Carles Benavent, bass player. Interview

"Copying is how I've learned all
I can know about flamenco"

Silvia Calado. Madrid, May 2004
Translation: Joseph Kopec

Paco de Lucía opened the door for him. Camarón de la Isla gave him his blessing. That was now over twenty years ago, enough time for Carles Benavent to be a recognized mainstay in the jondo world. Copying and adapting - as he insists on clarifying -, he has created the paradigm of electric bass in flamenco, that music which appealed to him on the expression side... so close - he says - to the blues of the oppressed. It is not the only style he masters, but it is the one that characterizes his sound, the one he has in common with all those cantaores, those guitarists and those others who have called on communication with his five strings. In all those experiences, and especially in the one he shares with Jorge Pardo and Tino di Geraldo, he tries "for the music I make to surprise me", he tries not to stop making his way. He talks about all of this and more, with his modesty, with his irony, with his choice words, in this interview postponed due to the studio hours. Chick Corea awaits him... and for the second time.

Carles Benavent

Carles Benavent started playing the bass when he was thirteen years old, attracted by blues, by Jimmy Hendrix... "I used to copy those people and I still have the marks, I still surprise myself phrasing, sticking in a bit of blues just as easily as a bit of flamenco". And the thing is that, in his view, there is a connection between both types of music which lies in their expression. "There's a common base; I don't know if it's because they're kinds of music that come from oppressed peoples that they have that sadness, that depth. Flamenco, like blues, is very tragic". And that was precisely what appealed to him about this music: "The expression, the rhythm, the vitality it has, the expressiveness... The accents are exaggerated, the stamping, the feeling". Paco de Lucía is, in this sense, "a good example - and that fascinates me about him - because he can take you from an incredibly mellow, lyrical trill to a wicked staccato in one split second. It's hard to be able to control that".

He speaks with knowledge of cause, since it was the guitar maestro who opened the door to flamenco for him over twenty years ago. Back in the band he used to share with Joan Albert Amargós - Música Urbana - he had already flirted with flamenco music, or rather Mediterranean. Paco de Lucía's bass player would have to leave to do his military service for him to take the definitive step forward. Jorge Pardo and Rubem Dantas proposed him as the substitute. "And they did a 'casting'. I sat down with Paco and within five minutes you could see that it worked, that there was a road to follow". And they got down to work. The first 'co-production' was a colombiana, a bass and guitar duet that "if I had to do all over again, I know I'd do just the same; and that's something significant, since now you still see that it was filling, catching".

	"My intention was to prolong the guitar of Paco de Lucía, for it to stop at the bass"

With no secrecy, the Catalan bass player admits that the way to learn was to copy. "My intention was to prolong the guitar, for it to stop at the bass. And I did so copying big-time; that's how I've learned all I can know about flamenco". Of course, he went beyond mimicry, and not in vain is Carles Benavent's bass the reference, the paradigm of electric bass in flamenco. "Of course, you have to adapt, due to the mere fact that you can't do everything with a bass that a guitar does. The hand technique is incredible, so I do what I can with the pick; in that I have had to make up the system". Even his bass is special: "My bass has five strings, the fifth one higher. Instead of sounding lower as is usual among five-string bass players, I use it higher to do chords and have a piccolo bass, being towards guitar".

"I saw right away that it was the way to go and I went with the flow. It's the best thing in these cases, to see what the jokes are like, to learn the style. It's not just about playing, but being there, living it, because if not, it's fictitious, it's a lie". And that's what happened in the Paco de Lucía Sextet, which "has influenced... and a great deal. In fact, there are many who copy him, many bailaores that have very similar bands behind them. He's created a trademark, a reference". And so it was.

next >>

Carles Benavent