Encarna Anillo, flamenco cantaora. Interview

“In flamenco cante you can’t settle for
the gift you’ve been given”

Silvia Calado. Cádiz, March 2008

Dusk at La Caleta is something unique. As the sun gradually sinks into the sea, the fishing boats turn metallic. And it all seems like a dream... which Encarna Anillo has just awoken from. The Cádiz-born cantaora’s first solo album is now a reality. And no coincidence. The recording reflects a professional career nearly as old as she is, and therefore, unusual maturity. She performs a repertoire of classical cante, which is the work she is recognized with, revisiting with her instrument and her person the great maestros who pinch her soul. To do so, just a handful of good guitarists and some clappers are needed to show how Encarna Anillo’s flamenco cante feels... now.

After so many years of cante, when do you decide to make your first album?

	Encarna Anillo (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

The cantes I’ve recorded are what I’ve been experiencing and growing since I’ve become an artist. The album has cantes that I’ve heard, what’s reached my heart and has made me say that if some day I did a recording, I’d include it. I wrote it all down in my personal notebook as I went along. When one day at my house Miguel Poveda proposed to me the possibility of making an album and he asked me if I wanted to do a career ‘up front’, I told him of course. The thing is that I started off singing ‘up front’! I was a bailaora, but at the age of ten I started singing ‘up front’ and dancing my bailes. Afterwards I started singing at the back, which is where one becomes an artist. And of course having a solo career was my dream, but with all of the learning that I now have. I’d already had a ton of offers, but none of them was the right one. And he offered me the chance of putting up the capital to be able to make an album. I didn’t think twice about it. I already had the album quite clear in my mind and following that conversation, things got changed, but the contents of the album are the fruit of the passing of time.

What was the selection process like of the songs, lyrics and guitarists?

All of it was thought over carefully. Maybe I wanted to work on the folk alegría. At that moment, I’d been working with Chicuelo for some time. And it turns out that what speaks to me the most about him is the alegría. Well then, he’s the one who has to play for me por alegrías. The milonga, for example, then, with Juan Requena. Since we both have that touch... I sang a petenera with Requena in a show by Andrés Marín. And I saw the score he did, how he felt it, I love how he plays. How Rafael el Cabeza plays por soleá fills me... And it was like that, remembering people I’d worked with and who I knew with myself and what they contributed to me.

Encarna Anillo (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

Where did you begin?

With ‘Barcas de plata’. That’s the first song I recorded. Six or seven years earlier I’d worked with Andrés Marín, and one day at a rehearsal Juan Requena came with the song written without music. Since I’m always talking about my native land and it’s very special, since he’s from Málaga and it’s on the sea, he told me he was there in Málaga sitting in front of the sea and he remembered me. And in the hotel rooms we started to add chords to it... and we did it por alegrías. It was the first song because it was really special and it already had something to start off with, and it came out by working together. It meant a great deal and, one of life’s coincidences, the lyrics name the silver boats, which is what I’d thought of as a title for the album years ago.

Why that title?

It comes from the ton of evenings I’ve spent at La Caleta with my family. Every time I watched the dusk, I walked up to the shore and saw the boats and how their reflections changed as the evening fell, next to Santa Catalina Castle. The boats get gray; with the light they seem silver. I always had it inside of me and I knew that if I ever made an album some day, it was going to be called ‘Barcas de plata’.

What does a cante por alegrías mean to you?

Oh, that song means a lot to me musically because I’m singing a song por alegrías, dedicated to my native land, as if it were the body of a man I’m in love with and on top of it, with the soniquete por alegrías from here. In the folk alegrías that are on the album I don’t have the same feeling; it’s totally different. Because in ‘Barcas de plata’ I tell what my native land is like and how happy I am in my land. And with the folk alegría what I’m feeling is how singing used to be done here before, the artists who have been here and what living here gives you, the spoken alegría, which is being lost, it isn’t even sung... And the only one who does that now is the one still alive, who is Chano Lobato. That’s what the alegría from here is like. I do both of them; one has nothing to do with the other, and I’m saying different things in each of them.

Moreover, ‘Barcas de plata’ responds to a more current scheme...

It has soniquete por alegrías, but they aren’t the usual alegrías. It has its different harmonies composed by Juan Requena, the way he’s felt them, and afterwards sung by me.

And the folk alegrías?

I’ve heard them by every maestro from here in Cádiz, by Aurelio, by Chaqueta, by La Perla, by Pericón... And I’ve classified them, since I stick to these lyrics, and these and these, and I’ve put together my Cádiz alegría. They’re folk lyrics, though little heard, which are within flamenco, but which aren’t the ones which are done most often. Since there are so many lyrics... But there are people who don’t search thoroughly, and I search thoroughly so that lifelong ones are done, but for them to be fresher to the ear. I had a lot of help from Miguel Espín because I asked for his opinion on the compilation I’d done, and he told me that there are still other lyrics which are less heard... And help from people who know about this and who love me.

But they say that Cádiz flamenco is being lost...

Yes, I feel that way. I like all kinds of music, I like young people who sound fresh, but I don’t feel like that to do it myself; each person feels it his own way. Though it sounds fresh in my voice, I’d rather cling to what the maestros have left. And I compile it and I sing it that way. Or I take lyrics from now and take them to that style. That’s how I feel today... maybe I’ll get up tomorrow and a different harmony comes out and I say how nice it is. But I feel that’s being lost and I don’t think the main base should be lost. We’re not talking about staying there; we have to evolve, but I think that evolution comes to you with age, with your person... it’s already in the script. You can’t do something new if the first thing isn’t there. You can tell if the knowledge is missing. The alegrías have a force the more elaborate scores don’t have. And the alegrías de Cádiz, the true ones from here, have feeling, grasp, guts... and then you speak them, and then you drop them, and afterwards you chew over your lyrics. The thing is that in Cádiz, alegrías is an art... You listen to Chano and your hair stands up on end because he has salt coming out of his ears. There might people who aren’t from Cádiz and the alegrías sound more like cantiñas. I find that knowledge missing in people my age, that detail, for example. Each person is free to do what he wants, but he has to know what he’s doing, where it comes from, what it is.

Encarna Anillo (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

In the presentation at Málaga en Flamenco 2007 you already said that the album was classical but made by a person from today …

On this album I offer my way of feeling flamenco, my way of singing since I’ve had the power of reasoning. I like doing a lot of types of music, I’ve worked with Andrés Marín, with Israel Galván, with Belén Maya... with a lot of bailaores. And I’ve had the chance to learn new melodies, new lyrics, different scores; I’ve had a lot of learning. And I’ve really got on the go, and I’ve learned a bit of everything. But when making an album I’ve felt more doing the malagueñas by La Trini because it’s the one that reaches my heart and singing it, doing a cante por soleá going through different styles, taking a zambra and doing it... When the time has come for me to display something on my own, I express that; how I feel flamenco. Encarnita Anillo is a cantaora, indeed. And for the following album I intend to record a petenera, a seguiriya, cantes de levante, marianas... cante, cante, but fresh. Classical flamenco doesn’t have to be boring; on the contrary. I know people might flip out a little, for me to talk about this at my age, but the thing is that it’s my first album and that’s Encarnita Anillo. And I know it’s what sells the least, the most difficult, but I’m not going to deceive myself... then we start off on the wrong foot.

Why did you reject previous record offers?

	"I listen to myself and I know perfectly well the feelings I have in each quejío"

The first time I was offered to record an album, I was fifteen. Now I’m glad for not having accepted because I would have deceived myself, after having fought so hard. I’m 24 years old, but I’ve been on stage since I was 5; I’ve been working in this world for 20 years. When I listen to my album now, I’m satisfied because I’m glad about everything that’s happened to me before; it wasn’t time yet. I had to grow inside, I had to take my bumps and bruises … All of that for me now to listen to the album and at least like myself. I listen to myself and I know perfectly well the feelings I have in each quejío. I knew this was going to remain for me for my entire life, so I didn’t sing with my throat, but with my heart; whatever happens inside of me. And there was joy, grief, troubles... All of that’s reflected. That’s why I’m tremendously satisfied; because I recognize myself. Now then, I have to outdo myself on the second one.

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