"Agujetas, Cantaor". Documentary
Review.

"I get up with a headache because I dream of singing every night."

"I don't know where I was born; I haven't got any papers… No age... You can be 200 years old and it doesn't matter as long as you can still get it up, you silly girl!" We imagine the French model Dominique Abel blushing on the other side of the camera. She has been in love with his rock-hewn features and cracked voice since she came to Spain; since she first saw him sing. Romanticism is back (with a certain touch of morbidness): Dominique Abel left Madrid for flamenco, to study dance in Madrid without completely abandoning her work as a model. She has published a book on her experiences, and a video about the man who initiated her in flamenco; about her punishing shaman who sings flamenco with his scarred voice and blood surging in his veins. The film is in black and white with a moment of color at the very end in a close-up of a somber Agujetas staring into the fire.

In this film-documentary he sings several martinetes at his home, hammer in hand. In the six-track CD version this is extended to seventeen minutes. The rest of the performances were filmed in a tavern in Chipiona alongside Moraíto, in which we see the savagery of Agujetas; both out of place and unpredictable.

Agujetas is flamenco in vinegar: well-preserved and nasty-looking. He is a singer of extremes, and is as hard as his Neanderthal martinete. 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 has plenty of comments, and we also see him singing to his Japanese wife as she dances alegrías. There is also some footage from the seventies, and some impressions: "Agujetas' singing is rough like the first drink of whiskey," 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: "The singing of Agujetas hurts you; it makes you bleed; it cuts open your flesh like a knife." The film also includes a quote from Unamuno: "He that defends his ego defends all of our egos. He is we," as Agujetas walks through the country singing. Is Agujetas strange, or is he complete and balanced? Throughout the 58 minutes of the film we see several of the egos of Agujetas, through his voice; deep as the gaze of the Cyclops.

Luis Clemente