GRANADA

In this Andalucian city, flamenco is an art form as well as a way of life not just for traditional dancers and singers but also for hip-hop stars, classical guitar legends and street artists

- DANIEL STABLES.

It's almost sunset, and the hilltop cave quarter of Sacromonte is just beginning to stir. The summer heat, which has been smothering Granada all day like a weighted blanket, has begun to lift; the heady scent of wisteria hangs on the breeze, and the shaded plazas echo with the meowing of cats and the shouts of playing children. As I walk up the steep cobbled streets, another sound filters in the plucking of a classical guitar, coming from the open door of a hillside home.

"Sacromonte has a magic of its own," says guitarist Pepe Romero when I meet him inside.

"It was here in the mountains that the Romani people settled. Then the Muslims and Jews, exiled by the Christian authorities, took refuge here in the 16th century. Sacromonte was one of the hotspots where flamenco was born, against this backdrop of oppression. Flamenco.

began as a lament." Today, Pepe 80-year-old a spry, charismatic is one of the world's most famous classical guitarists. Although he's from Málaga, his musical journey owes its origins to Granada, after he was captivated by hearing his father playing Francisco Tárrega's famous guitar piece, Recuerdos de la Alhambra. As we speak, the Alhambra itself -Granada's famed Moorish-Christian palace,an architectural masterpiece-sits framed beyond Pepe's balcony, against a shifting canvas of burnt ochre, rose gold and ferrous red in the quickening sunset.

Despite his classical prestige, Pepe's earliest albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s were flamenco records. "I've always been in love with flamenco," he says. "Its spirit is what we call duende: something like divine inspiration, but not religious - the divinity of all humanity. When you're in touch with that, you lose fear. Duende takes fear away."