orthodox at a time when orthodoxy was a gypsy matter<\/strong>, and a cantaor of the right by repertoire and of the left by lyric<\/strong>, which in the flamenco of the seventies had no comfortable place. He did not look for one. As one of his own verses put it: \u00abFirm I stand, firm until death.\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\n

Where to Watch Jos\u00e9 Menese on ALL FLAMENCO<\/h2>\n

The catalogue has \u00abMenese\u00bb<\/a>, the eighty-minute documentary portraying the free, untameable artist he was, in which his cantes are recovered and reinterpreted by young women’s voices. And it has him singing: \u00abJos\u00e9 Menese por ton\u00e1\u00bb<\/a>, from the series Cavilaciones<\/em> by the Andalusian director Pilar T\u00e1vora<\/strong>. Everything of his is on his artist page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\"Poster1 h 20 min<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00abMenese\u00bb. The documentary<\/strong>
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

\n\"Jos\u00e92 min<\/span><\/span>
\nJos\u00e9 Menese por ton\u00e1<\/strong>
\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To place him, two readings: his entry on the Andalusian regional government’s flamenco site<\/a> and the farewell the specialist press gave him<\/a> in 2016. The facts of his biography are on his Wikipedia page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A communist painter heard him sing in his village bar, and in 1959 Antonio Mairena put him on stage in Osuna. Out of it came a cantaor orthodox to the bone who spent over fifteen years singing to Franco’s face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":410880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_af_refresco_fecha":"","_af_refresco_destino":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,124,134,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad","category-biografias","category-bios-en","category-whats-new"],"yoast_head":"\nJos\u00e9 Menese: Biography of Flamenco's Most Political Voice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A shoemaker's son from La Puebla de Cazalla who turned cante into protest without ever leaving orthodoxy. 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