Historic flamenco interview. Francisco Lema ‘Fosforito’
(1931)
Cante jondo idols of the past
“Fosforito”,
Antonio Chacón’s old rival
Flamenco-world.com, August 2010
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Literal
transcription from the magazine ‘Mundo
gráfico’ in Madrid. Interview signed
by Juan de Gredos, published on September 16th,
1931
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“Fosforito”,
Antonio
Chacón’s rival, the old nightingale of
cante, wearing his neat black suit, not badly cut, clean,
melancholy in his expression, attentively looks after the
cockpit.
His lack of foresight as a prolific artist led him to this
state. Tickets, women, voice, glory… now, in decline,
are a teasing reminder of the past.
We strike up a conversation:
Fosforito and Juan de
Gredos
(Photo Mundo Gráfico) |
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-Where did you first see the light, Fosforito?
-In Cádiz, sixty-two years ago; in a land where poetry
became music in the opening speeches, in the courtyard fountains,
in the light, in the young girls’ laughter. And my
name is that of Francisco Lema. And I can’t tell you
anything interesting about my childhood, unless it’s
that when I was really little, I had to pull my weight to
help my family keep the house going. When I was a lad, I
started to take a liking to cante, and I was a woodpecker
which let loose its trills with any pretext, and in the
fever of dreams I imagined coplas and more coplas which
made the face of Fillo Silverio himself and Juan Breva turn
green with envy. Chance put me in the threshold of that
Málaga-born artist called Enrique
el Mellizo; the latter – my maestro soon afterwards
- used to tackle the entire genre, and the seguiriyas and
the soleares left his throat polished and thrilling to the
point of managing to get bravos and thunderous olés!
They didn’t use to let the final lyrics be heard.
I plucked up courage like one possessed, and at that school…
I started improving myself in the secrets of cante day by
day. My mentor, with a firm hand, taught me how to give
my voice nuances, to rob the coplas of their entrails, to
sift them through tremolos so that the essence of the feeling,
of the joy or the challenge would flow resoundingly in sighs,
in spine-tingling ahs like landed stabs; that music comes
to life and the echoes of triumph in the sharps, in the
slight palpitations of a whisper. I came out of there with
my style carved out, with a fulfilled mastery of what were
the registers in the precious mine of my throat. That wizard
whose last name was Chacón was a “classmate”,
an admirable opponent and competitor later on. And the nickname
of Fosforito, which I later popularized, making it famous,
was due to my build. I used to be what they called, in that
era, a fashion-conscious ‘junquillo’. Dark,
flexible, lean; as people thought I looked so tall and thin,
they started to call me Fosforito.
-Did you make your début when you were really young?
-Really early. I was just fourteen years old. I set the
course of my dreams for Jerez with my voice. I burst upon
the Palenque. The Café de Junquera, a room where
devotion was paid to this type of flamenco, had already
hosted between its walls other happy cultivators, such as
El Chato de Jerez, Marrurro, Luis el de Juanero and Javier
Molina, who tyrannized the attention of the place’s
regulars with their originalities and inspiration.
I was lucky. The struggle took place in an ambience unfavorable
to newcomers. In the first malagueña, the guitar
music was transfused with the lyricism of my tense soul,
warm and varied in tones like another string on the instrument.
When I finished, they clapped for me on accompaniment. Between
some glasses of wine and beer, I again sang two, five, I
don’t know how many more coplas! At Casa de Junquera,
when they used to pay, those twenty-five big ‘reales’
were a really good sign!
I stayed and performed there for forty nights and was a
big hit. Since then I’ve specialized in malagueñas.
Si de ti
pudiera vengarme
Bien sabe Dios que lo hiciera
Pero es mi querer tan grande,
Que lo pienso, me da pena
Y lloro lágrimas de sangre
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If I could take revenge
on you
God knows I really would
But my love is so great
That I think about it, it upsets me
And I cry tears of blood |
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Yo canto de noche y día
Mi voz a nadie conmueve
Soy como el ave fría
Que canta sobre la nieve
Llorando las penas mías
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I sing night and day
Mi voz a nadie conmueve My voice moves no-one
I’m like the cold bird
That sings over the snow
Crying out my sorrows |
Francisco Lema 'Fosforito'
(Photo Mundo Gráfico) |
I absolutely threw myself into those two
coplas, and I achieved so many triumphs with them that I
made them my favorites. If we go by the difficulties to
perform them, I consider the seguiriya harder, the true
“cante jondo”, just like the martinetes are
the most gypsy style.
-What do you know about Juan
Breva?
-You haven’t mentioned anyone. The first Málaga-born
artist to stand out at a time when the cañas, serranas,
seguiriyas, soleares and javeras were all the rage. A magnificent
style, arrogance.
-What do you think of the way that the fandanguillo is performed
nowadays by the swarm of cante jondo professionals?
-That it’s a real shame. They’ve made the copla
degenerate. Lacking style – the most delicate and
hardest part - they resort to faculties, and we’ll
see what they’re going to have left when they run
out of them. More than anything else, the fandanguillo is
a sung baile, which a Sevillian hidalgo, José Pérez
de Guzmán, with an opulent fortune and an enviable
voice, quickly popularized, first being used by the women
at the yard parties, and later on, by professionals. It
has its origin in Alosno, Huelva. The lyrics say so:
| El fandanguillo
de Alosno
Nadie lo sabe cantar.
Lo cantan los mineros
Cuando van a trabajar |
Nobody knows how to
sing
The fandanguillo de Alosno.
The miners sing it
When they’re going to work |
-After your début, where did you
channel your energies?
-Having broken the ice, I began my pilgrimage as an artist
to all the towns of greater or lesser importance which liked
“cante jondo”. On one of my trips I got a contract
for twenty-five days, also earning the same figure in ‘reales’
at a café called La Vera Cruz.
Heading up the bill made me suspicious, without being able
to explain why. I came out to sing, they gave me an ovation;
I collected my six twenty-five, and very satisfied, I went
to bed. The next day, fewer people, less applause…
and not a single peseta. And that happened for a week, and
then another week, until the last day of my contract arrived
and seeing that its guarantee was verbal and that didn’t
mean anything positive, I hit the road, and that’s
how I ended up in Puerto de Santa María.
I wasn’t unlucky. I consolidated my personality step
by step. In that sort of Olympus which was Mr. Manuel el
Burrero’s café, I stayed for nine years competing
with the good, bad and worse that performed on his stage.
My salary fluctuated between twenty-five, thirty-five and
fifty reales.
Then came in charge of me the fighting, noble, clean, true,
now deceased colleague Chacón - the master of cante,
the one who with amazing intuition and marvelous art culminated
in every facet - and my person. All those who delighted
in listening to us can vouch for what we did.
-When did you appear in Madrid?
-After practically having traveled around the entire peninsula,
earning a lot of money and applause. So just as it is in
Seville, Cádiz and Málaga where these activities
of “jipío” (flamenco lament) are best
understood, Madrid is undoubtedly the city where any expression
of art earns the most.
When I came, the popular theater man Felipe Ducazcal was
dying there. Right away I went to the house of Agustín
Monedero, owner of the most crowded and famous café
of that genre. My presentation had a really affectionate
welcome. I think I sang on that memorable night like I’d
never done before. Then I performed at other establishments
of that nature: the Romero, Naranjeros. In view of its counterparts’
business, the El Brillante Café followed the same
course, and my person inaugurated it some time later. The
last romantic temple devoted to the fervent worship of cante
jondo, and which defended itself with the greatest spirit
against the innovations of modernism in the evolution of
people’s tastes, was the “La Marina” Café.
In my era nobody saved up for old age. Everything was squandered.
Who thinks about old age when you’re on top of the
world? Ants! You can imagine! El Chato de Jerez was famous
and he died poorer than a rat, forgotten by everyone. The
one who earned the most was Antonio Chacón, and the
most he ever made was twenty pesetas per day.
-What was the date when you sang your farewell?
Fosforito, with the stoicism of someone drawing on the bitterness
of grief which clings to your heart, hesitates, is quiet
for a moment and then laughs philosophically, recalling:
-The last time my voice was heard was way back in the year
1923, at the Olimpia in Seville, in competition with El
Niño de Granada. Then at a concert organized by Vallejo,
at the no longer existing Teatro de Novedades.
-What do you think of flamenco dancing?
-That it’s “lost”, and it’s unquestionable
that there are still good cultivators; but they don’t
catch fans’ eye.
-Who creates the coplas?
-Most of them, the ones that ride the wind from lips to
lips like a butterfly of poetry, are devised by that spontaneous
bard who goes by the name of Fernando el de Triana.
-How does the current state of cante deserve to be summed
up?
-Kids nowadays sing very discreetly, with a great voice
but with little style. They cunningly adapt to their conditions
what works best for them, overcoming difficulties with a
lot of displays.
-And what do you do now?
-You can see: let the days go by and recall a little copla
which heals the illness of melancholy:
| Esperar en la experiencia
Es esperanza “perdía”;
Que antes que llegue el saber
S’acabaíto la vía |
Hoping in experience
Is “lost” hope;
For before knowledge arrives
Life has ended |
JUAN DE GREDOS
