Interview with Fernando Trueba, film director and music promoter:

"I'm a complete ignorant of flamenco"

Ezequiel Paz. Tenerife, October 2003

Fernando Trueba has already done nearly everything in the film world, including winning an Oscar. His shaky beginnings led him to initiate studies such as Philology, Photography and Journalism, to go on to that sort of conceptual jumble known as cinema. A discipline in which, in his opinion, there is room for all muses of art, including music, that which has brought him so much satisfaction and to whose favorite authors he wanted to dedicate the documentary 'Calle 54', thus settling an old debt. 'Calle 54' was the detonator of the Latin jazz explosion and, in passing, of flamenco jazz, experienced in the last two years in Spain. Today, he is engrossed in materializing new musical alchemies from Calle 54 Records, which he conceives as something up close and personal.

Fernando Trueba (Photo: www.clubcultura.com)

Every jazz enthusiast has his own particular love story with that music. What was yours like?

When I was young I was a big fan of Art Tatum, Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck. I drifted away from jazz in the jazz era of the seventies and eighties, except for my favorites. Since I'm an old-fashioned man, apart from my Latin tastes you already know, I listen a lot to Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Phil Woods and, among the younger ones, Brad Mehldau, Jacky Terrasson…

Do you have any musical training? Do you play any instrument? If you were a musician, what instrument or instruments would you like to play?

I have no musical training, since I studied solfeggio a little and then forgot it, and years later I learned some rudiments again. But I'm just an enthusiast. A man in search of beautiful things, not necessarily musical, also literary, cinematographic… If I were a musician, I'd like to play the high sax or the tenor sax, and undoubtedly the piano.

Producer Javier Limón says you're the person with the most jazz culture he's ever met in his life. Is it Borgian knowledge or simple affective memory?

Javier Limón exaggerates, since I know a great many people who know a lot more about jazz than I do. I think I'm just good at tracking beauty.

Is jazz a type of music for intellectuals? And if it were, would Latin jazz be the danceable, abdominal part?

There are periods I've drifted away from jazz on that intellectual, academic, school side, music for musicians. If the music doesn't excite me or elate me, if it doesn't affect me somehow, it doesn't interest me. I'm not interested in technique. Just what's done with that technique. And there are very skilled musicians who don't do anything interesting because they don't have the good taste, the criteria, the humility of making simply beautiful music. Besides, there are a lot of jazz enthusiasts who are snobs. A lot of them out-Herod Herod. The same thing happens in flamenco. And in bullfighting. I like Latin jazz, more than for being danceable, for its energy, its vitality, because it's live music, with clear popular roots, but it can be as technically complex or worked out as any other.

Fernando Trueba (Photo: www.clubcultura.com)

Of the following list of pianists, can you explain to us who reaches you most and why?
- Oscar Peterson
- McCoy Tyner
- Teté Montoliú
- Cecil Taylor
- Gonzalo Rubalcaba
- Chano Domínguez
- Bebo Valdés

I like all of them on the list; they're great maestros. Cecil Taylor is the one I've least listened to. My favorite McCoy Tyner is the young man of 'Nights of Ballads and Blues'. I like a lot of things by Tete. Chano... I love his style, it's his own. 'Alegría callada', 'Alma de mujer'… are jewels. Rubalcaba has excellent albums such as 'Mi gran pasión' and 'Supernova'. His version of 'El cadete constitucional' is great. Oscar Peterson... What can I say? Though I used to listen to him more when I was younger. He was one of my favorites back then. Now it isn't that he isn't, it's just that I listen more to others. And Bebo Valdés is my great love. For his attitude to music. He's beyond good and evil. He's the grandeur of modesty. The beauty of kindness. The honesty of pure musicality. The anti-ego. A few of my favorite pianists are missing from the list: Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Eddie Higgins, Keith Jarrett…

And within flamenco, what are your fundamental references?

	"One of the people who has most impressed me on stage in any musical genre is Estrella Morente. She's the princess of the 21st century"

I'm not a flamenco connoisseur, rather I'm a complete ignorant. Though I've always liked Camarón, Morente, Paco de Lucía, Tomatito, Vicente Amigo… And I can say that one of the people who has most impressed me on stage in any musical genre is Estrella Morente. She's the princess of the 21st century.

The critics are always trying to rehash things and now somebody has coined the term 'lágrimas jondas' ('jondo tears') to refer to the harmony between boleros and flamenco which the album by Bebo Valdés and Diego el Cigala has made popular. Chano Domínguez, for example, likes to speak more of fusions of musicians rather than of genres. Do you think along those same lines?

I hate the word fusion. It sounds scientific to me, like a laboratory experiment. And fusion albums usually make me shudder. I think the one by Bebo and Cigala is a natural, organic encounter. When Chano Domínguez listened to Bebo, he said: "He's the most flamenco of all". He's right. That musicians from the West Coast should like playing Brazilian music wasn't fusion, it was natural, since they had been the greatest influence on bossa nova. Those who knew Joao Gilberto before listening to Chet Baker and afterwards, say there was a change. Elis Regina quoted Chet Baker as his greatest influence. How could Ron Carter not play Latin music if he was Jobim's contrabass!

Your film 'Calle 54' is turning into a phenomenon propagating Latin jazz, in a similar fashion to what occurred with 'Buenavista Social Club' by Wenders. The activity of the labels Lola Records and Calle 54 Records gives a good account of it. What is your story as a promoter and how were those labels founded?

Lola arose by the will of a group of friends: Javier Estrella, Julio Martí, Andrés Vicente Gómez, Tito Ramoneda and me, of producing albums. And to do so, we created that company, which has made some excellent records. Calle 54 Records is my wish to do something very small, personal, crafted, which can't be considered industrial, but is rather something hand-made, made with the heart. This label's calling is to make a couple of records a year, no more.

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