David Palomar, flamenco cantaor. Interview
“I don’t know whether
I like
laughing more or singing”
Silvia Calado. Mont de Marsan, July 2007
Ignacio Espeleta, Beni de Cádiz
and Chano Lobato now have an assured successor. Following
a couple of blank decades, a young cantaor from Barrio
de la Viña has come to once again put the accent
on Cádiz cante, which is nearly a way of understanding
life. David
Palomar, who has just won two awards at the Córdoba
Contest, is a graduate of the background group university,
with a degree in accompaniment for baile. But he is now
preparing to come up to the foreground... and not just
as an orthodox cantaor. From his adolescent experience
with the group Levantito, he still has his passion for
fusion, added to which is his conviction that Andalusian
rock is not dead. It’ll sound incompatible to a
lot of people, but he’s convinced that with good
music and respect for flamenco, he’ll soon be filling
up places with other crowds who’ll also enjoy his
cante, but standing up.
To begin with, an introduction...
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David Palomar (Photo
Daniel Muñoz) |
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I’m from Cádiz, from (the
neighborhood) Barrio de la Viña. And in truth,
I didn’t start singing when I was a little boy but
rather when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. The neighborhood
is flamenco but it’s also carnivalesque, so I had
shared interests. The first academy I sang at was bailaora
Pilar Ogalla’s. I got used to cantes for dancing
there. I had my first professional experience with Levantito,
a fusion group which came out at the same time as El Barrio.
And then the first time I came out and sang was with Javier
Barón, who came to work in Cádiz and he
asked El Pájaro, the percussionist, to find him
a cantaor. And he came to my house to get me. Then, starting
there, I went with Carmen Cortés and Gerardo
Núñez, with people from Madrid like
El Güito, and afterwards with Cristina Hoyos for
about four years. Then I stayed in Seville for a spell
to work with everyone.
Straight to cante for dancing,
right?
Singing for dancing has been my school,
from the beginning... and I still have a long way to go.
I think a cantaor who hasn’t sung for dancing isn’t
good on rhythm. Though rhythm is something innate, after
that the development is clear, it comes from knowledge,
from experience. Baile improves your rhythm, gets you
ready better in the cantes because it forces you to be
studying all day long. Cante for dancing really gets you
on the ball.
Does it run in your family?
Cante doesn’t. My two sisters used
to dance, but neither has done it for a living in the
end; each one has gone her own way.
But the neighborhood does have
an influence...
Of course. Imagine seeing all the personages
there are there. Amazing. Juan Villar has helped me a
whole bunch, enthusiasts like Felipe Scapachini, Juan
Silva, El Niño del Mentidero... And Mariana
Cornejo, who’s a really good friend of mine.
We did her latest album, ‘Tela marinera’,
together. The neighborhood influences you. If I hadn’t
been born there, I’m sure I wouldn’t have
sung flamenco. That’s clear. You get that from the
experience and the life there. You get a way of singing
and living. We joke around there in such a way... that
people don’t do so just anywhere. We’re cracking
up there from the moment we get up. It’s part of
the land. Look at what Chano
Lobato’s like. You can’t imagine what
happened to me... The queen came to Cádiz and you
had to sing there for free (you can’t imagine what
the city hall is like). We’re there, in comes the
queen’s security with the dogs, they kick us out
of the place. And this man who’s a diabetic had
just given himself a shot of insulin without having eaten
and he had a rush, right at the time when the security
was inside and we couldn’t go in to give him water
or anything. I was right in the middle of it all. We kicked
the mayoress out of the car to take him to the hospital
(the lady volunteered). I couldn’t even sing. I
stayed there with him until one of his relatives came.
And afterwards Chano tells you about it and you have to
laugh. That’s the way he is.
David Palomar (Photo Daniel
Muñoz)
And you have another wave of
musical mixture from your experience with the group Levantito...
I do have relatives who are musicians.
For example, Pedro Cortejosa, who’s a jazz saxophonist,
people in classical dance... And those of us in the neighborhood
clique have always been interested in listening to other
kinds of music, always. We got hooked on jazz through
Pat Metheny, through Vicente
Amigo. And then you search, from one album to the
next. Now we’re crazy about Richard Bona, the bass
player, who’s flipped us out since he played in
Jimena. I also listen to latin music; I’ve been
in Cuba and I like it. I really love rock, starting with
Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Barón Rojo...
Besides, I’m one of the people
who thinks there haven’t been any successors to
Triana or to that brilliant period. Nowadays it should
be different. What’s done nowadays, which is typecast
as Andalusian rock, like El Barrio, I see as Andalusian
rock which is a little light, halfway, a little between
Andalusian rock and I have to sell because I have a following.
I don’t see rock which comes out naturally. When
you get involved in that stuff you have to get across
that energy and that aggressiveness which rock has. I
think that point has to return. Now what people go with
is pop.
I don’t know, Veneno and then Pata
Negra said “this goes like this”. It was
natural to them; they used to go to the base in Morón
for records... That way has to return. It’s amazing
that you talk to the record companies, you play something
like that for them and they tell you that what we need
is more refrains. And that word lingers on your lips:
refrains. And how do you deal with that? It’s a
problem for flamenco. If flamenco is a deep-roots culture
of ours and we don’t defend it, who’s going
to defend it, then? English rock is the best in the world
because they defend it to the max. There isn’t a
single record company that records true flamenco. We know
it doesn’t sell, but there has to be somebody to
deal with that section of music, as is done in jazz.
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