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Screw Cee Lo Green; Buika is the real soul machine. Of course, she’s not actually a soul singer or even a neo-soul vocalist. She’s not a jazz singer or a flamenco singer. She doesn’t do copla (a form of Spanish popular song). Nor is she, strictly speaking, a Latin singer or a lounge crooner. She’s not the second coming of Billie Holiday and isn’t all that much like jazz-pop legend Sade. Yet Buika is all of those things.
Though the Spanish songbird’s family hailed from Equatorial Guinea, she was born in Palma, Majorca. And it’s a damn good thing. Otherwise, the world might have missed out on the melding of styles and influences that form Buika’s unique spin on the traditional flamenco and copla sounds, imbued with the sultry sounds of soul and jazz. So, no, she’s not Billie Holiday. And she’s not Sade. But if Billie Holiday and Sade got together for a lesbian encounter under the Majorcan moonlight — just once, maybe in college — their offspring would be Ms. Concha Buika.
Sat., Nov. 20, 8 p.m., 2010
