Leonard Cohen and his Conde (and Flamenco)

I didn’t know that Leonard Cohen owed a debt to flamenco or that he had a 40 year old Conde that he bought at the Gravina, 7, shop in the 60’s. But in his acceptance speech for the winning the ‘Principe de Asturias’ prize in Spain he said that his Conde had inspired him all his life and that all of his songs were based on the 6 chords he learned from a flamenco guitarist in Montreal (who for unknown reasons committed suicide). The prize and the speech have gotten Felipe Conde a lot of good press in Spain recently and remind us that in addition to almost every great flamenco player playing Condes, they’ve been played by a lot people you wouldn’t have guessed, from Al DiMeola to Lenny Kravitz, David Byrne and Leonard Cohen.

You can hear the whole acceptance speech here (though you’ll hear the interpreter in Spanish on top of Cohen’s English), and you can see some of the articles in the Spanish press here, here or here.