Paco Soto (Águilas, 1991) is a guitar hustler. He began to play as a child because of that irrational effort that comes to those who soon see his way. As a guitar did not fit in his backpack, at age nine he stole a harmonica and learned to get sound locked in the bathroom of the school. He was ashamed to be seen. I wanted to make music with anything. Finally his parents gave him the guitar, he was wrong accordingly and he left the Fa of the soleá . Then, his brother Juan borrowed without permission - art exempts the intrepid from crime - from the mother of a girlfriend, the disc Fuente y caudal, by Paco de Lucía. That has already bewitched him. The only flamenco he had heard until then was Rafael Farina's singing, when he went to his grandfather's house.

Soto is not a virtuoso of the instrument and his compositions may not have the path of other brilliant young guitarists such as Juan Habichuela Nieto or Dani de Morón . He himself says it ahead: "I know my limits as a musician. My intention is, above all, to transmit. I am not afraid to launch myself or to be criticized, nor do I believe in that liturgical seriousness in which some guitarists are involved. Mine is learn and evolve, "he says. His first album, Vida , recorded it thanks to crowfunding . In the second, which has just been presented, it is worth up to the title to approach the teacher: Two seas . To compose it, he has been inspired by his childhood in Tangier. He is accompanied by some musicians who worked with Paco de Lucía: the singers Duquende and David de Jacoba, the exceptional flutist and saxophone Jorge Pardo , who was part of the Sextet that lit up, among other wonders, I just want to walk ... "My obsession is to get closer to Paco, "he says. "Not playing, because that is impossible, but I would like to remember everything I can. His musicians take me to him. I listen to him daily. He is my god, my father, my guide."

Two seas begins with David de Jacoba's ancient moan, "which has eighty gypsies inside," and a rumor of waves. The sea breeze returns to close the last cut of the disc, the seguiriya Conversations with Ramón el Portugués - a singer who is almost impossible to hear since his throat was operated. "I was looking for a more personal sound, and I think I found it in that Moorish air that moved me to my childhood in Tangier." They are simple themes, almost all festive sticks , which are listened to with pleasure and like each other.

After learning all the records of Paco de Lucía, Soto discovered Yerbagüena , by Pepe Habichuela, and connected with him and his son, Josemi Carmona, with whom he has shared the stage several times. "I identify with the way of playing Habichuela, Package, Diego del Morao, Rafael Riqueni ... His latest album, Parque de María Luisa , is a composition at the height of a Chopin," he says. Remember how he met his great idol at a concert in Marbella, the summer before he died. His mother gave him a ticket and got to be with him and his musicians at the later dinner. But I was so nervous that he didn't open his mouth . "Paco de Lucía approached, shook my hand, and said: Hi, I'm Paco. He has humility!"

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