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And she opens her huge, deep, dark eyes
even wider. She shakes her arms and hands and fingers
and accentuates her Sevillian accent, contrasting even
more with the setting, a corner of the bourgeois café
at the Fine Arts Circle in Madrid. If she were only on
the shore of Seville’s big river, with its bridge
in the background, with the throbbing strings of reflections.
That’s how she is depicted on the album cover, a
cover which has left no one indifferent. On top of it,
the photo session was done during the “Velá
de Santana”. And that means people, a ruckus, a
racket, up and down the bridge. “Imagine the stylists
there on the Triana Bridge with a clothes rack loaded
with costumes; they even made me a dressing room with
the shawls. It’s a very special album no matter
how you look at it”. Those who see it, the first
thing they say is what a sexy cantaora. “There I
am with my yellow dress without any superstitions at all.
Today a reporter told me what a ‘Basic Instinct’
pose it was. And I answered yes, that I’m really
sexy but it has an explanation: go back, look at the paintings
by Julio Romero de Torres, who painted the dark woman...
I didn’t want to be Sharon Stone at all. I’m
a gypsy woman, with a lot of race, I have really pretty
legs, what can I say, I was really tan from the summer...
Ha ha ha. And there’s no superstition as I said;
I put on my yellow dress and had my Triana Bridge behind
me. That’s all. I think the photo is really nice.
Everyone’s making a fuss about the photo... I don’t
think it’s common in flamenco because it’s
all faces or flowers or shawls. My other cover is a really
good photo, but I appear with my shawl; it’s a more
typical photo. And I’m not going to stop being so
flamenco because I show my legs. It’s a very flamenco
posture... the only thing I’m missing is a brazier.
As you can see, I’m full of myself!”. And
it’s like the guy said, speak well of yourself because
later on it sticks with people and they don’t remember
where they’ve heard it. “I think that’s
brilliant advice”, the cantaora answers.
Esperanza Fernández
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
But she doesn’t need it; all you
have to do is keep on listening to her sing on ‘Recuerdos’.
Besides the memories, the album includes pearls such as
‘Antonio Vargas Heredia’, “a whim by
José Antonio”. The Córdoba-born guitarist,
composer and producer told her that “after everything
so traditional, he’d like me to sing that song because
he thought it’d sound really good and really flamenco
with my voice. Why don’t we try it? He gave me a
record by Carlos Cano, who sings it in a duet with Serrat.
That’s where I got it, but I did it my way. People
have accepted it amazingly well”.
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| "With
the song ‘Gelem Gelem’ I was able to
reach the hearts without knowing how to speak Romano,
but simply with feeling" |
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And to finish, the thrilling international
gypsy anthem, ‘Gelem Gelem’. “Anyone
who buys the album will be able to read the lyrics. It
was written by a gypsy, Jarko Jovanovic, about the Holocaust,
when gypsies, Jews and blacks were killed. And the translation
says something like, where the gypsies go with their tents
and hungry children, I also used to have a big family
and the black legion murdered them... and really harsh
stuff”. The hymn came into her hands three years
ago, when he sang it by assignment at the University of
Seville on International Gypsy Day. The cantaora relates
that “I had to learn it because I can’t speak
Caló (Spanish gypsy language). I learned it from
a Yugoslavian gypsy with my headphones; the pronunciation,
and everything. It was hard, but I wanted to do it”.
And the result was worthwhile: “I have a really
fond memory because that day I saw a lot of gypsies crying.
And that couldn’t be erased from my memory. I was
able to reach their hearts without knowing how to speak
Romano (gypsy language), but simply with feeling”.
Although she was congratulated for how good the translation
was, she wanted to perfect it for the recording: “For
everything to be pronounced just right, I called up Juan
de Dios Ramírez Heredia for him to make a couple
of corrections for me. And the thing is that I’d
listened to a hymn from Yugoslavia, a hymn from Rumania...
and the pronunciation was different. There were details
to be polished, so I got in touch with a Rumanian gypsy
woman, I’d sing for her over the phone and she’d
cry non-stop, and told me where to put a stress, where
to put an ‘s’... a few details and there you
have it”.
Esperanza Fernández
The piano by Dorantes
which accompanies her in the hymn is the only instrument
that gets away from the succinct scheme of the recording.
“The album doesn’t have anything, just guitars
– those of her “soulmates” José
Antonio Rodríguez, Miguel
Ángel Cortés and Paco
Fernández-, clapping, cheering and very subtle
percussion in the fandangos because it’s essential.
The thing is that the record didn’t call for it,
didn’t need it”. That’s how whole tradition
is. A tradition which needs support, in the artist’s
opinion. And it isn’t because memory fails people...
“There isn’t oblivion. I think there’s
fear or respect on the part of young people when thinking
that traditional flamenco doesn’t sell. It doesn’t
matter. But the thing is that you have to know the roots,
to start at the bottom and then we build the roof of the
house. And we have a horrible image of pure flamenco,
that nobody wants to record traditional flamenco... Oh
yeah, there are new lyrics, but the old ones also have
to be recovered because they have a really strong emotional
sense and a lot of things have been forgotten and... why
not?”.
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| "Everybody
has a mirror to look in, but each person has to
mark his own personality" |
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And she argues that Pastora
Pavón used to record things by old-time cantaores
she used to listen to and the same thing Pastora has recorded
Vallejo
has, and Marchena
has the same as Vallejo, and if not Marchena, Antonio
Mairena has it. The same lyrics but each one giving it
his particular style and his voice and his heart and changing
a few details. It’s all enriched”. And this
reflection brought to the present time translates into
the fact that “now there are new voices, new thoughts,
a new life... and each person’s going to give it
something, since flamenco is free in expression; each
person can express himself the way he wants to and that’s
not bad. If you don’t finish the soleá de
Alcalá the way I don’t know who used to finish
it and if you don’t stretch out a part or shorten
it or whatever, well, it’s OK. Why should it be
bad? Why do we have to go into imitations if that’s
the most absurd thing in the world? Everybody has a mirror
to look in, but each person has to mark his own personality.
That’s the way I see it”.
Esperanza Fernández
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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... she says sharply. And the thing is
that if there’s something Esperanza Fernández
is brimming over with, it’s personality. Time has
only strengthened her. The cantaora believes that her
trademark is better defined on this second album. And
for a little while, she takes a look back. “My first
album’s lovely; I’m really proud and really
happy I recorded it. The particular thing about it was
that they were more like songs, but they sounded flamenco
in my voice because my voice is flamenco”. From
‘Esperanza Fernández’ to ‘Recuerdos’.
“However, this new album is traditional and folk.
I’m really glad that first one wasn’t a big
hit, because I might have been typecast in a system which
I shouldn’t have been in”.
And no, she doesn’t disown the
first album, but with ‘Recuerdos’ she’s
like a little girl with a new pair of shoes. “I’m
very happy; I’m overflowing. I’ve had a lot
of support, the reviews are really good, my colleagues
call me up, artists, journalists... To me, that’s
a great satisfaction and it gives me more strength to
be able to move forward with this album”, she comments
in a flurry of sincerity. But she goes beyond that: “I’m
speaking to you like a fan, not like Esperanza Fernández.
I sit down, listen to the album, and as a fan, I’m
telling you that it’s a very good record, like that,
the most natural thing in the whole wide world”.
And she suddenly goes out to the bustling Alcalá
Street to have a breath of fresh air -“I’ve
been here since this morning, with one interview after
another”- and to pose a little bit for the photographer,
unaware of it not being the Triana Bridge but rather a
noisy line of cars behind her, of wearing a leather jacket
instead of the yellow dress. That’s the way the
dark woman is.
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