Thursday saw the passing of a flamenco legend: Juan Carmona. The family has used the nickname of Habichuela for years so he was professionally known as Juan Habichuela or Juan Carmona Habichuela. Born in 1933 Juan began dancing at the age of ten but turned to the guitar at the age of 15 and quickly gained fame as an accompanyist.
Juan played for singers such as Fosforito, Camarón, Manolo Caracol, Mairena, Bernarda de Utrera and Enrique Morente. These days flamenco guitarrists in general have followed in the footsteps of Paco de Lucia, Vicente Amigo and Gerardo Nuñez in that the instrument is a solo voice or often the focal point of a concert or album. Juan was old school and for the most part limited himself to accompanying great singers.
Among the recordings made over a life of flamenco are: his first album with Rafael Farina, another with Manolo Caracól, a 1999 album with greats including Paco de Lucia and José Mercé, “Campo del Principe” (2002) with Juanito Valderrama, and Enrique Morente and others, and in 2007 “Una guitarra en Granada”. Juan toured extensively and had played in New York, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Mexico, Bogota and other cities all over the world.
His legacy is the profound respect that his colleagues had for the man and his criteria, the music and of course the saga of artists that follow him: his sons Juan y Antonio and his nephew José Miguel -members of Ketama-, su nephew Pepe Luis, founder of La Barbería del Sur and his grandson Juan Carmona an excellent guitarist in his own right.
