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Ricardo Miño y Gualberto
Three way dialogue between Ricardo Miño (guitarist), Gualberto (sitar) and
Luis Clemente (journalist).
Ricardo Miño: My friend Alan Raikovski, one of the producers of the score
for Titanic, and producer for Ravi Shankar, called me two days ago from Los Angeles.
And he says: "I've got a surprise for you", and he passes the phone to a man that
turned out to be that Beatle that has been stabbed.
Gualberto: George Harrison?
Ricardo Miño: Yes. He told me that he was interested in coming to
the Bienal this year.
Gualberto: The first time I heard a sitar was listening to him.
Ricaro Miño: Well, Raikovski and Harrison have just produced a very
nice book about Ravi Shankar, with four of his records. They have sent me a copy
and it includes even the sandalwood he uses at his shows.
Gualberto: So, ask him to call me, surely he will know me. Gonzalo (Garcíapelayo)
gave him a record of mine once, and I gave a copy of A la vida, al dolor to Ravi
Shankar myself, at Barcelona. Well, we better get back to the Gualberto Vs. Ricardo
interview. From which cantaor have you learned more?
"Gualberto" © Paco Sánchez
Ricardo Miño: Hombre, Antonio Mairena was like an encyclopedia,
but so it was Pepe Marchena, that knew how to get the tarantas and cartageneras
out of the cante; the range of Mairena in soleares and seguiriyas was out of this
world. Pastora had a lot of rythm and knew how to be commercial, she sang a ranchera
por bulerías and was very advanced for her time. Another one that was ahead of
his time was the guitarist Don Ramón Montoya, that recorded with the cuban saxophonist
Fernando Vilches at the beginnings of the century..
Gualberto: Bruce Zern, an american guitarist that learned with Diego del
Gastor, talked me about a great guitarist called Pedrito Sevilla ¿Has he recorded
something, is he worth of listening?
Ricardo Miño:: Yes, he was a sevillian school guitarist, a Niño
Ricardo's disciple. I was lucky to share a three months tour with him and Paco
de Lucía, including Mairena and Fosforito as cantaores and El Güito and Enrique
el Cojo as bailaores. A hell of a company that of the great bailaora Manuela Vargas.
I think that he recorded something with El Sevillano.
Luis Clemente: Gualberto, ask him about your current repertoire.
Ricardo Miño:: We're talking abour premieres, ain't we?
"Ricardo Miño " © Paco Sánchez
Gualberto: Yes, I'm writing a piece for viola and sitar, as a contrast
to that ones that Ricardo and I are going to play; that will be the same as those
of the record, just more freely played, but the palos will be the same: bulerías,
soleá, tangos de Málaga, alegrías… He will perform a solo act. The viola player
will be Ventura, a great sevillian musician.
Ricardo Miño:: I'm going to invite Bobote and Eléctrico to perform
at the second part of the show, and there will be Álvaro, the percusionist, too;
he also accompanies Gualberto, and at the end we will all reunite again.
Gualberto: We try each and every concert to be different. Although the
cantes are very precise, and although the flamenco rythm has a very ferreous structure,
we allow ourselves the freedom to let something new happen. Ricardo's falsetas
are never the same.
Ricardo Miño:: In our solo pieces we center ourselves in our instruments,
we investigate the sitar and the guitar, and the shows have more of a richness
because of that.
Luis Clemente: But you don't do that in all of your concerts.
Yes, lately we did it in Madrid, you were there, and in Luxemburgo, where the
audience requested us things that we had not even practised, like sevillanas.
Luis Clemente: -The ones that opened your first record?
Gualberto: Well, they were more or less based in the ones included in 'Puente
mágico'.
Luis Clemente: -It's incredible the speed at which time goes by: I was
present too at your presentation at the Pabellón de Chile, around 1980.
Gualberto: Ah, that was a memorable show. I even listened to some "oles"
muttered by Antonio Mairena.
Ricardo Miño:: Apart from us, at that concert performed Antonio,
Curro and Manolo Mairena. Antonio el Arenero did sing, too, and mi wife, Pepa
Montes, danced.
Gualberto: It was after that show that we were booked by Paco Ortega to
do a record. That was the synthesis, the embryo of everything that we have done
later in a more elaborated way. But at that time it was very dense already.
Ricardo Miño:: That was organized by Juan Valdés, the painter. He
did teach at the Arts and Works School and so he prepared a Cultural Week.
Luis Clemente: -Ricardo, you played sitar twelve years ago in a record,
and you finished it with the bulerías 'Fiesta para John Lennon'.
Ricardo Miño:: Yes, I have played it in two of my records, but I
don't do it in front of Gualberto out of respect for him. The guitar is my thing,
and I'm still learning it's chores…
Gualberto: Ricardo has a lot of curious stories to tell, because he learned
with Manolo el de Huelva and Niño Ricardo at the same time, and he acted as an
e-mail for them.
Ricardo Miño:: I would make them fight, they got crossed one time
and another.
Gualberto: Which one was your favorite?
Ricardo Miño:: They both had their own personality, the thing is:
Niño Ricardo was a genius and there's his work to prove it.
Gualberto: You're more influenced by Niño Ricardo than by any other. He's
my personal favorite.
Luis Clemente: -Sabicas told Paco de Lucía, the first time he heard him
play at a New York hotel, that it would better for him to let Niño Ricardo behind
and to walk his own path.
Ricardo Miño:: Yeah, but no one makes bread without baking powder.
Gualberto: Ricardo's style has been formed, aside from playing with those
two great teachers of him, for being with his wife, Pepa, because you have to
be very precise to play for a dancer, and it's very difficult, almost impossible,
to get out of beat. And you can't cross it. He sustains the cycles of every movement
when playing bulerías, and there are too few guitarists knowing how to do that.
Ricardo Miño:: That's just like a lenguage, like if you start saying
something in English and the third word is Hebrew.
Gualberto: Yes, but there are young guitarists, and very good ones, that
don't even know that you have to sustain that cycle. It's a matter of choice.
Art is a combination of inspiration and beat. And, along the years, Ricardo has
refined a way of playing that is very rooted in structure. A guitarist has to
have genius, energy... but also has to know where his place is.
Luis Clemente: -Ricardo, I'm not gonna leave without saying that you have
been a professional guitarist for 38 years now.
Ricardo Miño:: It's rained a lot since then,yeah. Let's see if you
make me feel young again...
Luis Clemente: -It's true, you have played for La Niña de los Peines, Pepe
Pinto and Pepe Marchena.
Ricardo Miño:: Yes. I was in a lot of provincial tours, and I even
played at Madrid's Circus Price Theatre with the 'Así canta Andalucía' show, along
with Pepe Marchena, La Niña de la Puebla… and Emilio el Moro, that used to play
with the guitar behind his back…
Gualberto: Like Jimi Hendrix but with a fez, ha, ha.
Luis Clemente: -Gualberto, it's been 30 years since you recorded you first
sitar.
Gualberto: Oh, really?
Luis Clemente: -Yes, for the early singles of Smash.
Gualberto: Ah, true, true.
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Byzantine
In flamenco, the East proposes and the West arranges. Gualberto García and Ricardo
Miño do know this fact; better yet: they know about scores but they don't need
them. His it's a return journey to the Byzantine, the flamenco that turns from
its western codes to those of the East, and then comes back reborn and new. The
decaying eastern sound had to wait until the West revealed its harmonies for being
able of building that Byzantine feeling: upon western foundations, the eastern
dome, the spiritual dome. The sitar has enough chromatism as to imitate the human
voice, but the guitar, as a western instrument, with so many semitones, doesn't
have that gift. In all that arabesque, the North of India it's just like the East
of Andalucía.
"The North of India has muslim influences, that's the reason behind its adornments,
we're talking about the arabesque Hindu music, the hindustani music; the other
kind is much older, the carnatic southern music", says Gualberto, totally in love
with the vina, an instrument that "it's the mother of the sitar, bigger, with
very high frets, and does a lot of adornments, like the melismas of the cante
jondo. We were in Luxembourg a month ago, and I bought a record in which there
is a raga written to be played with the vina. According to the experts, that's
the origin of flamenco. It's called bairabi and it has the flamenco scales. It
even has a part that is just like a seguiriya". The bairabi is 2500 years B.C.,
adds Gualberto while Ricardo leans his head. What would happen if Cagancho el
Viejo raised himself from the grave, 13 days after the beginning of 2000? he would
return to rest in peace knowing that his Triana is still alive.
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Luis Clemente.Magazine
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