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What would be your selection of ‘forever records’?

The same as everyone else. ‘Me voy contigo’, ‘Luzía’ by Paco de Lucía, ‘Siroco’, ‘Ziryab’, all of Camarón's, those by Miles Davis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones … are albums we'll listen to all our lives.

Kiko Veneno (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

In the lyrics of another song, ‘No cuesta dinero’, you provide a recipe that seems inferred from cante flamenco: “Simplicity in sound, a lot of rhythm, a forceful message”.

Yeah. Flamenco is an artform worthy of study because with few elements, it achieves extraordinary results. It gets to the heart of the matter, as stockholders say, straight to the core. Flamenco doesn't go for accumulating data or baroque style; it goes for simplicity. Few words, but with a lot of feeling. Cries that make you pour the pain out of your soul, and very essential. Few notes, but with a lot of strength and very basic. And the same thing in the format; the guy sitting up there with his guitar and the body rhythm of the baile and clapping. Flamenco is a very essential artform; therein lies its universality. And I'm trying to learn flamenco's great virtues for my music, especially in the lyrics and essentialness, getting to the point, seeking the emotion. And the lyrics, well, mine are longer than flamenco's, but shorter than Sabina's.

In a recent interview you called for a return to the roots of classical flamenco, since its connection to the people is being lost...

It's a highly-debated subject nowadays that flamenco's wasting away. And all that traffic there is with flamenco; some of its elements are taken to enhance other types of music. Well, more than anything to patch up deficiencies of other kinds of music; that's the way I see it. I'm a very positive person, but I try to be negative to see reality, too. This is a commercial agreement and what worries me is flamenco's situation as such, as an Andalusian artform, from our native land, art linked to a certain people, to a way of being, to nature, to the countryside's cycles, to natural cycles. And Los Delinqüentes, for example, get it. Without being strictly flamencos, they're on that wavelength. Nature isn't just birds, trees, beaches... it's also industrial parks, like Muchachito Bombo Infierno sings.

Nowadays flamenco suffers the ills we all suffer from: a lack of naturalness, a lack of calmness, a lack of zest, of power, of sitting down and moving your foot like that, trying to say simple things... In a frantic world, scampering forward, with new technologies... our historical, cultural and environmental legacy is largely being destroyed so that a few people can make a lot of money. Flamenco is weakened by all that. We're apparently gaining in some things, but I want to see the ones we're losing. We're losing free time, we're losing naturalness, the street, beaches, food in season, chemical-free food... and that to me is modernity. I'm in favor of all technologies, but I don't think any of them contradicts tomato spread on bread from your native land. I believe the most modern thing is nature, the most constant. Destroying nature always seems harmful to me and I don't think you have to support any kind of philosophy; I think they're all shields and subterfuges. I believe we can communicate by satellite, have our computer, our cell phone and Internet, but that doesn't contradict nature or humane cities.

Nor in music, don't you think?

	"Nowadays flamenco suffers the ills we all suffer from: a lack of naturalness, a lack of calmness, a lack of zest, of power, of sitting down and moving your foot like that, trying to say simple things..."

I really like techno and avant-garde music, the strange sounds and experimenting people are doing nowadays. They're not exactly musicians in the traditional sense, because they don't play any instrument, but they make use of recorded elements and samples to build a musical world. I find it useful and interesting, but balanced with natural values.

In fact, you use Internet to spread your music and to communicate with your followers. How do you defend this medium which is so heavily criticized?

Humankind is happy and free on the defensive, seeking and scraping up the happiness that can be allowed to us by the system, which is denied to us by the system's information monopoly. I see Internet as a weapon; the only one they let us have. If they don't let us talk on TV or on the radio, we've got to look for something. It'll always be a minority medium, but at least it's valid and real, where we can communicate freely. Logically, we're going to use all the corners of freedom that are allowed to us.

‘Rockdelux’ magazine named ‘Veneno’ the best album in the history of Spanish pop. How do you feel about that?

Pride and joy. I hope it's a stimulus for me and helps make people more receptive towards my new album.

The second album selected was ‘La leyenda del tiempo’ by Camarón. What role does flamenco play in Spanish pop music?

When ‘La leyenda del tiempo’ came out it was a record hardly accepted by the flamenco establishment. People didn't accept it because it was too ground-breaking. And in time it's become a more emblematic album perhaps due to that; because of the revolution it meant, the new sounds and the new ways of tackling a production. Also because of the courage Camarón had... and clarity and naturalness. After having made such brilliant albums with Paco de Lucía just with guitar and voice, he gets into a new world of sound in which he gets along with the skill and conviction of a genius, which is what he was. But people took a long time to accept it; it was something new and it was ground-breaking. I think that's the way it has to happen. A great many good things are condemned to being the minority and having to struggle against bad things, which are the majority.

	Kiko Veneno (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

‘Veneno’ was also ground-breaking and sent out its message...

We also did something, but more, more. Camarón's record was strange for Camarón, but it was a much more approachable album. The Veneno album (Kiko Veneno plus Rafael and Raimundo Amador) was much more ground-breaking in the sense that it was more unpleasant, surlier, tougher. It was a record that put your patience to the test, your ability to accept. It grazed the limits of perceiving music, intonation, poetry.

And speaking of poetry, on this new album you tackle themes such as peace, freedom... what are the messages in ‘El hombre invisible’?

The usual messages: about affection, freedom, closeness, zest, always wanting to communicate with others even if others don't want to communicate with you. And there's also a message about the paradox, life's dialectics, that what's successful and the most apparent is really the most inconsistent, what devalues the most. And like the one that's there in the minority, it's the little details in life that light up your entire life. That's the paradox we move around in where what's most commercial is the worst, but sells the most. People are also clearly aware that there are things which aren't commercial but are wonderful, although they don't count. We move around in these paradoxes; the great victors with the triumphant smile, but who no longer say anything to you. The people are worth more who struggle, contradict themselves, beg, fight, and clumsily say things that light up the world. This is the great dialectics we humans are unable to understand because we always go for the bestseller. And that's what they want; that's what those dominating the world urge us to do.

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