Juan Peña Fernández received us in "Las Galeras", his country home outside Lebrija. There, surrounded by trees, the son of María la Perrata of Utrera, and of Bernardo Peña, the livestock trader from Lebrija, opened up the story of his life, as if wanting to recall the struggle required to get to the top.

"I've got 33 published works and I consider myself incapable of being categorized. I've done everything from symphonic productions, to orquestrated bulerías, to rock music and pop... When I hear Michael Jackson or Sting I feel capable of singing like them, but there are certain stupid barriers that need to be torn down. Music is just waiting for something new".

El Lebrijano (Photo: Estela Zatania)

DIALOGUE WITH THE MUSIC

This was how the singer, little by little, guided the conversation to something that he has always defended: the dialogue with other kinds of music which is always possible. "When I did Arabic-Andalusian music I remember they all said I was crazy... With "La palabra de un gitano", in 1971, there were violins playing bulerías and I was also crazy. But I go much further back. There's a recording called "Detrás de las estrellas" that I made with Gualberto, in that group called Smash, where a flamenco sings rock for the first time, back around 1960". This gives a rough idea of the musical diversity that El Lebrijano always has in his head. "Music is the successful combining of sounds in time, and anything that enters into this definition is valid as far as I'm concerned".

Juan belongs to that generation of singers whose youth was marked by the arrival of other kinds of music to Spain. "I was very lucky, because I coincided with all the great artists of the Madrid movement and we could just as soon listen to la Niña de los Peines, as negro spirituals. If a jazz group came to Madrid, we'd go to any dive to listen to them. For that innovative spirit we were, and are, at the cutting edge". Nevertheless, if detours through other sounds are inevitable for the flamenco singer, even more important is that he speak in his own language. Because in addition to the flirtation with jazz, rock or what have you, El Lebrijano devoted five years to working in the world of Antonio Gades, and he's been accompanied by two separate and distinct generations of guitarists, from Niño Ricardo to his best student, Paco de Lucía, from Melchor de Marchena to his son Enrique, not to mention "that afternoon with Felipe de Triana in the Manzanilla inn when Manolo de Huelva played for me when I was just a boy". The thing is, Juan has had many "Encuentros" with the six-stringed instrument, and thanks to that, doors began to open for him in this world of flamenco.

PASTORA, HIS MUSE

But despite being the son of a cantaora, El Lebrijano realizes that he would he been a livestock trader like his father had it not been for his great teacher and muse: Pastora María Pavón Cruz. "La Niña de los Peines called me her nephew and she taught me practically everything I know. They said she was crazy, but that's because they didn't know her. She was a genius and she was the first one to apply the same lyrics to different cantes, as well as the first woman singer to sing solo in her own right. The bambera, the petenera, the tientos... these forms would not be the same without Pastora's special stamp. That's why I'm fortunate, because I knew her, and upon her foundations I built my structure, all that which is not seen, but which is absolutely necessary". Here, at this point in the conversation, the walk ended and as he stood there, by the triumphal arches that surround his house, it was the moment to run down the list of acknowledgements. "For me, one of the best singers who ever existed was Juan Talega, and I learned a lot from him. Mairena, Pinto, la Fernanda and la Bernarda..."

Translation: Estela Zatania