JUAN CARLOS ROMERO, FLAMENCO
GUITARIST. INTERVIEW
“Flamenco’s
challenge is to keep on growing while staying who we are”
Silvia Calado. Madrid,
january de 2011
Juan
Carlos Romero has continued to work at the recording
studio, but he hadn’t worked on an album of his own,
on a guitar album, for six years. The Huelva-born guitarist,
after releasing his second disc ‘Romero’, composed,
played and produced ‘Tierra de calma’ by Miguel
Poveda and ‘Raíces y alas’ by Carmen
Linares. And he admits that “I really felt like making
my album now”. He wanted to get down to work on it
after Poveda’s, but “I really liked the idea
of making something about Juan Ramón Jiménez,
a poet I’ve always really admired, so I couldn’t
say no”. Only afterwards did his time come, the time
for ‘Agua encendida’.
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Juan Carlos Romero
Photo © Lolo Vasco |
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“I needed to take a
look back a bit to seek the things about flamenco I’d
always liked and that had excited me”, Juan Carlos
Romero explains. And that led him to delve into his memory
as a musician and as a guitarist, halfway between tradition
and searching: “I’ve had very orthodox training
within the flamenco world. Ever since I was a boy, I’ve
been surrounded by certain strictness: you can do this,
you can’t do that… And since I started composing,
I felt like breaking loose from that”.
And he speaks sincerely about
those ties: “When you’re in that world of orthodox
flamenco, there’s little permissiveness. This is how
so-and-so used to do it and this is what has to be done.
And if you change directions at all, it doesn’t fit.
And if you do a specific harmony in a falseta, the cantaor
starts to feel strange. The concerns you have as you go
along are stifled”. But he sees the positive side:
“I’m glad I’ve lived it because it gives
you a very broad perspective and knowledge of the roots”.
So the disc is inspired by that past: “I felt like
looking back, seeking what I’d always liked and had
excited me”. But inevitably, his present came to light:
“You’re no longer the same and you look back
in that direction, but with all the loads of things you’ve
learned along the way”.
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“I’ve
always gone with the flow of what’s bubbling inside
of me”
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The one who best defines
the contents of ‘Agua encendida’ is Spanish
writer Luis Landero, author of the booklet’s text.
“There are no surplus phrases. Each one, and even
each note, are there out of a sort of necessity”,
he writes. “Regarding the essentiality, I’m
glad that he sees it like that. I don’t dare state
that about my own music, but it’s true that you tend
to say things with fewer elements, to weed out of the music
everything that might distract you from what you really
want to say”, Romero reflects. And I ask him if that
stance is a reaction: “I haven’t thought about
it as going against the grain. I’ve always gone with
the flow of what’s bubbling inside of me. What I needed
to do now was this, an album with little studio production”,
he replies. And in fact, the disc “really gives a
glimpse of the instant snapshot and uses the computer very
little”. In his opinion, the technique has to be used
“because that’s what it’s for, but in
what’s absolutely necessary. In the rest, I wanted
the moment to be reflected as is. There are very few takes
of each song and they’re all complete. It hasn’t
been fragmented and then put together”.
Juan Carlos Romero. Photo
© Lolo Vasco |
There aren’t many musicians
in the credits, either. “I’m tending to use
fewer and fewer elements. It isn’t deliberate. Once
I’ve recorded it, I see that I’m tending to
eliminate, that I keep things that are fundamental to me:
the vocals and the rhythm”. But his way of building
the rhythm isn’t usual: “It isn’t there
in an obvious way, but it is inside: the guts of the album
are rhythmically ambitious”. And he does admit “it’s
a tone of my style not to boast of rhythmic effectiveness,
either”. So he invites listeners to plunge in: “When
you delve inside and see where the falseta is placed, you
realize there’s a certain complexity”.
All of it indicates that
the album started to be prepared well before going into
the recording booth: “It’s all really elaborate,
but the preparation was done previously, at home. Once I’ve
decided that it was like that, I go to the studio and I
record it; I don’t keep on repeating. I wanted freshness”.
And the thing is that he loves the laboratory: “I
have a great time at the studio, it’s work which is…
I don’t know if tedious is the word, but it’s
something like that. A great many hours go into it for you
to turn out what you want, because you have to get your
idea across to another person - in the case of cante - and
that takes time and a lot of work. But I like constructing
a building brick by brick”, he admits.
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“None
of the voices chosen on the album is by chance; I wanted
them to be there because they are highly emotional”
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His way of working with flamenco
vocals is now an inherent feature in his career. And this
album is no exception. La
Susi, José
Mercé and José
Valencia, plus his mother’s lullaby, are the ones
which can be heard on ‘Agua encendida’. “None
of the voices chosen on the album is by chance; I wanted
them to be there because they are highly emotional. The
emotion was fundamental to me on this disc. And I understood
that through the voices, a channel was given to that emotion”,
he elaborates. He is really sure how to guide them: “I
can’t help it. I compose the songs with certain notes
and I don’t like them to be changed on me, unless
I understand that they do something that improves it, but
not whimsically”. Cante being the flamenco category
least prone to creation, Romero’s work as a composer
for flamenco voices is very interesting: “Each one
has his or her role. The role of the performer, of the composer,
of the instrumentalist is more than clear in the music…
and then I have some music and I think about some voices
that I think are the right ones to provide a channel for
that music”.
Juan Carlos Romero
Photo © Lolo Vasco |
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But there’s a reason
behind all those emotions channeled by the guitar and vocals.
The album is called ‘Agua encendida’ (‘Lit
Water’) because “it’s what my son Carlos
has meant to me. I grew up very close to the sea and, due
to where I’m from, it’s a really important element
to me. I understood that water and light were the top symbol
of life, which is what he has meant to me. They’re
contradictory but complementary elements”.
Together with the inspiring
poetry and together with the very fact of making an album,
other reflections surface about flamenco guitar in itself
and the reality of today’s flamenco guitarist. For
example, when he is reminded of that criticism from those
who think that flamenco styles are no longer recognized,
he replies philosophically: “But the thing is that
it’s hard to grow and gain things and not lose anything!
No pain, no gain”. He also tackles the matter of harmony,
the crux of the matter of contemporary flamenco guitar:
“Harmony is very important today because what flamenco
has traditionally lacked is harmonic resources. Everything
was developed in what some understand as Andalusian cadence,
in that cadence of chords lies all flamenco, above all the
most traditional cantes”. And, with the willingness
to teach, he explains “that’s starting to get
broken up a little with the latest generation of cantes,
like the cantes por alegrías, the round-trip cantes…
The tonality is starting to work there, but nearly everything
lies in the form. Flamenco was poor in that sense”.
In his particular case, as
he reasons, “I really tend towards harmony and it
isn’t just that I’ve sought it in that sense,
but rather harmony is an inner sensation, you see that things
are missing there… and it isn’t a series of
chords”. What’s the secret? “Some guitarists
have asked me at times how I harmonize. And I don’t
know, it’s as if they thought I use a method. It isn’t
like that, it’s that you listen to the phrase and,
in the background, you already hear the harmony. What you
do is look for what sounds inside of you. When you find
that sound, the phrase turns out harmonized the way you
wanted, but you aren’t following a specific method
to harmonize”, he admits.
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“The
best thing about guitar now in general is how well most
people play with regards to technique”
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Leaving aside the technical
details, he expresses his opinion on the pros and cons of
the panorama he sees around him. First, the positive. “To
me, the best thing about guitar now in general is how well
most people play with regards to technique, how well they
know so many things about guitar, with so many resources,
so many scales, so many chords… A lot has been gained”.
And here are the cons: “I think we have to be more
aware that we are what we are because someone left us something
and what they left us is really important. We’re important
because of that, flamenco is important because of that.
And sometimes I have the sensation that things are standardized
and watered down in the context of global music”.
What he means is that “we stop seeming like ourselves
in order to seem like anyone else. If we lose that, we lose
what all we are has given to us, which is an identity. To
me, the challenge is to keep on growing without losing our
identity, while staying who we are”.
And added to those difficulties is the
complicated situation of the record industry. “I don’t
even know what to say. Those who want to do things with
a certain weight, dealing with them rigorously, don’t
have it easy. It’s nearly a miracle for guitar discs
to come out, unless you resort to self-production. You record
your album, you pay for your album and you go and see if
there’s some charitable soul who will release it.
Then nobody wants to spend money on what’s given to
them for free. Nobody would if they did that with legs of
ham, but everyone understands that ham has to cost money
and music doesn’t. I don’t know why. Don’t
they know how many people there are working behind a disc?
No, they think it’s free and that it’s OK. But
how is it going to be OK? And as long as it’s like
that, it’s going to be really hard for anyone to want
to invest a dime in this, because they know they aren’t
going to get it back. The ones standing alone in this situation
are the artists themselves”.
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