KIKO VENENO
Kiko Veneno plays an Alhambra model 10 Premier with electrification Fishman Elipse
José María López Sanfeliu, better known as Kiko Veneno, is a Spanish musician.
Of Catalan descent by mother and Castilian by father, he was born in 1952 in Figueras, but at the age of three he lived in Cadiz and moved to Seville as a teenager, where he has lived ever since. In his early youth he was influenced by the underground through music. He began to travel around Europe, where he attended concerts by artists who left their mark on him, such as Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan. Later, in the early 1970s, he travelled to the USA, where he embraced the counterculture and the hippie movement. In 1973, in San Francisco (USA), he met a gypsy moronero who rediscovered flamenco for him.
When he returned to Spain he was branded a ‘hippo’ and frequented the (few) who were on the margins of Sevillian society: gypsies, artists, marginalised and subversive. In 1975 he meets Raimundo Amador and his brother Rafael, and together they form the group Veneno. Their first album ‘Veneno’, recorded in 1977, did not have a great repercussion at the time, however it is now considered a pioneering and fundamental album in Spanish music, especially in the fusion of other music with flamenco.
In 1979 he collaborated on the album La Leyenda del Tiempo by Camarón de la Isla. The contribution of the young Veneno to the final result of this record was vital. Kiko is best known for being the author of ‘Volando voy’, although he also participated in other songs on the album: ‘Mi niña se fue a la mar’, ‘Viejo mundo’ and ‘Homenaje a Federico’.
During the 80s he wrote songs for Martirio, and collaborated several times with the TV programme La bola de cristal (TVE) as a composer and singer. However, he was not able to make a professional living from music and combined his artistic work with other jobs.
His commercial success began in the 1990s with the release of the albums Échate un cantecito (1992) and Está muy bien eso del cariño (1995), both produced by Joe Dworniak.
Since then, successive albums and tours all over Spain, Europe, Latin America, even playing in 2007 at the legendary The Knitting Factory in New York, thanks to his colleague Jonathan Richman, who invited him to share his show, which opened doors to other performances in the United States.
Throughout his long career he has shared the stage with artists such as Jonathan Richman, Jackson Browne; Julieta Venegas, Jorge Drexler, Martín Buscaglia, Kevin Johansen, El Niño de Elche, Raimundo Amador, Lolo Ortega, Antonio Smash, Vera Fauna and C.Tangana, among others.
In 2010 he received the Medalla al mérito en las Bellas Artes, an honorary title awarded by the Spanish government to outstanding personalities from the world of art.
In 2012 he was awarded the fourth Premio Nacional de las Músicas Actuales, being preceded by Joan Manuel Serrat, Amaral and Santiago Auserón. The members of the jury emphasised ‘his decisive contribution over more than three and a half decades to the integration of international and Hispanic musical traditions, spreading the beat, enriching the popular song format with ingenuity and poetic quality’.
In 2019 he will also create some themes for the soundtrack of the film Entre dos aguas by Isaki Lacuesta, which will win the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Festival. This film will be nominated for its music and other awards at both the Catalan Gaudí and the Andalusian ASECAN awards.
In 2020, the MIN awards, from the National Association of Independent Record Companies, named Sombrero Roto the ‘Album of the Year’ and awarded Kiko the ‘Mario Pacheco Honorary Award’ in recognition of his entire career.
In March 2020, already in full confinement due to COVID measures, Kiko starts ‘Radio Virus’, an attempt to help and inspire people. The motto is ‘Music is medicine’ and spontaneous creations and reflections follow one after the other. Some of these songs, such as ‘Duele’ will end up being part of the new album Hambre. In the same spirit of helping, he releases a tribute to the doctors and health workers who are the first line of defence against the epidemic: ‘Hay gente’ (There are people). All proceeds will go to Médecins Sans Frontières.
The tour ‘Un país para escucharlo’ begins in 2022 with a series of concerts with Ariel Rot in a peculiar format: following the trail of the TV programme (in whose first programme Kiko Veneno himself took part), they collaborate in each town with local musicians and other artists. Each concert is unique and the repertoire varies.
To find out more about Kiko Veneno you can follow him at:
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