Original subtitles

How is it possible that one of the most important voices in the history of flamenco

ended its days without remembering its own name?

For decades I kept in my memory old songs that without artists like me could have

been lost forever. But life had reserved me a cruel irony.

The woman who helped preserve the memory of flamenco ended up losing hers.

When my last years came, the disease was erasing my memories until I was trapped in

a world that I no longer recognized.

I'm Pastora María Pavón Cruz, but Flamenco knew me as the"Girl with the Hair".

Although my story doesn't end in that illness, the real question is another.

How did a gypsy girl from a humble neighborhood keep songs that were about to

disappear? It all started in a humble house in the Seville neighborhood of Puerta

Osario, where a gypsy girl grew up between the sound of the rag and the echo of the

song that filled her house. She was born on February 10, 1890, on Butrón Street,

a corner where many herrero gypsies lived and where singing was part of life.

My father, Francisco Pavón El Paiti, was a herrero in the Fragua de los Lérida.

They said of him that he was a monster by tonnage.

In those neighbor's corrals the smell of jazmín, the sound of the yunque and the

voices that sang to relieve the little fatigue when the day was over mixed.

My mother, Pastora Cruz Vargas, sang in tangos with a sweet voice like caramel.

My brothers Arturo and Tomás also breathed the song since they had a reason to use

it. Without knowing it, the memory that one day would turn me into a legend began to

build up there, listening from a child to everything that sounded around me.

But no one could imagine that what was going to happen to me one night at the

Sevilla fair would change my life forever.

I was barely a child when an unexpected problem arose.

My brother Arturo had to sing in a casette at the Sevilla fair,

but he got so drunk that he couldn't even talk.

That forced my family to make such a simple and risky decision:

to put myself in front of the public.

No one expected anything from that shy gypsy.

However, when I opened my mouth, something happened that would change my destiny

forever. That was the first step of a career that would take me much further than

anyone could imagine. That night of the fair could have been a simple

anecdote, but it was not.

I started singing with my brother Arturo in the taverns of Seville and soon the

contracts came out of my city.

I was still a girl when I acted in the Café de la Marina de Málaga.

There I won three daily pesetas.

Later I arrived in Jerez de la Frontera, where I sang for years in the tavern"La

Primera de Jerez".

While other children played in the streets,

I went to Andalusia accompanied by my mother,

singing to earn a living and help mine.

Each new stage kept me away a little more from that anonymous girl.

The years passed and singing began to take me further and further

away from Seville.

I still was very young when I arrived in Madrid to act in"El Café del Brillante".

There I shared a poster with my brother Arturo and I started to attract the

attention of fans and businessmen.

It was then that something curious happened.

The audience began to identify me with some tangos that I sang over and over again:"

Péinate tú con mis peines","Que mis peines son de azúcar".

That couple became so popular that people stopped calling me"Pastora Pavón"to know

me by another name:"La niña de los peines".

But if I still remember today, it's not because of that nickname,

it was because of something much more important.

While the public knew me through those tangos, I kept learning from artists who

belonged to a generation before mine.

Mercé La Cerneta, a great friend of my mother, came to live with me for a season.

From her I learned styles by solea, which later would form part of my repertoire.

La Cerneta died, I was here and everything.

I also received lessons from Trini and Moreno.

As my fame grew, I was gathering the last fragments of a

flamenco that was beginning to disappear.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to sing it again.

Then a new life began. In 1910 I entered for the first time in a recording studio.

Accompanied by Ramón Montoya, I registered my voice on records that could be heard

much further away from the singing cafes.

For the first time, those songs remained fixed forever.

The recordings multiplied.

The tours, the theaters and the contracts arrived throughout Spain.

Little by little I stopped being that girl from the Osario door.

The press began to call me the queen of the Andalusian singing.

My name was already heard all over Spain.

But the true recognition came when I started to share stage with

the most admired artists of my time.

Among all of them, there was one whose opinion was worth more than

any newspaper headline. Don Antonio Chacón.

It was during one of our hands-on when he gave me a nickname that would run from

mouth to mouth among all the fans.

He called me"The Fierce".

It was not an insult, but a way of recognizing the strength with which I defended

each song. Meanwhile, my fame continued to grow.

I came to sing in front of Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia,

carrying an art born in corrals, fronds and taverns, to the halls of royalty.

What had started at the Osario door was becoming an authority within flamenco.

In 1922, my journey took me to Granada, where the historic Cante Competition was

held. It was there that I met Federico García Lorca.

When he heard me sing, he was fascinated.

Over time, he began to describe my voice in a way that no one had done before.

He said it was a voice of shadow, of melted tin and covered with moss.

Our friendship continued for years.

Lorca frequented the environment of my family and felt a special admiration for the

Pavón, especially for my brother Tomás.

While flamenco changed forever, my life was also about to do it.

In my youth I lived an intense love story with Manuel Torre.

In addition to sharing part of my life, his way of understanding singing left a deep

mark on mine. Over time our paths separated and years later I shared my life with

Manuel Escacena. Together we formed a home in Seville, near the Alameda de Hércules.

The family was the refuge to which I

always returned after each trip.

But time was approaching one of the

hardest blows of my life.

The blow came in 1928, with the death of

Manuel Escacena.

His loss put an end to a fundamental stage in my life.

The stages were still filling up and the audience continued to applaud,

but when the lights went out, the reality was very different.

Shortly after Antonio Chacón died.

That artist who had called me the beast, disappeared forever.

I wanted to pay tribute to him in the best way I knew, singing.

I recorded some of the styles that he had taken to the top,

keeping some songs alive, which did not deserve to be forgotten.

Without realizing it, my role within flamenco was changing.

I no longer only interpreted it, I also began to guard its memory.

It was then that a person appeared who would change my life forever.

In the early 1930s, my relationship with Pepe Pinto stopped being

just professional.

We worked together in the opera-flamenco shows,

touring theaters and squares throughout Spain.

And little by little our relationship grew.

Pepe was 13 years younger than me.

Despite the comments that that awakened, I followed my own path.

After years of losses and absences, I found in him the stability that I needed so

much. In the early 30s, we got married in the parish of San Gil.

For the first time in many years, I felt that life was starting to smile at me.

With Pepe Pinto by my side, I found a stability that I had rarely known before.

But that tranquility lasted a short time.

The country was changing. Shortly after came the coup d'état and the civil war.

a tragedy that also hit the world of flamenco.

The years went by and flamenco was changing too.

I saw many of the singers'cafés disappear, who had marked my beginnings.

I saw my fellow stage companions leave, with whom I had shared half my life,

and I contemplated how new generations gathered the witness of those ancient songs

that I had learned as a child.

Little by little I was reducing my public appearances, but everything I had heard,

preserved and transmitted for decades It no longer depended solely on my memory.

It was recorded on records, in the voice of other artists and in the passion of

those who continued to listen to those chants born long before my time.

However, life had reserved me for one last paradox.

The woman who had dedicated her existence to preserving the memory of flamenco began

to lose her own. The disease was slowly erasing memories, faces and experiences,

until I locked myself in a world that was getting farther and farther away.

"Mi camino en el duende"ended on November 26, 1969,

in my hometown. But if my name is still alive today,

it is not because of the honors or fame.

It is because many of those songs that seemed condemned to

oblivion, managed to survive.

I am the"Niña de los Peines"and this is my exciting story.

It may end up not recognizing faces and memories.

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