Flamenco singer Juan Peña "El Lebrijano" died this morning at 74 years old, victim of a heart ailment that had recently been operated. The author of works like "Pursuit" or "The word of a gypsy god" died at his home in Seville, according confimaron sources of the City of Lebrija, his hometown, which has decreed three days of official mourning as a sign of sympathy for the passing of which qualifies as its "international ambassador". Since childhood, this member of one of the families more gypsy tradition artist, of Perrate de Utrera, was always closely linked to flamenco. He started very young combining singing with the guitar playing, but at age 23 and after winning the prestigious competition Mairena del Alcor, decided to devote himself only to sing. It soon became a large space in the world of flamenco and became one of the greatest of the "cante hondo" in Spain. Inheritor of the tradition, "El Lebrijano" was also a huge innovative fusion doing important work and incorporating the symphonic flamenco world.
The recording work "El Lebrijano" coetaneo artists like Antonio Cortés Pantoja "Chiquetete" or José Monje Cruz "Camarón de la Isla", brings together some thirty recordings have earned him national and international recognition. The writer Gabriel García Márquez, for example, said of him that when he sang "water is wet". "John started with the guitar, sang for dancing, dared to sing and revolutionized later his" jondura "through the most orthodox criticism, to become the most gifted of his generation singer," said City Council its Lebrija native in a statement. The coffin with his remains will be transferred today at the Teatro Municipal "Juan Bernabe" of Lebrija where the chapel will be open to the public will be installed. The mayor of the Seville town, José María Fernández, showed "regret for the death of one of the most universal flamenco creators of this art," and stressed that it is "an irreparable loss for singing".
