La Niña de los Peines

Pastora Pavón Cruz, known as La Niña de los Peines (10 February 1890 – 26 November 1969), is considered the most important woman flamenco singer of the 20th century.

Her family were in dire need of money, so she started to sing regularly as a professional in the Taberna de Ceferino, in Seville, and then spent a period in Madrid and Bilbao.

[2] This famous music festival was largely organized by Manuel de Falla and also Federico García Lorca in order to reinvigorate the flamenco arts.

[3] Along her career she met or shared the stage with many classical flamenco singers of the Golden Age like Antonio Chacón, Manuel Torre, Francisco Lema (known as Fosforito El Viejo), La Trini, or Frijones.

After this, she retired for a few years, and came back with a show called España y su Cantaora (Spain and her singer), together with her husband, which she toured for a few months and was acclaimed by the critics.

In 1961 she received an homage in Córdoba, in which several well-known flamenco artists took part, such as Antonio Mairena, Juan Talega, Manuel Morao, or Fernando Terremoto.

In that same year, singer Antonio Mairena recorded his album Honores a la Niña de los Peines in homage to her.

A complete artist, she sang all palos to perfection, excelling especially in siguiriyas of which she preserved several styles like those of Ciego de la Peña and El Marruro, which have reached our days thanks to her.

Critics like Molina and Mairena ([1963] 1979:305), Martín Salazar (1998) also highlight her importance for palos like malagueñas, tarantas, cartageneras or granaínas: "As we said before, Pastora was also an excellent malagueñera, who marked with her deep personality such different styles as those of Chacón, El Canario, and Fernando de Triana.

She has been accused by a few critics of having surrendered to the fashionable trends in at the time of ópera flamenca, as she recorded many examples of the so-called canción por bulerías and cantes de ida y vuelta (both condemned by purists) and took part in theatrical shows.

(See Lefranc 2000: 197-198) "In some sort of way, Pastora Pavón was a revolutionary of the flamenco song, serving as link between the traditionalism of the last century and all the modernisms the current one, even the most detestable, which she did not reject without experimenting on them first, assimilating and enlarging everything that had some valuable element."

(Álvarez Caballero 1998:249) "We already saw, in the words of García Lorca, what La Niña de los Peines was when she sang with duende.

(Pepe de la Matrona, singer, quoted by Álvarez Caballero 1998:252) "[Referring to the singers of the ópera flamenca period] there remains, towering, as a challenging unique figure, Pastora Pavón, La Niña de los Peines, battling the fandangueros in their own territory, the theatre stages, and achieving indisputable success with the old styles of seguiriyas, soleares, malagueñas, peteneras, tarantas, tientos and bulerías."

An all-style interpreter, she completely mastered the fundamental songs (seguiriyas and soleares), the festive ones (tangos, bulerías and cantiñas), the peteneras and the cantes de Levante (malagueñas, cartageneras, tarantas and granaínas).