Manuel Agujetas: Fifteen Points of Scarred Genius

"A person that knows how to read and write can't sing flamenco because his pronunciation isn't right."

A French video is causing a sensation in Spain. A separately produced CD complements the latest effort from the scarred voice of this outstanding and controversial singer; anarchic and unpredictable.

"A fierce enemy of modern ways, and a free and original personality that has been mythicized for the good and the bad of the gitano1 world." (text from the cover of the video)

1. "I don't know where I was born; I haven't got any papers… No age..." "Agujetas has made a mark on my personal universe," writes the maker of the film. "I guess I'm fascinated in an anthropological sort of way. My sensibility is fascinated by a type of beauty that is vividly embodied by flamenco and gitanos¹."

2. Dominique Abel left Paris for flamenco, heading for Madrid to study dancing while continuing with her modeling career. About this experience she has written a book. About flamenco she has made a video that portrays the man that initiated her in lo jondo²; that scarred voice, of open-veined flamenco. A video in black and white, with color reserved for the last image.

3. The result of this new romanticism is a video and CD that differ in content but share a title: "Agujetas, cantaor." The CD includes more of the bare singing from the soundtrack: two seguiriyas, two soleares, and a fandango. Six cantes in 50 minutes.

4. The crude singing does not include the 17 minutes of martinetes recorded in his house with hammer in hand (previous mental preparation required). His furnace and his singing are white hot, like the style of the singing blacksmiths that forge good metal. Agujetas forges his twisted verses like passkeys to the soul.

5. This is the second recording from Agujetas in a year and the eighteenth in his career. The performance was filmed in a tavern in Chipiona alongside the guitarist Moraíto, in which we see the savagery of Agujetas, both out of place and unpredictable.

6. The formidable Moraíto acknowledges that it was one of his most positive experiences: "He's constantly surprising you with new and undeveloped ideas. Because the singing of Agujetas is wild and untamed in its natural state."

7. With a single shout he milks the cow dry. There are singers like Sugar Ray that can hit you fifty times in a flash. But just one punch from Agujetas, and you're going down.

8. "Agujetas' singing is rough like the first sip of whiskey." This is one of the declarations that punctuate the film, as well as these of the aficionados Platero: "real old, born a hundred years later, real strange and mistrusting," and Coyote: "Agujetas' singing hurts you. It makes you bleed. It cuts open your flesh like a knife."

9. "Aglow with pain and gitano essence," wrote Fernando Quiñones about the unmistakable voice; "Soaked in acid primitiveness." A flamenco Neanderthal. In a string of poetic definitions, Caballero Bonald wrote, "Uncontaminated. Nothing here is superfluous or artificial." "It's as if an erotic world shuddered in his captivity," wrote Manuel Ríos. "If Manuel has built his house with his own hands, and without a plumb line or level, who am I or anyone else to demand that he appeal to our own geometries?" asks Francisco Almazán. The singing of Agujetas is not easily explained. How can you explain a force of nature?

10. The film opens with a quote from Unamuno that appears as we see Manuel walking through the country: "He that defends his ego defends all of our egos. He is we." The film portrays all the different egos of Agujetas, and expresses his darkly colorful statements: "The best singer is the one that has suffered the most," or "You don't get to be a singer until you're at least 75."

11. In the wounded cry of Agujetas we hear the groaning hinges of flamenco: "I've got several families, but they've had enough of me." His family is extraordinary, to say the least. His great-grandfather was a singer, and his grandfather Rubichi was a companion of the original mad genius, Manuel Torre. His father Agujetas Viejo was an encyclopedia of great Jerez singers from the past. "He had unforgettable memories, and he would bring out those lines of saetas³ sung to siguiriyas with the lungs of an ox." The restricted transmission of flamenco; the vitality of inherited cante⁴.

12. His teeth are golden and his words are pointed. Statements against the señoritos⁵: "I never sang for anyone's party, because I think there would've been problems. I wasn't born with a remote control... I'm real dangerous that way." Is Agujetas strange, or is he complete and balanced?

13. Agujetas: Flamenco in vinegar.

14. He is a singer of flamenco maxims, hard as a martinete⁶. Here he shines: "I get up with a headache because I dream of singing every night." And here he kicks: "A person that knows how to read and write can't sing flamenco because his pronunciation isn't right," he says, referring to the illiterate singers that charted the territory of flamenco; gitano singers that were allergic to frills and rhetoric.

15. With his voice, deep as the gaze of the Cyclops, never is always possible.

Luis Clemente
Translation: Norman Paul Kliman

Interview with Dominique Abel