La Macanita, flamenco cantaora. Interview
“I’m not such a
serious cantaora as everybody thinks”
Silvia Calado. Barcelona, May 2009
Coming across La Macanita’s
voice once more is to come across flamenco cante once more.
The Jerez-born artist’s new album, ‘Sólo
por eso’, confirms such a statement through soleares,
seguiriyas and bulerías. But she wants to go further
and vindicate herself as “a cantaora of my time”.
That’s why she once again put herself in the hands
of Ricardo Pachón, who a decade ago produced that
album ‘Jerez-Xères-Sherry’ and that “huge
song”, ‘Adiós tristeza’. And as
she admits, she herself is “surprised” by the
nuances her voice takes on when performing songs to the
beat of tangos or bulerías, like the two composed
for her by Fernando Terremoto, to her, “Terremotito”.
And if she has to recall her elders, she also does so from
that sweet tessitura: she remembers La Paquera with ‘Maldigo
tus ojos verdes’, and Chocolate with the ballad ‘Cobre
viejo’.
La Macanita feels it is her duty to safeguard
the memory of flamenco. Although the history of Jerez cante
pervades any of her quejíos, on her new album ‘Sólo
por eso’, she includes two explicit tributes. Chocolate’s
is, as the cantaora explains, “through a song, a track
by Carlos Lencero with really short lyrics which Ricardo
proposed to me in case I felt like doing them”. And
of course she felt like it: “How could I not dedicate
that to a cante genius who is unfortunately no longer here,
but who has been a hard act to follow. Singing something
for him and dedicating that song to him made me feel really
good. I think we cantaores of today have the duty to remember
our maestros on albums”.
La
Paquera’s goes beyond admiration and respect for
one’s elders: “She used to adore me”.
And what she has done in this recording is to recover the
zambra ‘Maldigo tus ojos verdes’, some tientos
by Gallardo and Sánchez that the mythical cantaora
recorded way back in the year 1958. “I felt like doing
a song of hers, but one of the ones she recorded when she
was twenty years old. That song is over forty years old
and for me to do it now has brought me great pride and satisfaction”,
she explains. To which she adds a nuance which imbues the
entire disc: “Of course, it’s done in my form
and my way, because she recorded it in another style. We’ve
given it another air”.
What La Macanita is referring to is the
musical packaging her voice has on this album. Electric
bass, contrabass, keyboards, piano, drums, percussions,
slide guitar, harmonica, bandoneon… and of course,
clapping are the instruments which give most of the songs
that “other air”. A clarifying example is the
start of the aforementioned zambra, in which the bandoneon
does a sketch of ‘Caravan’. But in the musical
section she attributes all the ‘responsibility’
to the producer: “That’s more Ricardo’s
business. I know the musicians who are on the album, they’re
all good artists, but he’s the one who deals with
them the most”. She’s put all her trust in him.
“With them, the disc has been given a lot of freshness;
I think he’s given each song what it needed. Who better
than those musicians … I mean, he knows a ton about
that stuff”.
| |
|
“I
think Ricardo Pachón has given each song what
it needed”
|
But there is one instrument which stands
out above all the rest: of course, flamenco guitar. And
there are two of them. Diego
del Morao plays those tracks which have so much song
in them. Manuel Parrilla tackles the more traditional cantes.
As Tomasa points out, “they’re very different
guitarists and that gives the album freshness”. But
she has no preferences: “I sing well with both of
them. Each of them has his stuff and I feel really at ease
singing with both of them, really. Diego is younger, but
Manuel also sticks in stuff which is modern and, shall we
say, less formal. But in short, what we wanted was for both
of them to be there and for both of them to work on the
album, each giving it his mark”.
The thing is that here, Manuel provides
the right toque and with the mark of the ‘Parrilla
Family’ for the grief of cantes such as the soleá
and the seguiriya. And they are two cantes which always
suppose a challenge for this cantaora, although those who
listen to her - as it happened recently at Barcelona’s
Ciutat Vella Flamenco Festival - find it hard to believe.
She affirms that the soleá is a style “which
I really like to sing, but I also get by well with the seguiriya.
The thing is that I get by better with the soleá.
The seguiriya is much harsher, more serious. But I love
the soleá and it’s my forte and if I don’t
master it, I think I get by with it”. Get by? It is
hard to believe that Tomasa Guerrero ‘La Macanita’
should speak with this modesty about cante, but it has its
explanation. And she gives it herself: “The thing
is that I like what I do and I still have quite a bit of
respect for cante. The thing is that I’ve listened
to cantaores who are no longer here sing so well, but I
listen constantly to their records… and it’s
amazing”.
| |
|
“I
like what I do and I still have quite a bit of respect
for cante”
|
When talking about the soleá and
the seguiriya, she pronounces a key word: “serious”.
And she immediately reacts by explaining that it is applicable
to cante, but not to the cantaora. And she makes a firm
statement: “I’m not such a serious cantaora
as everybody thinks”. Next, she explains that “I
like singing a little bit fresher, new lyrics… not
just seguiriya and soleá”. La Macanita believes
that “I have to vindicate myself as a cantaora of
my time. Although I’ve been in the artistic world
for a great many years now, I consider myself a very young
cantaora; I’m still very young. I’ve come this
far, but I still have a long way to go. You learn something
new every day”. But nature has given jondo flavor
to her instrument and that marks her: “The thing is
that I’m a cantaora of purity, my voice is pure, rather
open and it can’t sound like any other thing that’s
not flamenco”.
But as she wished, new nuances emerge on
‘Sólo por eso’. “I have sweeter
registers here. The truth is that they’ve even surprised
me myself”. And it is curious that the one who composed
two of those tracks for her, the bulería ‘Volver
a verte’ and the tangos ‘Déjame volar’,
is another cantaor associated a priori with ‘seriousness’.
None other than cantaor Fernando
Terremoto - or as she calls him, “Terremotito”
- is the author of those two significant songs. The cantaora
relates it like this: “Fernando wrote the tangos and
the bulería-style song, and I liked it a lot because
it was really flamenco and really nice; moreover, I really
liked how he sang it for me. Then I gave it my personal
touch”.
And in passing, she vindicates Fernando
Terremoto beyond cante: “It must be said that he composes
really well. He’s now number one in his cante and
he’s a real artist, but apart from that he has quite
a good sense of music; he composes really nice things, does
wonderful song arrangements… which you then listen
to and nobody might think that he’s the one who’s
done the arrangements. Well, he has. That must be said.
What we all want now is for him to get well soon, God willing,
to see him working soon”. For those who don’t
know it and might be wondering about his absence from this
season’s festivals, since a few days after his recital
at the 2009 Nîmes Festival he has suffered a serious
illness which he is now recovering from and is scheduled
to return to stages this October. So be it.
And returning to the matter of flamenco-style
songs, youth and freshness, it must also be pointed out
that La Macanita is not new to these tessituras. On her
previous album, ‘La
luna de Tomasa’ (currently off the catalogue!),
Isidro Muñoz composed songs like that for her such
as ‘El corazón tras la puerta’ and ‘Como
comer solo’. But the story goes back further. The
cantaora explains it like this: “This type of flamenco
isn’t new for me; I’ve already done that style
of song on previous albums”.
-There’s ‘Adiós
tristeza’, I tell her.
-‘Adiós tristeza’
was a great song, she answers.
And was it ever. But the youth who sang
that emblematic song now has to be ‘grown-up’.
She will finish putting on her make-up all by herself in
a makeshift dressing room at the Contemporary Culture Center
in Barcelona, she will put on that sparkling red dress which
she has inside out on a hanger, she will put up her hair
a bit… and without further company than that of Parrilla’s
toque as well as Chícharo and Gregorio’s clapping,
she will give a superb flamenco cante
recital at the Pati de les Dones. It will soon come
time to perform live the songs, sweetness and youth included
on ‘Sólo por eso’, the latest album by
La Macanita.
