Carlos García Montoya (13 December 1903 – 3 March 1993) was a prominent flamenco guitarist and a founder of the modern-day popular flamenco style of music.
Carlos Montoya was born into a gypsy family in Madrid, Spain. He was the nephew of renowned flamenco guitarist Ramón Montoya. His interest in music and the guitar began at an early age. He began studying the guitar with his mother and a neighboring barber, eventually learning from Pepe el Barbero, a guitarist and teacher. Not only was he interested in playing the guitar, Carlos Montoya wanted to learn the history of flamenco music. Flamenco music came out of the Moorish invasion of Spain. His uncle, Ramon Montoya, was a successful flamenco guitarist also. Carlos Montoya started playing professionally at the age of 14, playing for singers and dancers at the cafes in Madrid. Two of the dancers he most often played for were La Teresina and La Argentina.
In the 1920s and 1930s he performed extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia with the likes of La Teresina. The outbreak of World War II brought him to the United States where he began his most successful days as a musician, bringing his fiery style to concert halls and universities. He also accompanied orchestras. During this period he made a few recordings for several major and independent labels including RCA Victor, Everest and Folkways performing traditional flamenco music such as Farruca., Malaga and Hokie.
His career began to blossom when he was asked by the dancer La Argentina to tour with her. There followed several years of performances around the world, particularly in Latin America and in Japan, where Montoya was offered a two-year post as professor of guitar at Tokyo University. He turned that down, but not before agreeing to be filmed. Footage of his guitar-playing went on to become a cornerstone of the development of flamenco in that country.
Montoya settled in the U.S. in the early 1940s and was naturalized after marrying local dancer Sally McLean. He continued playing a more traditional form of flamenco for some years, but toward the end of the decade started to change his style—to play flamenco guitar as a solo instrument (the first major player to do so) and create the sound with which we are all so familiar. By the end of the war in 1945, his repertoire had broadened to include blues, jazz and folk music.
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| Carlos & Sally |
He again toured internationally, and was the first flamenco guitarist to tour the world with symphonies and orchestras, and dominated the field of flamenco in the U.S. During his career he also performed on television and recorded over forty albums, including Suite Flamenco, a concerto he performed with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1966. His performances helped popularize flamenco guitar music worldwide.
Montoya is credited with having transformed flamenco guitar music into a separate music style, beyond being a traditional dance accompaniment. He adapted flamenco to other genres of music to create his own recognizable style, becoming an international star. However, his style was not particularly appreciated by some serious flamenco students, who considered it less traditional than many others. That he was unpopular among aficionados was possibly because he abandoned the compás that had evolved within flamenco over hundreds of years. Many of his works do not even keep perfect tempo, increasing and decreasing in speed almost whimsically. He was admired for the speed of his picados and found popularity on the international stage as a result of this technically impressive pace.
Montoya died, as a Flamenco legend, in the tiny Long Island,New York town of Wainscott, New York, March 3rd, 1993 of heart failure. He was 89. His niece, Rosa Montoya, is noted for introducing flamenco dance to most of California with her studio based in San Francisco.
(Edited from Wikipedia, Classical Guitar Magazine & AllMusic)