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Yesterday you also commented
on how important cante is to you...
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Farru and José
Maya on 'Al natural' (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
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J.M.: Well, of course.
Cante’s the base of flamenco dancing. And if cante
isn’t important to us...
B: If you don’t
know what you’re listening to and you don’t
know how to feel cante...
J.M.: Cante’s
the inspiration baile is born from. We listen to Simón
or Antonio Zúñiga sing and we necessarily
have to dance; you can’t help it.
B: You can bring out
a step or a ‘little kick’ or a shuffle por
soleá thinking about some lyrics...
F: From my point of
view, it’s really hard to dance to cante, not dancing
for the sake of dancing because you have rhythm. It isn’t
about being a baile percussionist, but knowing how to
understand the password. One of our missions is that:
each night, to guess that password. That’s really
hard, I think it’s worse than deactivating bombs,
that’s a risk...
B: Which no insurance
company covers you for. Ha ha ha.
F: We work on that every
day. And the thing is that everything is equally important
to me: cante, toque... You have to know how to listen
to it, you have to know how to dance to that. And it’s
really hard; nearly impossible. The three of us feel the
same way.
B: If it were possible
to be sung for you according to what you dance, there
wouldn’t be any cantaores.
F: I think you have
to know how to receive and afterwards when you receive
that information, to express yourself. It’s really
hard to explain.
Is there really improvisation
in your baile?
F: I think it totally
prevails.
J.M.: Flamenco is improvisation.
F: Besides, the thing
is that when it’s all so mechanical, if you’re
lucky enough to have sixty galas in a row, after eight
or nine there is no longer any motivation. And the guitarist
is looking for Gelves, the cantaor doesn’t always
feel the same way to sing the same thing...
Barullo on 'Al Natural' (Photo
Daniel Muñoz)
J.M.: If it’s
all mechanized, nothing has the same flavor any more.
F: So they don’t
know what they’re going to do... nor do you know
what you’re going to do. You run the risk, as we
say, of ‘screwing up’...
B: You always have to
have a base. You can’t come out, though there were
people who used to do it in the olden days, saying just:
sing for me, play for me and I’ll dance.
F: You have to be really
good to do that.
José Maya on
'Al natural'
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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B: That’s why
you have to have a certain base. I start here, I finish
here and then in the middle... I don’t know what
it’s going to do.
F: And I think that’s
where what people call duende, magic, arises. They’re
those moments when there are fifteen of us in the show,
it hasn’t been rehearsed and everybody goes to the
same point. And that’s greatness.
B: And in magic... well,
the trick can turn out well or badly.
F: Now then if it turns
out well, it turns out better than any other one that’s
really well organized.
And now looking at the clock, they
joke about what might happen in a few minutes on stage
at the Teatro Villamarta. “We’ll see if ‘duende’
comes now...”, one says. To which another answers:
“Or Spiderman!”. Ha ha ha ha.
Part of the ‘Al natural’
tour has consisted of being openers for artists like Björk.
What was that experience like?
J.M.: And for Beyoncé
and for Marc Anthony. You can imagine; wonderful. Being
able to see Beyoncé... We really had a lot of adrenaline
when dancing.
F: Besides, going out
to dance in front of fifty thousand people who haven’t
come to see you and they respond to you like that; you
can’t forget that. It gives you an adrenaline rush
and you think you’re...
... Spiderman, perhaps?
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