The fist that opens and closes seeking to grasp the duende.

The photograph is not one — it is three. Paco Manzano chose the triptych for Chocolate because no single image could contain what was happening on that stage. At the San Juan Evangelista, on the night of January 24, 2003, Antonio Núñez Montoya was 72 years old and sang as if the world would end at dawn. The right hand raised, the fist opening and closing trying to grasp the duende, the mouth open in a cry that is not a shriek but a quejío — the most important distinction in flamenco.

Chocolate embodied in Madrid the resistance of classic cante against the commercial fusion currents of the nineties. While other artists sought new audiences with modern sounds, he remained seated in his rush chair, without an invasive microphone, without lighting tricks, singing seguiriyas and soleares with the same austerity as the masters of the Alameda de Hércules. The San Juan Evangelista audience venerated him precisely for this — because in Chocolate survived the sound of Tomás Pavón and Pastora Pavón, the tragic aesthetic of the oldest cante.

Manzano has acknowledged Chocolate’s imposing photogenic quality on multiple occasions. There was no need to seek the angle or wait for the moment — Chocolate was the moment at every instant. His hands, his face, the tension of every muscle as the voice emerged from somewhere very deep, built an image that the camera only had to collect.

This photograph hangs today on the walls of Cardamomo. If you are here it is because you saw it in the room. Now you know what happened that night.