It all started one night out. “Farruco, Farruquito, El Perla, Kiki Maya, Tobalo and Diego el Cigala - investigated for gender violence since he was arrested on June 10 for a complaint from his partner - ... They came home to have a good time because they were fed up of the pandemic. When the night dragged on, everyone had to sing something. And they nagged me that I have to sing flamenco and I swear to you that I don't know why the trick of flamenco is not to sleep in three nights, have many drinks and have a free mind and chest as well. But I don't have that much resistance, and look, I'm an Olympian ”, reflects Prince Hubertus de Hohenlohe (Mexico, 62 years old). They insisted so much — and he resisted so much — that at three in the morning he decided to write a song that said what he had been repeating all night.
I don't know how to sing flamenco
is a catchy pop song with flamenco guitar that can be heard on platforms from July 30 and whose 10% of the proceeds will go to the Alalá Foundation, an entity that promotes integration through culture and the art.
The song is accompanied by a video that was recorded in Las 3000 casas de Sevilla: “I didn't know it was a dangerous place”.
More information
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It is not the first time that this “gypsy prince”, as the flamingos nicknamed him that night, has dedicated himself to music. As a child he loved to
lip-sync
and imitate Alice Cooper and as a young man he signed hits like
Higher than mars
and
Tears of love.
Singing has only been one of his professions - he is also an Olympic skier, photographer, designer and presenter of a television program - and he says that when he started in Spain, the record company was looking for someone to compete with Miguel Bosé, who by then he was reaping his first successes. "They must have thought: 'Another good boy who can sing." Although the formula did not work, music has always been a constant in his life: “When I met my wife, at the 1994 Olympic Games, she had a Jovanotti album that we listened to over and over again. It was such a good vibe that we fell deeply in love and continue to this day ”. With her, Simona Gandolfi, lives on horseback between Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the Dolomite Alps, where she spends the winters skiing, and Marbella and Ronda, in Malaga, in summer. He also has a house in Vienna, Austria,city you travel to often.
Hubertus de Hohenlohe with Farruco, Farruquito, El Perla and Tobalo on the night they composed the song COURTESY OF HUBERTUS DE HOHENLOHE
Son of Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe and Princess Ira de Fürstenberg, niece of Gianni Agnelli, owner of Fiat, Hubertus was born in Mexico, where his father had set up a business selling
Volkswagen
beetles
with some friends, but moved to Marbella with only three years, when his father, in a turn of events, became the great host of the city.
As a child he had a babysitter whom he called Fiesta —probably, the most repeated word in his environment—, and the entire
jet set
paraded through his house
international: from moguls to royalty to Hollywood stars; nobody wanted to miss the Austrian prince's evenings. But Hubertus was most impressed by athletes and musicians. “I remember one night I was with David Bowie and we were coming back from the Pepe Moreno nightclub with Sofía de Habsburgo. Before going to sleep we sat near the pool, which was decorated with a sculpture of dolphins. Bowie commented, 'I'm inspired, I'm going to write a song.' He picked up the guitar and began to sing:
'Oh I wish I could swim like the dolphins can swim',
because they were in front of him. The following year he released
Heroes
and it became a bombshell.
I called Sofia amazed: 'Have you seen?'
I realized that songs are born like this, from a magical moment.
Some come out and others don't ”, he tells about how Bowie created one of the phrases of the mythical theme.
Bowie himself went on to say in his lifetime that to compose it in its entirety he was inspired by a relationship that its producer, Tony Visconti, had with a young German woman, something that at the time he could not reveal because Visconti was then married.
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Although his father thought that singing seemed “tacky”, he was very calm when he saw that his son became a star of skiing, a sport that he himself practiced. "At the age of five, he was already taking me to Sierra Nevada and getting on the slopes in his Mercedes because there were no lifts." Through his parents, Hubertus is related to some famous contemporary names. He is the nephew of the designer Diane von Furstenberg, and his cousins include Ana Gamazo —wife of businessman Juan Abelló—, the Medinaceli family —one of the most important noble titles in Spain— and the
enfant terrible
Lapo Elkann: “I am his version
light
. I don't smoke, I don't drink and I don't take drugs ”. And he concludes: “Thus, it seems difficult to sing flamenco well”.
