When the guitarist Manitas de Plata, who has died aged 93, became an international star in the 1960s, his was the name most widely associated with flamenco. At the time, music was classified as either popular or classical: the term world music had not been coined and the wizardry of the Gypsy from the south of France was regarded as both high culture and light entertainment.
Admirers marvelled at his fluency and virtuosity in a musical language that few understood. The improvisational drama, the ebb and flow of his flamenco-derived music was a long way from the grid structures of western music. But nor did he follow the strictures of pure flamenco. This indifference to convention also ran through his personal life: he was viewed both as a celebrity who partied with Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso, and as an illiterate troubadour who was said to have fathered dozens of children.
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