Pastora Pavon La Nina De Los Peines

Pastora María Pavón Cruz, known professionally as La Niña de los Peines, was one of flamenco's most comprehensive and influential recorded voices. Born on 10 February 1890 in the Puerta Osario district of Seville, she began performing as a child and acquired her stage name from a tango associated with her early repertory. Her siblings Tomás and Arturo Pavón were also flamenco singers, placing her within a family network of transmission and artistic practice that shaped her development.

By the early twentieth century, Pavón had built a repertory of unusual breadth. She did not anchor herself to a single palo; contemporary and later accounts emphasize her command of seguiriyas, soleares, tangos, bulerías, peteneras, malagueñas, cantes de Levante, and other forms. That range made her a central figure as flamenco moved through cafés cantantes, theatre circuits, and recording studios across Spain. She performed in Madrid while still a child, according to biographical accounts, and by 1910 had entered a recording career that would document her wide flamenco repertory across several decades.

Her recordings preserved nuances that earlier flamenco generations could leave only through oral memory. Her voice was valued for individual timbre, rhythmic authority, and the ability to make inherited forms unmistakably personal. She worked with important guitarists, and later archival editions enabled new generations to study her phrasing and expressive choices. Pavón's artistic circle connected her to major figures in Spanish cultural life, including Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla, and La Argentinita—though these associations should not obscure her own authorship as an artist whose recorded decisions shaped how twentieth-century flamenco understood its own past.

She married cantaor Pepe Pinto in 1931 and remained a reference point for performers and revivalists throughout the twentieth century. She died in Seville on 26 November 1969. Andalusian institutions now preserve and interpret her legacy, including through the Centro Andaluz de Documentación del Flamenco.