Concha buika son

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Buika (pronounced BWEE-kah) was born Concha Buika on the Spanish island of Mallorca, to parents who arrived to Spain as political exiles from Equatorial Guinea. They lived in the island’s capital city, Palma de Mallorca, where, Buika remembers, the only black resident other than her family members was a man hired to stand in the doorway of a gift shop, like just another novelty on display.

She was a skinny girl with an afro hair style that curious neighbors would reach out to touch — hair which she later learned to style from photos of her early musical idols Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. Her father, a writer and activist, left the family and returned to Guinea, and her mother raised Buika and her five siblings in a household “filled with people, food and music.” She grew up singing and playing instruments – guitar, piano, bass. She has recently taken up cello.

“I am African and an African does not have musical training,”she explains. “An African can’t live without music. When my grandmother was upset with some

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Concha Buika

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Buika has been a sensation in Spain since her album, “Mi Nina Lola,” came out in 2005. She is part of a new generation of flamenco influenced performers who are hooking young audiences by mixing in other genres. The fusion of flamenco with jazz, soul and dance rhythms in Buika's music mirrors the story of her own life.

Buika was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1972 where her family, originally from Guinea Ecuatorial, live. She learnt from her mother to listen to the great voices of jazz, and from the Spanish radio, the flamenco copla that would influence her vocals.

She started singing at bars & pubs in Mallorca, recording several songs (house style) and collaborated with La Fura del Baus in “Ombra”. In 2000, she relocated to Las Vegas where she worked in Casinos as the double of Tina Turner and The Supremes. This was a short lived venture and she soon returned to Spain.

When she moved to Madrid and recorded her first album, she showed the never-ending possibility of her skills as a singer. At the recordi