Artist Bio:
El Camarón de la Isla—known to his family as José Monje Crúz—was one of the greatest flamenco singers of the 20th century. Born in 1950, in Cádiz, El Camarón was a teenage prodigy who revitalized traditional flamenco in the 1970s and '80s and whose innovations helped birth the nuevo flamenco movement.
Given his boyhood nickname—which translates as "shrimp"—because of his fair coloring and small stature, Cruz had a big voice that got him noticed at an early age. He began singing at the age of 8, and, after a failed attempt at bullfighting, appeared in the film El Amor Brujo at the age of 14. When he was 16, he won first prize in the prestigious Festival del Cante Jondo in Mairena de Alcor, and the following year set out to make his fortune in Madrid. There he became a singer in residence at the prestigious flamenco club Torres Bermejas, where he first met his legendary guitarist and collaborator Paco de Lucia.
In 1969, el Camarón, backed by de Lucia, released his debut album, Con la Colaboracion Especial de Paco de Lucia. It was a tour de force that showcased the young singer's mastery of the difficult and demanding cante jondo ("deep song") style, and the recording remains a classic among aficionados to this day.
Cruz's vocals were raw and wildly passionate but also fluid and controlled—a perfect rendering of the exquisite contrast that's at the very heart of flamenco. The album was a wakeup call for many flamenco fans, who, for too long had let the more tourist-friendly aspects of the music become dominant. Camarón and de Lucia's passionate, virtuosic back-to-basics sound was a reminder that the wild heart of flamenco puro still beat.
Throughout the next decade, the duo would record eight more classic recordings and embark on a series of tours that revitalized the moribund genre. In 1977, the duo parted ways, and Cruz went on to record with an equally great guitarist, a former student of de Lucia's known as Tomatito. With Tomatito, Cruz began to open up to new sounds, experimenting with many nontraditional instruments in his recordings, including the electric bass. Though traditionalists frowned, he was helping to pave the way for the nuevo flamenco explosion of the 1980s.
In 1979, the exhausted Cruz retired from touring but continued to release increasingly experimental records. His 1980 album, La Leyenda del Tiempo, helped set the stage for the exuberant new flamenco of that decade with a myriad of rock and jazz influences and electrified instruments. This era coincided with a giddy moment in Spanish cultural history called "La Movida," when the country began shaking off the dust of Franco's long rule—and Cruz had had no small part in ushering the era in. By the end of the '80s, el Camarón—the second of eight children of a basket-maker—would be a part of the establishment, recording with the London Philharmonic and recording Spain's first gold record in 1989.
But Cruz's hard-partying lifestyle eventually caught up with him, and just a few years later he succumbed to lung cancer in a Barcelona hospital. It was estimated that more than 100,000 attended his funeral, and his obituary was on the front page of every newspaper in Spain. Today, Camarón de la Isla's legacy is indisputable: he's the benchmark by which every great young singer is measured against. —Tom Pryor
