Whoops, I’m time warping. Should have posted: The blocked one is a much earlier version of Tempest, a more recent rendition of which is found at 51:50 of the second vid (gets a bit intense toward the end of Tempest).
Paco took Flamenco to a new audience and then redefined the genre, adding elements of jazz, South American traditional music, rock, and more while always retaining the traditional rhythms (compas) of the pieces.
He was able to do this and be accepted by purists, aficionados and fellow Andalucian musicians because he was Paco, the son of a Flamenco family and a student of the great traditional Flamenco masters. He had to be an established master of the traditional form first to get the buy in of so many purists when he added his own artistic interpretations to the form. He paved the way for Rhumba-centric “Flamenco” like the Gypsy Kings, Ottmar Liebert, Roddrigo y Gabriela, etc., but they aren’t considered Flamenco masters by the purists - just makers of good music that happens to contain elements of Flamenco in it. Flamenco is more than music, dance and singing, it is the cultural expression of a people. It was taught from father to son, mother to daughter, and purists in Spain and around the world are tough audiences to sell on new ideas and interpretations of the form if you don’t have the cultural background and mastery of the traditional form first.
Entre Dos Aguas (Between two waters), versions of which are linked in this thread, was one of the first popular pieces that combined jazz and Flamenco and ‘got away with it’. But he had to be able to do this first, in order to be able to do that. And he could - since the time he was about 10 years old.