Manitas De Plata

Biography

Ricardo Baliardo (7 August 1921 – 5 November 2014), better known as Manitas de Plata ("little hands of silver"), was a French flamenco guitarist of Catalan Gitano descent, born in southern France.

Baliardo was born in a gypsy caravan in Sète, southern France.

Nicknamed Manitas de Plata ("little hands of silver" in Spanish), he agreed to play in public only ten years after the death of Romani-Belgian jazz guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt, in 1953.

Baliardo attained fame in the United States after a photography exhibition in New York, organized by his friend Lucien Clergue. He had recorded his first official album in the chapel of Arles in France in 1963, on the Philips label. It was...