Esperanza Fernández, flamenco cantaora. Interview

“Everybody knows flamenco is free and each
person expresses himself the way he feels it”

Silvia Calado. Madrid, November 2007
Translation: Joseph Kopec

Pastora Pavón “Niña de los Peines” revealed the secret to her. Since she was a little girl, she had heard her grandmother Salú sing the song ‘Manolito Reyes’, but she’d never done the end for her. “Because she couldn’t, because she suffocated”. It was in an old recording by the mythical Niña de los Peines where she was able to complete it. “As I’ve been told, it was a big hit in its time”. It might be one now, too. Why not? Esperanza Fernández is brimming over with energy on this second album, the same infectious energy of the bulería which narrates the ups and downs of the gypsy forge worker’s love affairs. And she doesn’t conceal it when talking about what she calls her “third child”. ‘Recuerdos’ is an album she wanted to have.

Esperanza Fernández (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

The Triana-born artist is the rare case of a cantaora who hasn’t needed to go to the recording studio to remain in the top ranks of flamenco for over twenty years now. “I haven’t needed to. And when I’ve really wanted to is when I’ve done it”, she explains convincingly. So there haven’t been any conditions. “I had to capture my live show on an album now, which is what people really wanted to hear”, states the cantaora. All she had to do was to seek a producer who understood the project. But she had one close at hand: José Antonio Rodríguez. “I knew it had to be him because he’s a flamenco tocaor, because he’s really a musician in general and he knows the studio perfectly, like every nook and cranny of his house”. She points out about her partner that “everybody knows that as a guitarist, he’s a great musician, that as a person he’s fantastic, and moreover, I’ve coincided with him a great many times in collaborations at the studio”. The thing is that “he really fell in love with the project. And I was clear about the album, but he cleared it up for me even more”. The concept had three keys: the live show, tradition and purification. For it to sound natural, for it to call on memory, for the guitar to be enough.

In fact, there are several cantes which are recorded live, albeit it at the studio: the soleá, the seguiriya and ‘Gelem Gelem’, the gypsy hymn. Esperanza elaborates that “it’s not a usual album, since normally you go to the studio and you grab the good takes, but rather it’s made up of entire takes. The live recordings are done at the studio; they aren’t concerts”. And she stresses heavily: “But they’re without cuts”. And as an example she gives the fandango de Huelva, coming from the concert ‘Cuatro guitarras y una voz’ which she premiered at Bienal de Sevilla 2006. ‘Celos hasta del aire’, as she relates, “was done all at once. José Antonio stuck in the arrangements which he himself composed for the four guitars and I did the whole takes afterwards. The best one was chosen out of the best ones. But it wasn’t that a little piece was taken, then, another, and then they were joined”.

	"I can’t go into imitations because that’s absurd. I take flamenco the way I really see it and feel it"

And she agrees that way of recording provides another flavor: “Of course, that’s what I was aiming for; for it to be as real and as from the heart as possible. That’s the peculiar thing and what I like the most about this album; that there’s love. I’m not saying that there’s no love on every album recorded, because making a record is like giving birth. Like I said the other day at the presentation, I’ve delivered my third child. And it’s normal; everybody makes an album with the utmost hopefulness. Besides it being made with heart, since they’re cantes I normally do in my concerts and I’ve chewed them over, everything came out at once. And you can tell”.

And now comes ‘Recuerdos’. The cantaora vindicates “folk lyrics, the usual flamenco”. She says that people ask her who El Titi was and she feels sorry about that forgetfulness. “Everything on the album is memories, everything has its reason. For example, I’ve been singing the cantiñas all my life, since I belong to the Pinini clan. Why El Titi? Well, because when I was a little girl I used to listen to him sing por tangos. I used to listen to my grandmother Salú sing ‘Manolito Reyes’ and the farruca is by Pastora”. On the more jondo plane, she stresses the soleá, “which is a folk soleá in which I make references to Fernanda”. And the seguiriya is a reminder of Chache Lagaña, “who was a gypsy from Lebrija, a man who was a really big enthusiast that used to sing por seguiriyas as well as anybody and he was really peculiar singing”.

Esperanza Fernández (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

-Those lyrics were recorded by Antonio Mairena, weren’t they?

-Of couuuuuurse. But the thing is that Antonio Mairena knew Chache Lagaña. It isn’t that I do it the way Chache Lagaña used to; what I have is a vague memory and what I do is to sing it the way I feel it at that moment because everybody knows that flamenco is free. And each person expresses himself the way he feels it. I can’t go into imitations because that’s absurd. I take flamenco the way I really see it, feel it, and I express myself the way I am. Nobody can tell me that in the seguiriya the ending isn’t like that or that the fandango de Lucena isn’t... Which I took, by the way, from Fosforito. The thing is you don’t end it like Fosforito... And why would I end it like Fosforito? If I’ve been able to contribute a pinch of something to it, because I’ve felt it that way and it’s not done badly, why should they tell me it’s no good? That’s what I’m saying.

-And do you think there are still people on top of those details?

-Oh yeah!

-Ha ha ha ha.

-There are, and you know it. But oh well, I don’t add them up any more because that’s what it does; it makes you laugh.

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