Three years ago, at a roadhouse called El Patio outside the Provençal town of Arles, a Gypsy singer named Chico and a couple of Flamenco dancers wove their way around the tables. Not, technically, the famous Gipsy Kings, although it was sometimes hard to know which cousins were still part of the group.
Gypsies (Gitanos in Spanish, Gitanes in French) are neither Spanish nor French but Romani. No matter where they congregate, they are regarded by locals with grave suspicion if not outright hostility, showered with mistrust and calumny (as "thieves," as "lazy," etc.). And yet. One of Spain's best sherries is called La Gitana; the top-selling cigarettes in France are Gitanes. And their music, well, simply the most romantic in the world. Every female on the planet, it would seem, dreams of the moment, from the time she was a little girl (whether she admits it or not) when she will be touched by an angel dressed in red and summoned to the stage to dance Flamenco.
Now, the musician they called Manitas de Platas ("Little Hands of Silver"), whose real name was Ricardo Baliardo, has died at the age of 93. He was the mentor to the original Gipsy Kings and their various successors including Chico from El Patio.
As the evening three years ago came to a dramatic close with guitars strumming and Spanish melodies filling the night. Sheathed in red silk, Karina del Oro, who'd been writhing decoratively behind the singers, descended from the stage and began anointing members of the audience. Thrilled and breathless, barely able to believe their good fortune, the chosen women let their shoulder bags fall, loosened their hair (and dropped their inhibitions). They stretched toward the ceiling with a practiced twist of the wrist, as if changing a light bulb, reaching as Gatsby did for the green light. It was a scene of longing and redemption, of Goethe's Ewige Weibliche, set to Andalusian music.
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