Word: plata
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...like the feel of the crowd-"les marts," he contemptuously called them, "the dead ones." His playing was listless until midnight, when the dead ones left, and an enthusiastic group of flamenco appreciators-some gypsies among them-arrived from Aries. Then 29-year-old Ricard Baillardo (Manita de Plata, or Little Silver Hands to his admirers) came alive...
...Your hands are not of silver, but of gold." He moved among the crowd, found a pretty French girl, and sang her a Spanish compliment: "You are beautiful. Your husband is a silly man unworthy of you, and we should meet tomorrow." The girl smiled in mystification, and De Plata moved away. At last, before dawn, the concert ended. "I have rarely played so well," said De Plata. "I have the guitar in my heart...
...Christ Danced." The current rage of the Riviera, Manita de Plata is one of a handful of guitarists in southern France who get out their instruments after the tourists leave and play the fiercely emotional music that they call their own. Anyone can finger the guitar, they believe, but only the true gypsy can play "flamenco"-a word that to Andalusians literally means "gypsy...
Playing for Himself. Born in a gypsy wagon near Sète, a seaport near Marseille, De Plata is of the best flamenco tradition. He is illiterate, cannot even read music. His father was a horse trader who taught his son the guitar and encouraged him ("Manita, you have remarkable hands"). For the next 20 years, roaming southern France in the caravan, De Plata stayed out of school to spend his time practicing and listening to other gypsy players...
...hear him play. But money means little to him: "When I am playing well, nothing else counts. I am playing for myself." He has never signed a recording contract, although a recording of his cabaret performances was illegally released in France, and Decca is attempting to release another De Plata disk over his lawyer's protests. Like many of his fellow guitarists, he has a scorn for non-gypsy audiences, often deliberately insults them in his improvised lyrics. He has turned down an offer from a New York nightclub because he gets seasick on ships and fears planes. Recently...