Para mi, la indiscutible reina sobre todas las otras (aunque todas fenomenales) es Celia Cruz.

¿Qué pensáis vosotros, a cual escogeríais?

Celia Cruz: El mito eterno de la música hispanoamericana

Celia Cruz no solo es la cantante más grande de Hispanoamérica por la potencia inconfundible de su voz, sino por haber sido una pionera absoluta que transformó la industria musical. En una época en la que la salsa y los ritmos afrocubanos estaban dominados casi exclusivamente por hombres, la «Reina de la Salsa» rompió el techo de cristal a base de un talento descomunal, un sentido del ritmo impecable y una capacidad de improvisación única. Su figura se convirtió rápidamente en un símbolo de orgullo, identidad y resiliencia para la diáspora latina en todo el mundo, unificando culturas bajo el calor de su icónico grito de «¡Azúcar!».

El verdadero milagro de Celia Cruz radica en una longevidad artística sin precedentes que se extendió por más de medio siglo. Desde sus inicios en la Cuba de los años 50 con la Sonora Matancera, pasando por la explosión de la Fania All-Stars en Nueva York, hasta sus exitosas reinvenciones pop en los años 90 y 2000, Celia demostró una capacidad única para conectar con múltiples generaciones. Con su carisma desbordante, sus extravagantes pelucas multicolores y un legado musical que sigue sumando himnos universales, la guarachera de Cuba se consolidó como una fuerza de la naturaleza eterna e insuperable.

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Celia Cruz: The Eternal Myth of Hispano-American Music

Celia Cruz is not only the greatest singer in Hispano-American history because of her unmistakably powerful voice, but because she was an absolute pioneer who transformed the music industry. In an era when salsa and Afro-Cuban rhythms were dominated almost exclusively by men, the «Queen of Salsa» shattered the glass ceiling through sheer talent, flawless rhythm, and an unmatched gift for vocal improvisation. Her figure quickly became a symbol of pride, identity, and resilience for the Latino diaspora worldwide, unifying cultures under the warmth of her iconic catchphrase, «¡Azúcar!».

The true miracle of Celia Cruz lies in an unprecedented artistic longevity that spanned over half a century. From her early days in 1950s Cuba with La Sonora Matancera, through the explosion of the Fania All-Stars in New York, to her successful pop reinventions in the 1990s and 2000s, Celia demonstrated a unique ability to connect with multiple generations. With her overflowing charisma, extravagant multicolored wigs, and a musical legacy that continues to deliver universal anthems, the Guarachera de Cuba cemented her status as an eternal and insurmountable force of nature.

Picasso, el presentismo moral y la izquierda que ya no existe Francisco Bravo Cabrera I. El hombre y el mito Conviene separar desde el principio dos …

Hablemos de Picasso y de otras cosas…

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GRACIAS

Of course there are many more, but for me, these are the top 10. Tell me what you think.

1. John Lennon & Paul McCartney – The Absolute Foundation
2. Mick Jagger & Keith Richards – The Rock & Roll Blueprint
3. David Bowie – The Avant-Garde Theatrical Maverick
4. Ray Davies – The Master of British Social Vignettes
5. Jimmy Page & Robert Plant – The Mythic Folk-Blues Architects
6. Roger Waters – The Master of Conceptual Cynicism
7. Elton John & Bernie Taupin – The Flawless Melodic Factory
8. Neil Tennant & Chris Lowe – The Architects of Literate Electronic Pop
9. Geezer Butler & Tony Iommi – The Industrial Riff-Masters
10. Pete Townshend – The Aggressive Intellectual Rock Operator

CHEERS

Calm your soul, recharge the body, step inside and live!

It was very difficult to just list 10, but to me they are the top. There are many more, so many more in all the styles that, well, help me out here, how would you create a top 10, and who would you put?

·  Chuck Berry – The Genesis of the Rock & Roll Narrative

·  Brian Wilson – The Avant-Garde Harmonic Studio Visionary

·  Bob Dylan – The Folk-Rock Literary Standard

·  Joni Mitchell – The Master of High-Art Alternate Composition

·  Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter – The Mythic Americana Poets

·  Gregg Allman & Dickey Betts – The Southern Blues-Jazz Architects

·  Charlie Daniels – The Outlaw Fiddle Storyteller

·  Curtis Mayfield – The Soulful, Political Street-Level Poet

·  Smokey Robinson – The Master of Flawless Pop Elegance

·  Sly Stone – The Psychedelic Funk Boundary-Breaker

CHEERS

Caminar es invertir en el presente y el futuro.

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Walking is an investment in the present and the future.

Arte, hipocresía y los héroes del proletariado Francisco Bravo Cabrera I. El arte conceptual y sus confusiones Supon que os diga que el arte …

El Arte, la hipocresía y la tontearía

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GRACIAS

Art, Hypocrisy, and the Heroes of the Proletariat

Francisco Bravo Cabrera

I. A Necessary Distinction

Conceptual art is not, properly speaking, a branch of the visual arts. This is not a denial of its artistic legitimacy — which few serious critics contest — but a question of correct classification. In its essence, conceptual art is a performative and theatrical practice. Its closest affinities are not with painting or sculpture but with gesture, duration, and staged presence. That many fine arts departments have encouraged students to abandon technical mastery in favour of installations and actions has produced a generation of artists who talk fluently about their work but execute it with little craft. I refer to artists like Koons, Hirst, Amin and many others.

II. Yoko Ono: Myth and Reality

But few “careers” better illustrate these contradictions than Yoko Ono’s. Born into a wealthy Tokyo family, she arrived in New York with the means to penetrate the avant-garde circles of SoHo and the East Village. Her first marriage to composer Toshi Ichiyanagi — a recognized figure in Japan’s experimental scene — opened the first doors. Her second, to producer and art promoter Anthony Cox, consolidated her position: it was Cox who took her to Tokyo’s Sogetsu Hall and arranged her 1965 appearance at Carnegie Recital Hall.

At Carnegie she presented “Cut Piece” (1965), inviting the audience to interact with her freely on stage. When a man attempted to cut her bra strap, Ono pressed it to her chest and stopped him. The moment is telling. Compare it with Marina Abramović’s “Rhythm 0” (1974), in which the artist declared herself an object available to the audience and did not intervene even when threatened with a loaded pistol. That is commitment to the work; that is risk as an internal condition of the piece, not a decorative afterthought.

III. John Lennon and the Millionaire Rebel

When Ono met Lennon in London in 1966, she gained a platform that none of her work had earned on its own. Their “Bed-In for Peace” at Amsterdam’s Hilton Hotel in 1969 — conducted from a luxury suite, surrounded by press — was presented as protest against the Vietnam War. Several journalists noted the obvious at the time: discomfort is not a form of resistance when practiced from opulence. Checking into a five-star hotel to declare solidarity with the war’s victims is, at best, naïveté; at worst, mockery.

The same contradiction runs through Lennon’s output in those years. When he released “Working Class Hero” in 1970, an ex-Beatle who had never been poor or working-class was appropriating an identity that was not his. The plea in “Imagine” to renounce possessions, delivered from his luxury Manhattan apartments, is not merely a biographical inconsistency: it is the aesthetics of privilege dressed as radicalism. Lennon was, in the very early Beatles years, a genuine innovator. But the figure of the wealthy rebel who preaches renunciation from the safety of wealth is one of the most durable and least interrogated poses in twentieth-century popular culture.

IV. Conclusion

Conceptual art, when practiced with genuine rigor and real risk, can be as valid a form of knowledge as any other. The problem lies not in the genre but in its capture by those who find in it a shortcut to celebrity without the demand of mastery. Ono and Lennon are, each in their way, paradigmatic examples of this operation: the conversion of posture into legacy, and of fame into retroactive artistic credential. Pointing this out is not cynicism. It is simply the obligation to look with open eyes.

(Stay tuned for part 2 coming to VALENCIARTIST real soon)

CHEERS