BUIKA (aka Concha Buika)

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Afro-Spanish singer BUIKA’s first major North American Tour reaches 21 cities October 15 – November 20, 2010

Latest CD “El Ultimo Trago” (The Last Drink), an homage to Mexican music legend CHAVELA VARGAS, wins Latin GRAMMY for “Best Traditional Tropical Album”;

Buika and Vargas both make world’s “50 Great Voices” list on NPR

Singer to perform in Almodóvar’s upcoming film “La Piel Que Habito”

Buika video mix

Buika profiled in THE NEW YORK TIMES

BUIKA profile on NPR’s “50 Great Voices”

BUIKA 2010 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
Buika – vocals
Iván “Melon” Lewis – piano
Dany Noe – double bass
Fernando Favier – percussion

Oct 15 Chicago, IL Chicago Symphony Hall
Oct 16 Toronto, CN Koerner Hall, Royal Conservatory of Music
Oct 20 Cleveland, OH Gartner Auditorium/Cleveland Museum of Art Series
Oct 22 New York, NY Town Hall
Oct 23 Boston, MA Berklee Performance Center
Oct 24 Portsmouth, NH The Music Hall
Oct 26 Philadelphia, PA Kimmel Center/Perelman Theatre
Oct 28 State College, PA Penn State Center for Performing Arts
Oct 29 Fairfield, CT Fairfield University, Quick Center for the Arts
Oct 30 Fairfax, VA (DC) George Mason U. Center for the Arts
Nov 3 Denver, CO Univ of Denver/Gates Concert Hall
Nov 5 Berkeley, CA UC Berkeley/Zellerbach Theatre
Nov 6 Davis, CA Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Nov 7 Vancouver, CN Univ of BC/Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Nov 10 Los Angeles, CA Walt Disney Concert Hall
Nov 12 Houston, TX Wortham Center/Cullen Theater
Nov 13 Dallas, TX AT&T Performing Arts Center/Winspear Opera House
Nov 15 Hampton, VA American Theatre
Nov 16 Raleigh, NC Stewart Theater
Nov 18 San Juan, PR Centro Bellas Artes de Caguas
Nov 20 Miami, FL Knight Concert Hall

BUIKA is one of the most peculiar Spanish artists around. This singer, born on the island of Mallorca to African immigrant parents from Equatorial Guinea, has become a true revelation to those who thought flamenco had little left to contribute to Spanish music, and to jazz. Her evident African roots and her cosmopolitanism, developed in clubs in Spain and Americanized during a strange detour to Las Vegas as a Tina Turner impersonator, explain Buika’s rare self-possession. But nothing can quite explain her ability to connect – one of those rare and wonderful “one listen” artists.

Her latest CD El Ultimo Trago(The Last Drink), a homage to the Mexican singing legend Chavela Vargas, won Buika her first Latin GRAMMY awards for "Best Traditional Tropical Album." She has just completed a duet with Seal entitled "You Get Me" for his new CD Seal 6: Commitment. And she has also finished taping her screen debut for Pedro Almodóvar's upcoming film La Piel Que Habito (The Skin I'm In). She closed 2010 with her first American tour, a 21-city swing that began October 15 in Chicago and ended Nov 20 in Miami and a feature on NPR’s All Things Considered for their “50 Great Voices” series

Buika (“BWEE-kah”) was born María Concepción Balboa Buika to parents who came to Spain as political exiles. Her family were the only black residents in one of Palma de Mallorca’s poor neighborhoods, and such local curiosities that Buika remembers how neighbors used to reach out to touch her hair – an Afro styled from pictures of her early musical idols, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. She found a second home among the community of Gypsy families, finding in flamenco’s individualistic spirit a path to self-acceptance. Flamenco was a open door, remembers Buika: “It’s not just about music, it’s a way of life. It’s about not running away from yourself. Some people sing about what they would like to happen or would like to be, but in the copla and el cante, we confront who we are, with all our fears and all our defects. In the United States there’s also a great tradition like this: it’s called the blues.”

After a few false starts in Euro R&B, Buika released her U.S. debut Mi Niña Lola (My Little Girl Lola) in 2007, which had already won “Best Album” and “Best Production” honors at the Spanish Music Awards. Her next recording project, Niña de Fuego (Child of Fire), produced and arranged by Javier Limón (Bebo y Cigala, Paco de Lucía), and released in 2008, helped to catapult her internationally into the ranks of the most exciting voices in modern Latin music. With just a handful of concerts in Miami, LA and New York, the CD scored two Latin GRAMMY nominations in 2008: “Album of the Year” and “Best Production” and the singer was soon invited to appear on the televised awards, performing her searing rendition of the Mexican classic, “Volver, Volver.”

Buika’s fans soon included Alejandro Sanz, Gloria Estefan, along with Nelly Furtado and Portuguese fado star Mariza (both of whom she recorded duets with), director Pedro Almodóvar, fashion photographer Bruce Weber, and the iconic Mexican singer Chavela Vargas. Vargas in particular was crucial in opening doors for the young Spanish singer in Latin America.

Yet the story of Buika’s relationship with Chavela Vargas began with artistic disappointment. It happened in Madrid four years ago, when Chavela refused to allow Buika on stage to sing with her. After that bitter beginning, the singers became friends, and Vargas was soon declaring that in Buika she had discovered “my black daughter” and “the most amazing and personal voice I have heard in many years.”

El Ultimo Trago (The Last Drink), is first and foremost a tribute to Chavela Vargas, released in October 2009 as the hard-living, hard-loving Mexican singer celebrated her 90th birthday. Buika reinvents the repertoire that Vargas has built over her entire career. “Las Ciudades” (The Cities), “Las Simples Cosas” (The Simple Things), “Sombras” (Shadows), and “Luz de Luna” (Moonlight) are some of the songs that Chavela has performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Buenos Aires’ Luna Park, Olympia Theatre in Paris, as well as in Pedro Almodóvar’s and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu’s films. In the CD, Buika reinvents these Mexican standards, creating a kind of “tequila tablao” – as Iberian as it is Mexican, and as old as it is new.

Supporting the singer on the CD is Cuban piano star Chucho Valdés, who met Buika in 2008 at Spain’s Vitoria Jazz Festival, where he was debuting a duet CD with his father, Bebo Valdés. For the recording of El Último Trago, the musicians only needed two days at Abdala studios in Havana, Cuba in April of 2009. Producer Javier Limón recorded all the vocals live, with no overdubs. “El Andariego,” Alejandro Fernández’s famous song, became a rumba; “Somos” (We Are) was transformed into a bolero/cha-cha; and “Sombras” (Shadows) started as a bolero but ended in the blues.

Buika will begin recording her next projext in January 2011, for release later that year.

BUIKA Press Quotes:

NEW YORK POST
“A singer like BUika comes only once in a generation.” (Sandra Guzmán)

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
“With her singing, Buika traces the line of soul music from Africa, through the shores of the European continent, and then home to América.” MARGARITA DIAZ

NEW YORK TIMES
“She has a husky, layered and imperious voice, something like Nina Simone’s but more flexible and virtuosic.” BEN RATLIFF

MIAMI HERALD
“Unique is an over-used word but this Spanish-African singer and rising world music star’s gorgeous, smoky, profoundly soulful blend of jazz, flamenco, blues, soul and more deserves the title.” JORDAN LEVIN

WASHINGTON POST
“A mesmerizing, cross-cultural stew featuring the wailing emotionality of cante (flamenco song) and coplas …. with undercurrents of Latin jazz and soul.” RICHARD HARRINGTON

NEW YORKER
“The dynamic Spanish vocalist Buika has the timbre and style of a soul singer and the repertoire of a pop flamenco star.”

STEREOPHILE
“The woman blew me away…a powerhouse singer …with a defiant edge to her voice” (Robert Baird)

PEDRO ALMODOVAR
"Much like Chavela, Buika is able to make her audience feel completely exposed. Her songs transport us to a place where we are left face to face with our own romantic history, one in which our failures stand out the most. And, what's more, after listening to her sing, one is determined to keep making the same mistakes because there are no rules, no common sense, no caution and no regret in passion. In El Último Trago, Buika celebrates all the incarnations of passion, from the most glowing to the darkest. She does so in a thrilling and original way." LINKS> BIO OF CHAVELA VARGAS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavela_Vargas

NEW YORK TIMES “POPCAST” of “El Ultimo Trago” CD review
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/weekly-popcast-new-moon-soundtrack-chavela-vargas-tribute-and-more

BUIKA PROFILE IN MIAMI HERALD / POPMATTERS
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/latin-grammy-nod-fuels-free-spirited-singer-concha-buika