MARINA HEREDIA, IN OTHER FLAMENCO WAYS

Only 20 years old, and working on her first solo record, he is already considered one of the best voices in Flamenco

If Macanita deserves the bronze for her voice, the silver must be, after looking at the show in which they both perform together, for Marina Heredia: White skin, smooth voice, with a good looking figure that moves elegantly, and a great boldness that she doesn’t want to break. A young voice trying to get out ancient and darker sounds.

She sings tangos from her province, Granada, and among the liberties that she permits herself to arrange are her jingling and long times "por alegrías". She is 20 years old in April 2000. A good friend of Estrella Morente since their early childhood ("Yesterday night we went out together..."), Marina is currently concentrated with the recording of her first record. She has just signed a contract with Universal and is still searching for some tunes, without a hurry. "We want to do it really well, with a lot of little details, everything must be really clean". When it will be released? Maybe at the fall? "I would say so. The people from the label want it done for the spring, but I think that we don’t have the time for it". Will be Estrella’s father also your musical Godfather? "It would suit me just fine, but my record’s producer is Isidro Sanlúcar. That’s not for me to say".

She entered a recording studio, in a French production, while still being thirteen, with Pepe Habichuela and Enrique and Estrella Morente. When she was fifteen, her voice started to stand out from behind of the "cuadros flamencos" of "bailaoras" as La China first, and with guitarists as Miguel Ángel Cortés after that. "When I was starting my career, Miguel Ángel was the first that took the risk of practicing with me, of helping me, because, you know, you always have to have a guitarist with you, to tell you what to do, to open for you. I have spend much less time with Paco, because he’s older and he’s really busy with Carmen Linares".

Getting some air

With him she performed live Lorca’s ‘Baladilla de los tres ríos’, a song that follows the arrangements of a Carmen Linares record, to whom she replaced in a María Pagés’ show at the Granada Festival de Música y Danza. Talking about some more classical matters, she also collaborated at the last Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla with José María Gallardo in six ‘Canciones de la vida’ (Songs of Life) that have just been released as a record called "La Maestranza. "Well, of course that it sounds like flamenco, but that is because I can’t sing anything else. And José María really has a flamenco touch. Nowadays, flamenco in not just seguiriyas, soleá and bulerías anymore… The last song of that show is similar to a tientos. I really enjoyed working with him, and learned a lot of the musicians that play with him, because they’re really open minded. And a change of pace is always positive. To get some new air". To get new airs in such a closed room as that occupied by flamenco? "You know that in a flamenco ambient you finish your job and then you go to party all nigh long, night after night… That’s all right for a while, but here you have to work everyday, and you can’t afford not to be in top notch form, or else you are not going to be able to deliver what is asked from you. With this people, is just the opposite, you can only work, and if some day a party comes along, that’s quite all right".

While being in that Bienal already mentioned, Marina also performed with the bailaora Eva la Yerbabuena. "This year we have worked together a lot, and for me it’s been a great pleasure, because singing to Eva is another way of looking at flamenco, that’s really fantastic". And behind La Yerbabuena, she sits next to Árcangel. "In this show we sing separately, but sometimes we all sing something together".

One among the elders

Marina has managed to put herself at the front of radically different milieus: she performed at the Espárrago Rock (98) as well as in an opera, ‘Amore’ (99), composed by Mauricio Sotelo. "At the beginning I thought it to be a little risky, because it meant mixing flamenco with modern opera. I was thinking: Hope they don’t kill us for this…" She staged it at Munich for a month an a half, sharing the stage with the cantaora Eva Durán. The play debuted in Spain at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, in September, and was not staged again.

Last week, Marina sang in France "at a little festival near París", with his father, Jaime el Parrón. His master. "He was the first one that I heard singing. When I was born he started to sing to me, and after that I’ve been learning from everybody... that is, from everybody that’s good" Some influences? "I would lie to you if I didn’t say: Camarón". Anyway, she doesn’t have that accurate "camaronian" style typical of the last generations. "You have to know how to separate things. I’m Camaron’s number one fan, and I will always be, but there’re a lot of really great singers; you mustn’t evolve around just one person, when you have such interesting people as Caracol, Mairena, Chacón, and so many others. I like to think like the elders."

Luis Clemente