West African heritage, raised in exile in Majorca, and embraced by flamenco’s inner sanctum, the sensational Concha Buika has ignited Spanish music, bridging the gypsy tradition with a modern sensibility, effortlessly embracing grooves from The Americas and her African roots in Equatorial Guinea. A heady cocktail from a compelling stage presence and a voice of raw emotive power awaits audiences for her debut Irish performance.

Buika’s passage to the forefront of popular flamenco has been a journey along a road less travelled. The daughter of political exiles from Equatorial Guinea, she grew up the fourth of six siblings in what was then the only African family in Palma Mallorca, lending an outsider’s perspective that found solace in the island’s ever-present flamenco with its themes of loss and yearning. It found expression too in divas like Sarah Vaughan and Tina Turner, and their inspiration is readily apparent in Concha’s uninhibited embrace of jazz and soul - sultry like the former, defiant like the latter.

If flamenco was her destiny, she wasn’t one to immediately embrace the muse, and her formative years were marked by a restless quest to satisfy other musical appetites from soul reviews in Las Vegas to dance remixes in The Balearics. An encounter with Javier Limon changed the script, the celebrated guitarist and producer immediately recognizing that this was a unique voice. Their 2006 debut together, Mi Nina Lola, heralded the coronation of a major new star in Spain with its imaginative perspective on the coplas, the songs at the heart of flamenco, brilliantly woven with the other threads of her unique musical DNA.

Live, it transfixes, for this is a performer who has it all - glamour, defiance, charisma, arresting looks, a voice to die for and music that unapologetically deals in real life passion and drama. She has duende too, that elusive soulful quality that defines the authentic flamenco, but hers is from a different source, as much African as Iberian.

Concha Buika Official Site HERE