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Sunday June 17, 2007
King Prawn
I have just returned home from London on the last train of the evening.
Robert had got tickets at the Barbican to see a famous (flamboyant, sexy, gravel voiced) flamenco singer Diego "El Cigala" [various translated as "the gypsy" (wrongly?), "the little prawn" (owing to his height, it said), "King Prawn" (the evening's program), and "Norway lobster" (Altavista Babelfish)]. Prawn or lobster - he was great - singing both traditional gypsy flamenco, along with music with a Cuban flavour, which is apparently what brought him to more international attention outside Spain.
The evening's opener was the Martin Lubenov Orkestar, a line-up of young musicians from Bulgaria and the Balkans. This band combined elements of rumba, tango, gypsy swing, and jazz. Here's the best picture I could get of them (just to say "I was there"):
The performance was part of the Barbican's excellent festival of gypsy music. I think that all day they had been running flamenco lessons as part of their "family days", and in the foyer before the performance there were "Freestage" performances. We caught one of them, which had us puzzling all evening as to their nationality. Anyway, I now think they may have been: "Romani Rad - London's most celebrated Polish Romany ensemble performing wild wedding music and traditional songs". Here are some more pictures of moderately poor quality due to low lighting, but not quite so much due to my usual camera shake; in consequence it does give a great sense of their energy and movement.
Posted by Christina at 12:35 AM. Category: Art and Culture
Comments
a nice site
Posted by: shofela sulaimon adeshola on February 22, 2008 1:20 PM
