Here’s a video of Juan Tomás de la Molía that you will love followed by a letra from the clip:
You can hear this bulerías letra and watch Juan Tomás dance to it around 1:30:
Como la mujer que es loca,
no hay hombre que la sujete,
desgraciao al que le toca.
This verse is basically saying that no man can restrain a crazy woman, and unlucky is the one tasked with doing so.
Yikes.
This is the letra in full:
Caballo que se desboca
no lo monta un buen jinete,
como la mujer que es loca,
no hay hombre que la sujete,
desgraciao del que le toca.
A horse that runs amok lacks a skilled horseman, like a crazy woman… (see above).
The additonal context definitely enhances the machismo voice.
I found the full verse in this article from ABC Sevilla, El flamenco, gran notario del machismo andaluz, about Andalusian machismo culture documented in many traditonal flamenco verses. The piece also mentions that some letras are mistakenly interpreted as sexist when arguably they are not. (The article is in Spanish, but you can translate it to English.)
Listen to El Torta sing his version in full here.
In his interpretation, he sings that a good horseman can ride a horse who runs amok, but unlucky is the man who’s tasked with restraining a crazy woman because he can’t.
But back to Juan Tomás,
I love this bulerías clip even more than the one above. (It’s filmed from farther away but you can still feel his buena energía.)
Some of us got to see him perform at Peña Terremoto during the last Flamenco Tour to Jerez.
Seeing him up close in such an intimate setting with the enthusiasm of the Jerez crowd was incredible.
Ani, Ana María López, one of his first teachers, and one of our bulerías teachers on the Flamenco Tour to Jerez was there in the front row. He gave her a personal shout out.
¡Olé!