Mi Niña Lola

Concha Buika was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1972 into a family of political exiles from Equatorial Guinea. Her father was the former politician and writer Juan Balboa Boneke. She grew up in the Son Gotleu neighbourhood of Palma, where the Gitano community became a second home, and in flamenco she found an honest way to express herself and an escape from poverty and life on the margins. Her first record, Mestizüo, came out in 2000 with the pianist Jacob Sureda, and in the early 2000s she also lent her voice to house tracks by DJs. The turning point was her 2006 album Mi Niña Lola, made with the producer Javier Limón. Its title track was not new: it was originally a song by the flamenco singer Pepe Pinto, and on the same record she reworked the copla classic Ojos verdes. The album went gold, with the disc handed to her by Joaquín Sabina, and won the Spanish music award for best album of Spanish song, as well as a German critics' prize. What followed was an international career: Latin Grammy nominations for Niña de fuego in 2008, a Latin Grammy for her tribute to Chavela Vargas, songs chosen by Pedro Almodóvar, and NPR naming her among its 50 great voices. A daughter of Equatoguinean exiles, raised among Gitanos in Mallorca, had made the old songs of Spain her own.