Juan Medina & Joakinito Moreno & Nasrine Rahmani: “El Espejo”


This week on Solera Flamenca we are bringing you Juan Medina´s guitar, also known as “Juanito Makandé”. He will be playing “El Espejo” (The Mirror) a composition of bulerías, filled with harmony as well as beautiful melodies, and with the guitarist Joakinito Moreno and the percussionist Nasrine Rahmani.

Juanito Makandé´s relationship with music started unexpectedly one day, while his father was driving to his school to pick him up. The song “Como el Agua”, by Camarón de la Isla, was on the radio. Then, he suddenly felt an instantly connection with the instruments, the sound he was listening to.

Before starting his solo career, he was part of the duo Radio Makandé, although they finally broke up.

Juan Medina has always been regarded as a freelance musician, refusing to any links with managers or record labels. In 2006 he released his first solo álbum, which he would call “Sueña”.

Now in 2011, despite having recorded everything in 2008, his second solo album saw the light: “Momentos de alimento”, where nearly 40 musicians took part. However, its release took longer than expected , as the offers for its publishing were not fit. During this time, he was focused on two of the bands he was collaborating with: The Mencial Project and Trece, apart from accompanying Chico Ocaña during his tour and helping with the production of Canijo de Jerez´s album.

In 2014, he published his third album, “Las canciones que escribí mientras volaba” (The songs I wrote while I was flying), which he managed to publish due to a crowdfunding project. This album was a success, and had a fantastic welcome by the audience, owing to hits such as La llave, Niña voladora, Cuchillos por el aire or Calores.

In 2015 he released “Muerte a los pájaros negros”, a record financed by crowdfunding, as proposed by the artist himself on his social media. The album was made of 12 songs, with the following as some of the most important ones: Cuando te empecé a querer, Kamikaze, Cristales or Tocar las nubes.

In 2016, the international magazine Billboard, specialized in music, said Juanito Makandé was one of the best Latin artists.

In 2018 he would release his album “El habitante de la tarde roja”, and in 2020, his last single, «Domingo eterno», which talks about the lockdown caused by the Covid 19 pandemic in Spain, composed in the previous two weeks before the state of emergency, on 14 March. The artist himself took care of the composition, the lyrics, the music and even the recording of the videoclip.

Joakinito Moreno is one of the most respected guitarists in our country. His undoubted talent and virtuosity take him to the very top of flamenco performers.

Required by some of the leading figures of flamenco singing and dancing, Joakinito Moreno continues surprising us over and over again, due to his skills for performance and lyricism, as he proved in the great symphonic concert dedicated to Chick Corea, where he masterfully imitates Maestro Paco de Lucia´s guitars.

Nasrine Rahmani is a professional percussionist specialized in Flamenco and Latin percussion.

Born in Australia, whose mother was from Mauritius Island, and whose father from Iran, she started her studies on African, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban percussion. After finishing the “Music Performance” degree in the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, she started the first of her four periods in Cuba so she could continue with her studies on Latin percussion. Intending to live surrounded by a musical culture which could be closer to percussion, she decided to move to Spain, finally specializing in the cajon drum. Now, after a twenty-three year long career as a musician and a twelve-year stay in Madrid, she was recognized in Spain as the best representative of the woman in flamenco percussion, valued for her delicacy to accompany, but also her surprisingly strong improvisation.

She has accompanied several leading figures, such as Montse Cortés or Jorge Pardo, and she is part of the projects carried out by Diego Guerrero, Antonia Jiménez and Daniel Doña. She works hand in hand with the best makers of flamenco cajon drums, spreading and promoting this instrument, and even designing her own line of plates: “TOUCH” with the collaboration of the American brand TRX. In 2021 “Tu Compas flamenco” was released: an album with 52 accompanying tracks for the study of the flamenco “palos” (genres). This is still employed by plenty of professional musicians and dancers, as well as flamenco lovers in general, whether they are in their studio or any school all over the world.

Without further ado, we will leave you with «El Espejo». For this recording, Juan Medina played a guitar made by Miguel Rodríguez in 1978 and Joakinito Moreno, with a guitar by Hermanos Conde 1978. Two guitars with such charm, just like our protagonists´ art!