Raquel Kurpershoek
Lyrical flamenco with smouldering fire
Born in a flamenco nest
Despite her tender age, singer Raquel Kurpershoek from Huelva in southern Spain has an outspoken opinion about the flamenco. She puts the distinctive edge to her voice down to the pure, unadulterated flamenco that she has mostly been listening to since early childhood, but as a singer she prefers to go her own way and chooses a more lyrical and melodious approach.
All-rounder with a unique style
Raquel – a recent graduate from Codarts in Rotterdam – not only writes her own lyrics, as more flamenco singers do, but also composes the melodies herself. She learned to love flamenco from an early age thanks to her mother, herself a flamenco dancer who runs her own dance school in Amsterdam. She got her surname from her Dutch father. That’s usually spelled incorrectly in Spain, and friends and acquaintances are the only people able to pronounce it more or less correctly. But she has no plans to change her name, because ‘that is unique and means that I’m at least recognized’.
