ANTONIO CAMPOS, FLAMENCO CANTAOR. INTERVIEW
“Flamenco currently has
twenty thousand
ribbons tying it to the same point”
Silvia Calado. Madrid, December 2009
Translation: Joseph Kopec
It isn’t very usual, but
Antonio
Campos decided to make his début with
a live album. “Where I could give the most truth”,
he affirms. The Granada-born cantaor, one of the essential
accompanists of baile, performed at the Corral del Carbón
in Granada one fine summer day two years ago. His tocaor
couldn’t come, against the clock he managed to get
Daniel Méndez there just in time, and having to improvise
the entire repertoire, he offered the recital. Despite the
setbacks, he had not only that accompanying guitarist in
his favor, but also the warmth of the live show and the
magic of a place he considers “Aladdin’s lamp”.
The recording, at first intended as a professional portfolio,
was released in the end and is now his letter of introduction.
This Granada-born cantaor whose art doesn’t run in
the family appears natural for the first time. He was a
butcher until the age of twenty-five. And one day his fate
changed.
Antonio Campos |
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How does the unusual idea of releasing
a live recording come about?
Producer Manuel Illán wanted me
as an artist. He saw me work in ‘Mujeres’, where
Diana Navarro came in, and he’s her manager. In the
third gala, he spoke to me and the truth is that I listened
to him very respectfully but I didn’t pay much attention
to him. You never believe that a guy’s going to come
from the mighty industry and he’s going to notice
you. And when he was at the London Flamenco Festival, he
found out from my colleagues that I had an album recorded.
It didn’t seem right to me to be going on with someone
about “I do”, “I have”, “I
compose”… because they have to be fed up with
that. Besides, I didn’t think that work was for him.
Even so, he wanted to listen to it and he called me up to
tell me that he loved it, but it was true that it wasn’t
within his line as a producer. And as it was already mastered,
he told me that what it needed was distribution and in the
end he offered to publish it with his own label. He has
a really good technician, Boris Alarcón, and he thought
he could improve the mixing and the mastering. He did a
great job; he improved it… but quite a bit.
How was ‘Corral del Carbón’
forged?
If we open the session of ProTools,
the “click and cut” is in the applauses. What
was heard in the recital is what’s there. To give
it more weight, I tried to stick in more clapping at the
studio and it had just the opposite effect; it lost atmosphere.
Moreover, the work by Carlos Grilo and El Lúa is
unsurpassable; two claps from them are worth twenty. At
first I recorded it with the idea of having something to
give to the media and managers and try to take a step forward.
And since I was sure that I wanted to record live, when
they proposed for me to sing at the Corral del Carbón,
I said it had to be there. It’s a place I love and
it sounds great; it’s like Aladdin’s lamp. Everything
started to fall into place. At first, Dani
Méndez wasn’t even going to play, but rather
Rafael Rodríguez ‘El Cabeza’, but he
called me up that same day at four in the afternoon telling
me he couldn’t come and play because he was sick.
And how was it sorted out in so
little time?
While I was looking for another guitarist
to patch things up for me, I called the technicians to postpone
the recording, but they told me that they were already setting
up the equipment. I thought of Dani right away, but at that
time he was all busy with Paco
de Lucía, with Concha Buika… and it moreover
meant changing everything he had in his head because he’s
a totally different guitarist. It was impossible to look
for somebody like Rafael, basically because there isn’t
anybody. And I called him up, he told me he was in El Arahal…
and I saw my chance. “Get in your car and I’ll
be expecting you at seven in Granada”, I told him.
The only thing he knew was that El Cabeza had gotten sick
and that he couldn’t play for me, but I didn’t
even mention the recording to him. When he got there, he
asked me what I was going to sing and I told him that I
didn’t know, that it was better not to look at anything.
Then I explained to him that I was going to record it, but
that if it didn’t work out, it was OK.
Did the repertoire come out then
as you went along?
The songs came out as we went along up
on stage. I had something thought out, but with Rafael.
When Dani came, everything got changed around. Even the
romance por bulerías at the beginning wasn’t
planned. Dani told me that halfway through the concert he
was going to put the nut up on five in order for me to sing
broadly, that he liked me singing there. And I told him
that it would be better for us to start out like that and
if we were capable of it, to leave the level there and not
lower it. I felt so at ease that I didn’t want to
come off the stage; I just wanted to be allowed to sing.
We reeled off the seven cantes there, which are really nine
because there are malagueñas with abandolaos and
tientos-tangos.
Weren’t you afraid to record
live?
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“The
warmth of the live show was a point in favor of the
recording”
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No. I was recording the album as a letter
of introduction and where I could give the most truth is
in the live performance. You can do a lot of things at the
studio, but where I feel the best is up on stage. I thought
that the warmth of the live show was a point in favor of
the recording. As the circumstances were that I was given
the Corral del Carbón, which moreover sounds really
good, I had a flash of inspiration and recorded it, if it
turns out well, good, and if it turns out badly, then it’s
OK. I wasn’t entirely bad in it and Dani was overwhelming…
What does his guitar contribute?
When people listen to the album, they might
think that it’s all really set up musically, but as
he came in out of the blue, it didn’t seem appropriate
to me to prepare anything in a couple of hours. I’ve
known Dani since I began working professionally. His career
has been a rocket at a really unbelievable level, with El
Pele, with Arcángel, he’s been with Paco
de Lucía, now he’s doing Mercé’s
‘Ruido’, where he’s with the two Moraos…
On a wedding cake, he’s reached where the little figures
are. Besides the fact that I love him as a friend, we understand
one another musically, we’ve gone a long way together.
He’s a monster as a musician and a guitarist. You
start to analyze him bit by bit and he’s a monster.
And Carlos and Lúa are also marvelous on clapping.
I think the disc’s warmth reflects the affection we
have for each other. There’s so much good feeling
that you don’t have to look at anything either, just
enjoy one another.
Talk to us about those cantes...
I have the cantes more or less structured
in my head. And out of what I’d thought of, when Rafael
didn’t come, it all changed. The romance por bulerías
was suggested by my colleagues and the rest are cantes I
usually do live. But here, for example, I do Gayarrito’s
malagueña because, I don’t know, at that moment
you’re trying to get into your cante and all of a
sudden, some lyrics or a style pop into your head which
you might not be very used to doing but they’re there…
and they come out in the end. The thing is I also think
a lot of Enrique
Morente, although my ways have nothing to do with him:
I have neither the faculties, nor the timbre of his voice,
nor many other things of his which I’d love to have.
I do usually always do El Mellizo’s double and the
change to abandolao caught Dani by surprise because, I’ll
tell you, it was all improvised. Por alegrías, I
sang what popped into my head. The soleá is what
I usually sing, a route through Alcalá and Cádiz
ending up with Triana, a structure which Antonio
Mairena left and we keep moving around here more or
less; it’s our gospel. Por tangos, I lost my head
and I remembered Gaspar, which is why it’s called
‘Gaspar en la memoria’. After Pastora, I really
like Gaspar and his tientos have practically fallen into
disuse; hardly anyone does them. In his time, Lebrijano
drew up to it, but nobody has followed that style. I love
him and specifically that way of doing tientos. I did lyrics
por bulerías of the kind we do every day. And in
the romance, I remember Perrate
above all, who’s the one who fills me the most.
Perrate? He isn’t a usual
reference for a young cantaor…
I don’t know. His ways are the ones
I like most, that form of his, that cante clipped but so…
We’re involved with cante all day long and you get
to the point where your head swells up. And then I put on
a recording by one Gazpacho de Morón which Perrate
sings in and Diego del Gastor plays for him, with Fernanda
and Bernarda on clapping. That’s like turning on the
swimming pool’s filter system; it puts things in their
place for me. Perrate is one of the ones who fills me the
most and more because of his taste than his form. And his
cantes don’t go down entirely badly with me, comparisons
aside… he was a genius. I even love the way of cheering
there: “Let ’em call us old!”.
Are your references in any way
present on the album?
Everywhere. I like everybody, but you always
like some more than others and people who, due to your features,
you can approach a little more closely. I’d love to
sing like Marchena,
but he’s like a radio in my voice; I don’t have
that speed he had or that form. I love Valderrama por taranta
and he drives me crazy por guajira, but my way has nothing
to do with that. I do stuff by them my way, but I wish I
could… The Lord has given me the voice and the tone
he’s given me.
Like most of your colleagues, you’re
aware of tradition. Why aren’t people more daring
in cante?
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“Flamenco
currently has twenty thousand ribbons tying it to the
same point”
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Flamenco currently has twenty thousand
ribbons tying it to the same point. First, you have to show
that you know about this; it’s like a daily exam.
If you start firing shots up in the air… You don’t
shoot them up in the air, you see the clay pigeon and you
shoot at it, but people don’t understand that, people
think you’re firing shots up in the air. I think that’s
why we all do at least a first job which is as serious and
as orthodox as possible, so that people see we’re
a little bit worried about this. And though we all say that
we don’t care, this carries weight and at the moment
of truth, there are very few people who dare to say I’m
going to do what I feel like and I’m going to throw
out the prejudices. We’re like really tied down.
But you’ve taken part in
music projects as open as ‘Silence-light’ by
Nacho Arimany…
On Nacho
Arimany’s disc, I had the great luxury of singing,
besides with him, with Lionel Loueke, who’s Herbie
Hancock’s guitarist, and with Javier Vercher, who’s
a world-renowned saxophonist. I’ve also worked with
Antonio Sánchez, Pat Metheny’s drummer. They’re
joys which life and music and God give to you as you go
along… and there are more and more of them. I also
got involved in the ‘Palo flamenco’ project,
with Basque txalaparta, which was carried out at the top
flamenco and world music festivals. When your heart and
your thoughts are flamenco, what you do is going to sound
flamenco.
And do you feel like any encounters
outside flamenco?
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“I
like music, but I like flamenco above all else”
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I don’t have any project planned
out yet. I do have a lot of stuff in my head that I’d
like to do, but I don’t know if I’ll have the
chance. There’s a project with Manuel Illán
and the label to keep on making records. And I imagine we’ll
open up to other roads, but always from a flamenco point
of view because I’m not a very versatile man either.
There are artists who have the ability to open up to anything
and they’re good at anything. I don’t see myself
like that. What is true is that in every project I’ve
gotten involved in, although they’ve been very diverse,
what I’ve done in the end is to sing seguiriyas or
soleá or malagueñas. I haven’t tried
to go beyond that. I can’t see myself singing jazz.
What I have seen and I have done, within all of this business,
is to get into what I know how to do. I haven’t tried
to be avant-garde. But just that opens your head up to a
great many other places. In my iPod I have Richard Bona,
Khaled, Vinicius Cantuaria… and Mojama and Camarón
and Borrico and Vallejo. I like music, but I like flamenco
above all else. I do listen to a lot of stuff and when I
listen to certain artists, I’m surprised by how far
people’s sensitivity can go. I remember when I was
in Antwerp this past summer that at eleven o’clock
in the morning there was a jazz group playing in the street,
a guy started playing the flugelhorn and I was stunned.
I was sitting there on a bench and it was better than if
I’d paid sixty euros at a theater!
Tale
of an ex-butcher
Antonio Campos
comes from Granada, but flamenco doesn’t
run in his family. In fact, he comes from a
family of butchers. And that was his profession
until the age of twenty-five. But there was
something in him since he was little which drew
him towards cante. “I’ve always
liked this more than anything else and I don’t
know why. When my brothers and sisters wanted
a bike, I wanted a record by Gabriel Moreno.
My mother thought I was crazy. When I was a
boy I just listened to Las Minas’ albums
and the first discs by Chocolate, the ones where
he appeared on the cover wearing frilled shirts
with shiny buttons. That was my childhood, with
a record player and a guitar”, the cantaor
explains. He says he saw a video by Manuela
Carrasco so many times that when she called
him up for the first time to sing for her, he
knew the entire soleá. His life changed
when he recorded on the collective album ‘Granada
baila por tangos’. “I was asked
for a song which sounded old-time and I took
those tangos by an old gypsy woman I’d
heard in Íllora and some stuff by El
Príncipe Gitano, I put them together,
I gave them my edge and I took them”,
he recalls. But I thought they were going to
be sung by some professional involved in the
project. When he was told that he was going
to record them, he said: “Me? I’m
not a cantaor or anything”. They proposed
for him to go to the studio in the early morning,
giving him enough time to start working at the
butcher’s at five o’clock. And of
course, once the album was released, he also
had to perform live, singing and playing the
guitar, no matter how much he refused to and
how embarrassed he was to perform beside “Paco
and Miguel Ángel Cortés, Marina
Heredia, Juan Habichuela, Marote, Pepe Habichuela,
La Nitra, Curro Albaycín, Tony Maya…
all of Granada!”. Shortly afterwards,
the audition came to join the cave La Reina
Mora. “The bailaora asked me to sing soleá
por bulerías for her and I thought that
she wanted my tangos from the album, I told
her yes and as soon as she’d gone into
her dressing room, I got into my car and left.
Halfway, chewing it over, I decided to return,
I stuck my neck out and she told me that she’d
be expecting me the following day”, Antonio
recalls. That night he told his wife: “I’m
no longer a butcher; now I’m a cantaor”.
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Voice
for baile
The years in
Sacromonte were the beginning of his career
as a specialist in cante for dancing. Toni Maya
took him to Casa Patas in Madrid, he accompanied
the then teenage Manolillo Liñán
in his first gigs and “then I was lucky
enough to sing for Antonio Canales and everything
took off. Shortly afterwards I did ‘Rinconete
y Cortadillo’ by Javier Latorre and then
everybody started calling me up”, he remarks.
And that means more than singing: “I think
singing for baile is more complicated than singing
solo, since you have to have the capacity to
adapt to everyone and besides singing, we’re
clappers, we’re actors… I’ve
dressed up as a mushroom in ‘Alicia’
and I’ve gone with Manuela Carrasco with
one hundred percent purity. I’ve done
a bit of everything, but always with the conviction
of doing it with my full attention and believing
more than anybody”. And the thing is that
to him, he who was a butcher and came to cante
already grown up, “everything I’ve
done, I’ve done truly because I like this
more than anything in the world”. And
he considers each friendship he makes in the
profession a gift, and especially if he does
so with people who were hitherto his idols.
That happened to him with El Extremeño
and with Juan José Amador, references
for “the current generation of cantaores
for dancing, with an incredible level: David
Lagos, Londro, David Palomar, Miguel Ortega,
José Valencia, Pepe de Pura, Enrique
Soto…”. And he thinks that both
maestros “gave prestige to working for
dancing and are the undisputed kings; they’re
encyclopedias”. He has advice from them
and also affection, a factor he considers fundamental.
He still gets emotional when he tells how the
first time he sang for his admired Manuela -
an experience he compares with “sticking
yourself into a bottle of champagne and being
uncorked” -, after the show “she
had my daughter sitting on her knees. I saw
that in flamenco, the personal side could surpass
the artistic”.
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