Juan Carmona Habichuela. The Flamenco Guitar.

While I'm writing these lines, I'm watching the six videos concerning the "toque" (flamenco guitar playing) from the series "Rito y Geografía del Toque". And through an inevitable association of thoughts, I notice the absence of Juan Habichuela in this collection: Niño Ricardo, Paco de Lucía, Pepe Martínez, Melchor de Marchena, Enrique de Melchor, Paco Cepero, Diego Carrasco "El Tate", Andrés Batista, Pepe Habichuela, Serranito... all pass-by in front of my eyes, offering their solos, their accompaniment, their opinions about the "toque" of the seventies.

Although he was raised in Granada, Juan developed his artistic career in Madrid, where he currently lives, and he doesn't hide his "ricardian" influence and his sympathy for Niño Ricardo as a source and as a school serving as reference point for him.

Why was Juan not considered as a classic when he was at his prime and why is he now celebrated as such?

Photo: Anahí Cármody

Just to make a brief review of the facts before writing this paper, I go through my archives seeing interviews, studies, articles, brief notes from newspapers, etc. dedicated to Juan, and once again I find that they are all recent. I finally reach, perhaps too hastily, a first conclusion: the world of flamenco has changed so much in recent years, it has made such a rapid evolution, it has varied so much, that artists who were respected yet not exalted yesterday, are today placed in the altar of the classics. And I am convinced that the first to be surprised by this must be the artists themselves. Finally, it seems that flamenco, no matter how avant-garde it pretends to be, always needs points of reference which are recognized by all.

What does "el Tio Juan" (Uncle Juan) have, being simple, modest, rather lacking in "falsetas" (flourishes) and in tecnique, to be placed today in the center of focus?

Juan Carmona Habichuela lived his first years under the influence of the misery of the post-war (Spanish Civil War) period: "Flamenco is now occupying an excellent spot in our society. It is experiencing an extraordinarily great moment, very different from the one present when I began. Then people suffered great hunger. I remember when I was a kid, and my father played the guitar while I danced in the streets, and then I passed a hat around and we would get a few coins. One day a man came up to my father and told him that where I should be was at school".

Today Juan Habichuela, with a certain spot at the tablaos of Madrid, will go down to Granada in a train after having earned a bit of money to spend it along with Juanillo "el Gitano"(the Gypsy), to hear him sing or simply to talk. On the other hand, his preference for accompanying nowadays cantaores like Chano Lobato or Rancapino is due to more than just artistic correspondence. Today his son Antonio Carmona (Ketama) has just bought a house in the most select area of Madrid and is on the cover of many magazines. Times change and perhaps the gypsy and flamenco family of the Carmonas might be one of the best paradigms of this speedy economic evolution of the Spanish society and also one of its consequences.

He began at an early age with the dance, even though it wasn't his thing. His first conception of flamenco and understanding of it, other than his descent, is therefore a rhythmic one. There is another fact which catches the eye about the dancing Juan: his early abandonment of this branch of flamenco after seeing other youngsters of his age dance such as Farruco or Terremoto, and realizing that it was not the thing for him. Early brilliance and clarity of mind therefor in the adolescent Juan, conscious of his limitations, and a key moment without which the destiny of the "tocaor" would have been different.

Once dedicated to the "toque", he was dedicated initially to accompanying the dance of a man from the same region as him, Mario Maya, together with Juan Maya "Marote". He continued thus with the rhytmical apprenticeship of flamenco. His guitar playing tecnique was ellaborated for this specific function of accompanying the dance.

He now states with pride the fact that he soon became an "aficionado" of the cante as an important value of his flamenco self. Thus, to his early rhythmical schooling we must also add his early listening of flamenco melodies, expressed with the voice and with its particular characteristics. Undoubtedly, his being oriented towards the dance, although it turned out to be the wrong vocation for him, conditioned his way of listening to the cante and its "fraseo" (performance of the lyrics of the cante).

He perfectioned his "toque" and his professionalism at the tablaos of Madrid. I recently went to "La Carboneria" in Seville to see several flamenco acts performed by a flamenco group composed among others by Luis Agujetas (cante) and Carlos Heredia (toque): a youthful public of diverse nationalities (drinking, talking and laughing strenuously) forced the tocaor and the cantaor, who had no microphones, to make a bigger effort than usual. This forced attitude conditions the tecnique and the modes of expression of the performers. Carlos Heredia had to give priority to certain mechanisms so as to be heard, like the use of the thumb and of the strumming. The more classical tecniques, like the arpeggios, tremolos, or even the staccatos would have been of no use. Being at this place in Seville, I could not help the feeling at "la Carboneria" of being in a nineteenth-century singing café and seeing to what extent an unfavorable environment can condition the "toque" of a guitar player, making him give priority to one tecnique or another. "When I feel like playing I go to an inn or to some friends' house and I spend almost the whole night playing, because I usually live at night. I live at night because noise bothers me. For me, the lack of noise is essential. With disturbing noises I am unable to play the guitar", says Paco de Lucía in an interview by José María Velázquez.

All of this will help understand why Juan Habichuela has in his first recordings the usual habits of the tocaor for dance, and the fact that his "toque" resembles that of Juan Maya "Marote": force, little harmonization, an abundant use of strumming and of the thumb, and quickness in the tempos. I am listening to his first recordings alongside Fosforito, Caracol, Jarrito, El Indio Gitano, El Lebrijano, Manuela Vargas, etc... and I cannot recognize the harmonious and full of different shades tocaor of today, except for the touch of the schooling of Ricardo in the "falsetas" (flourishes).

After this period of "toque" for the dance, Juan Habichuela had the fortune of going on to play at the festivals and the peñas, accompanying several different artists, forming an artistic couple with Fosforito and thus progressing further in the trade of being a tocaor, gradually making his "toque" more harmonious and diverse.

"Today there are many who dominate the guitar, who play it wonderfully. But when accompanying, the guitar player has to pause and listen to the cantaor and help him out, especially when he is lacking in voice power. One should not include long variations and play strange things to leave him with an even soarer throat, but instead should help him to get settled and to perform what he has to sing even though he is phisically sore. That is what an accompanying guitar player should do (...) When the cantaor finishes with his cante, you perform a short variation and allow him to come in again. You help him to breathe and to begin singing again (...) The cantaor is like the "mataor" (in bullfighting) and the guitar player is the "banderillero". You have to allow them to sing and if the guitar player wants to stand out, then he can play a couple of solos at the end to allow the public to see that he is also a star. But while the cantaor is performing, the guitar player has to be subject to what the cantaor is doing".

Juan is not only an "aficionado" of the cante, but also of the guitar, and he knows perfectly well the place which he holds amongst the guitar players when he describes with great sincerity his "toque", in the presentation of his album "De la Zambra al Duende":

"I have included a "Solea" which I dedicate to my brother Luis, who liked to play smoothly and simply, which is how I know how to play, simple and easy things, because I am not a "virtuoso", why should I try to make people think the contrary (...) I am a "short" player, who has always sacrificed himself in favor of the cantaor. I can play alone but they are "falsetas" (flourishes), not a player of strong staccatos or of speed... my thing is something different, it is much easier than all of that. It is to play flamenco and to do it briefly"

Norberto Torres Cortés
Translation: Pekka Odriozol Magazine