INTERVIEW WITH CHANO DOMÍNGUEZ, PIANIST:

"Flamenco-jazz is still going through its adolescence"

Ezequiel Paz. Tenerife, August 2002

Chano Domínguez isn't just an Andalusian pianist with a formidable sense of swing. Maybe the word that best defines him is intuitive. Self-taught musician, street performer, accompanist to church choirs, progressive rock artist… The career path of this ubiquitous figure from Cadiz is like a rainbow of rich experiences, discoveries in sound and wild incursions into contemporary jazz. Strikingly modest in his words - you might even go so far as to say there was a certain innocent shyness about him - he plays down his role among his musical colleagues in the creation of a new form of flamenco-jazz, and denies his vertebral role in a new piano language. A language wrapped in jazz, with a true jondo flamenco center, and with an improvisational approach, a language with subtle Sephardic, Arabian and Caribbean reminiscences.

Chano Domínguez

Chano, you've been credited as one of the pianists most responsible for revitalizing autochthonous Spanish styles like the copla or forgotten flamenco styles. Thelonious Monk played in a flamenco style and bulerías and coplas played in Bill Evans's style...

I started playing copla tunes and traditional Spanish songs because I've listened to them all my life, my mother's been singing them ever since I can remember, so they're songs that have always been around. And suddenly one day it hits you that you're playing jazz, standards, American numbers, movie themes, which are beautiful but if you look inside yourself you find a wealth of wisdom on the part of composers and songwriters. That music, taken out of the context of the dictatorship, holds an immense value, and it's that music which is feeding my craving to improvise, to play. A large section of the audiences who come to hear me play share that musical patrimony which resides in the collective unconscious of the Spanish.

How did the transition occur from flamenco guitar to piano?

I started playing flamenco guitar because that's what we had to hand at home. In those days it was crazy to think of something as big as a piano. We started off playing in the street. I've always said that I taught myself to play in the street. With regards the piano, things just happened naturally. I moved from the guitar to the electric bass because at that time I was playing rock and pop with my friends. And meanwhile on Sundays we sang in the church choir at San José Parish Church in Cadiz, and that's where I discovered harmony. It was the first time I lay my hands on a keyboard. And you can guess the rest - we formed CAI, which was a symphonic rock outfit in the late seventies, and made a few records. By then I'd moved on to keyboard playing influenced by groups like Yes, Genesis or King Crimson.

What did you used to listen to in those early days of your musical training?

When I was small we listened to my dad's records. They were cartridges in a really old format that's now obsolete. There were recordings of lots of old flamenco artists: Marchena, Mairena, Manolo Caracol... And on the other hand, my mother always had Spanish traditional songs on the radio. That's how we grew up, with true jondo flamenco and canción española.

Chano Domínguez

When did you first come into contact with contemporary jazz pianists like Bill Evans, Hancock etc.?

To be honest it was a gradual process. Really right from the start, maybe unconsciously, I was making music to improvise, opening up structures to create different melodic situations on the spur of the moment. My natural inertia led me to seek out groups that had that improvisational quality to their music. That's how I discovered groups like Weather Report, Return to Forever or Mahavishnu Orchestra, to whose fusion I owe my wanderings into the world of jazz. And then I discovered Chick Corea, Hancock, Bill Evans and later still Ahmad Jamal, Tommy Flanagan, Red Cardigan and Scott Joplin.

When did the idea of mixing jazz and flamenco occur to you?

I couldn't really say - it didn't occur to me, it just happened to me, because I was a musician who'd played bulerías all my life and that's the way it came out. I never made a conscious decision to play a standard in the style of a bulería, it just turned out that way, that's all. It's not like there comes a moment when you say to yourself: I'm going to try a fusion of flamenco-jazz. In my experience at least, things come out differently each time you make new discoveries. I'm a musician who's worked with people from very different genres - pop, rock, flamenco, jazz - and I can honestly say I learnt something from every one of them.

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