LA MACANITA

A HIGH RELIEVE VOICE

"I’ve been singing since I was a little child. I couldn’t understand a thing, but I was already singing". Tomasa Guerrero Carrasco, A.K.A La Macanita due to his father’s nickname, El Macano, was born in a tenement placed at the Calle Nueva, no less, in the Santiago district. "That’s the cradle, a lot of artists that now are quite important have been born there. It's a very flamenco district, and I'm very proud of it".

Although she doesn’t live there anymore –she’s still living in another side of Jerez, anyway-, that’s the place where she grew up, and there was where she came up on a stage for the first time, when she was eleven years old. She debuted at a studio recording singing a tune for the "Así canta nuestra tierra en Navidad" ("That’s the way our land sings in Christmas") series, and after that, she also participated in all of the other instalments of the same series but the first, and there’s been seventeen already (she also sang christmas songs for Saura’s film). The last thing recorded by La Macanita have been three Christmas songs for this series, one of them, ‘En el camino de Egipto’ (Egypt’s way) with La Paquera. The best cantaoras from Jerez, face to face.

"La Macanita" © Paco Sánchez

Comings and goings.

When she wasn’t still twenty, Manolo Sanlúcar asked her to sing in his record "Tauromagia". "A very important record in my career. Manolo Sanlúcar was then at his peak, and there were also collaborations by José Mercé and other great artists. I rememeber to have had a great time, and they were all very nice to me, because I was still a kid. They made a place for me, and that was a very important experience in my life".

Tomasa la Macanita has excellent solo records, and she doesn’t sings to dance. She dances all alone. Without a micro. She gives herself to the audience at her shows. But let’s talk now about what happened the year after ‘Tauromagia’ was released, 1989: Pepe de Lucía produced and composed for her a very merry first record, that opened with colombianas and was closed por fandangos. It was the first one signed with her name, and was called "A la luna nueva". "I had a lot of hopes for that record, but if an artist records her thing, and then that thing gets locked in a drawer and doesn’t get any promotion, that’s not the artist’s fault. In fact, I do still sing some tunes of that record... That’s one of the things that I have experienced in my career".

Not long after that, Paco Cepero worked with her at the recording of yet another difficult to find album, this one called ‘Cariño de ida y vuelta’ ("A Coming and Going Love"), which was more Spanish singing oriented. ‘Con el alma’ ("With Soul") was a different story. It was recorded at Sevilla, and released by a French Label in 1995. Playing guitars, nothing more and nothing more than Parrilla and Moraíto. Inside, among other cantes, five different classes of bulerías. "It was more intense, because it was a more professional job, and my voice was better altogether, more worked out. This is a very flamenco and very well done album. Yet another experience, another work and other illusions".

Jerez – Sherry

Little time before entering her thirties, Hermana Macana recorded her masterwork due to Ricardo Pachón’s bifid hand, an homage to her dry Jerez. Gypsy hoarseness, african lips, and her Moraíto in top notch form. The four opening tracks (alegrías with a salt smelling blues background!) are colourful; the three closing ones are black and white in a high relieve.

"It’s a record of a good quality" remarks Tomasa. They called it ‘Jerez-Xèrez-Sherry’, and it opened with a bulería por soleá that was a real diamond, ‘Adiós tristeza’(Bye bye Sadness). "Yes, it’s very beautiful, what happens is that... no, I’m not going to tell you that because I don’t like to say naughty things, but you have to be lucky".

And all that, although the record has two very different sides. "When you are recording you mustn’t only remember the soleá, seguiriya and alegrías, because purity appeals only to a minority, so you have to reinvent yourself and search new tunes. It’s a very beautiful record, and it has a lot of work behind it, but maybe it has lacked of the luck and promotion it should have had. I have not been in many television networks with this work, but anyway, it’s been good for my live shows. To have a new record on the racks helps me getting work".

Loneliness lessons

In it there’s a part of a warm room, a quarter of an hour of primeval soup: to have Fernanda’s aura por soleá is as much as you can get por soleá. After those ‘Lecciones de soledad’ (Loneliness Lessons) that she dedicated to the one from Utrera, the strenght of La Macanita’s voice has become truly unique. "We did it without a wait. We sat next to a fire and we were talking, me and my people, the kids with whom I usually work, Chicharrito, Gregorio, Moraíto… and we got it like that. Morao was getting hot on the guitar, "Keep singing, keep singing", so we recorded a twelve minutes soleá... they registered it and it was just like if they would have recorded it without our knowledge. It wasn’t prepared, it was an espontaneous thing".

She doesn’t goes short on shows; this year she has performed in Germany, and she will be in London soon. That’s why she doesn’t think that she will go back to the recording room in a while. "Well, of course there’s a project of a recording, but I have not signed yet with any label. I’m freee as a bird. Let’s see what can I make to get this record more widely know than the previous one".

Some days after this interview was done, Pachón told me that they had just signed with Senador. Fifth record and fifth label for this real and artistic live wire, with a Jerez seal. And the echo of her bulerías still resounds: "You can’t pave your way with little cloud stones that go away in a sigh…"

Luis Clemente

Magazine