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Marina Heredia
(Photo: Daniel Muñoz) |
Tango de las
madres locas
“It came into my hands when I’d
just become a mother. My feelings were skin-deep; everything
was so new. It came to me by accident one day when I was
listening to a copla compilation by Carlos Cano and it
was hidden in the last cut on the second disc. It was
so unexpected that I was flabbergasted. And I decided
that on the next album, which I didn’t even have
in mind back then, we were going to do a version of it
and record it. Because besides what it meant to me as
a mother, I always like to say something when I’m
singing; I like to relate and leave a message. Besides
the fact that love’s really nice and all that, I
like to say things. We’ve tried to keep the Argentinean
air about it, like in the original, but to take it to
my terrain... And that’s achieved simply by me singing
it, instead of Carlos Cano”.
Rosa
tardía
“It’s a song of mine which
I’d had tucked away for a great many years. Nor
any intention of dusting it off. But Bola (Jerez-born
guitarist José
Quevedo), that’s what being close means,
found it out in a booklet of mine and practically forced
me to do it. It’s a really festive, high-energy
bulería. Joaquín
Grilo adds the footwork there. What deluxe collaboration
we had. But well now, I don’t think this will ever
happen again!”
-Do you usually write?
-I write little things, but it’s really hard for
me. And besides, I hardly ever like what I write. I throw
it out. I don’t know if I’m doing the wrong
thing by throwing it out, because one’s own criteria
is sometimes no good.
La
gran faena
“It stemmed from an assignment
for a Christmas gala on Andalusian TV. We didn’t
know what to do, since we didn’t feel like singing
the classical Christmas carol. And I just happened to
have a look at books by Benítez Carrasco and I
came across this poem which speaks of Jesus. I sent it
to Bola by e-mail and he musicalized it for me in three
days”.
-By e-mail?
-Yeah, yeah; we work a lot that way. It’s the latest
rage, ha ha ha.
Marina Heredia (Photo: Daniel
Muñoz)
Mil
vidas
“The lyrics are mine, too. I gave
in again. Bola and I do the music half and half. It was
a song I wrote when I was in Germany with the opera ‘Amore’
by Mauricio Sotelo, and I spent many hours alone at the
hotel. I’m a really melancholy person and when I’m
alone, I have a really bad time. I don’t like solitude
at all. And I wrote it there in Germany, so it’s
a love song ‘made in Germany’. And when Bola
found ‘La rosa tardía’, on the page
next to it was ‘Mil vidas’... Ha ha ha. And
he also took it to musicalize it. Since he musicalizes
so easily, you don’t even have time to refuse. When
he brought it to me with music... well, it didn’t
sound so bad to me. I mean, I liked it and all”.
Illo
y Romero
“On that tour of Germany, one of
the times I went there, José Bergamín’s
publisher, Manolo Arroyo, gave me a book called ‘Apartada
orilla’. I’d never read poetry because it
seemed a little boring to me; that stuff from adolescence.
And since I was given that book, I’ve never been
away from it. I’ve read it like five hundred times,
forwards, backwards, I lose it for six months, I find
it again... It’s the book of my life. With the passing
of time, I met Carlos Bergamín, currently my press
agent, who is José Bergamín’s grandson.
And thanks to him I got this poem. He’s talked to
me a lot about his grandfather. The relationship has changed
a lot; José Bergamín is like part of my
home, like my grandfather. So I have a lot of things by
José Bergamín, but I’m still missing
many others which have gone out of print. And I asked
Carlos to please give me stuff I didn’t have. And
one day without warning or anything, he sent it to me
by fax. When I saw it, I flipped out. I knew I had a song.
The same thing; I gave it to Bola and he musicalized it
in no time flat”.
-There are tracks which don’t
correspond to flamenco styles; they’re more like
songs...
-Since we’ve made this album by sentimental... impulses,
each track captures the moment we were at. And life goes
through a lot of moments; it doesn’t just go through
one. Your life doesn’t revolve around a unique sensation,
but rather every day you have a different hunger for living.
We’ve done the songs little by little without the
idea of recording them; the album arose later on. We didn’t
set out to find a repertoire to later record, but rather
the other way around.
Marina Heredia (Photo: Daniel
Muñoz)
El
calor de un beso
“It’s a soleá por
bulerías with lyrics and music by Bola. He also
had it tucked away in a drawer. And one day he showed
it to me and I liked it. This time I stole it from him.
We started to do it live well before the album came. And
when we got down to recording, it had to be in there.
It was already another part of the repertoire”.
-Speaking of soleá. That style
is your trademark...
-I think soleá is the mother
of flamenco; I think it all comes from there. I like seeing
it danced, I like seeing it played and I like seeing it
sung. If it’s there, I like it.
Los
tangos de la penca
“Ha ha. They’re from the
prickly pears, from the agaves. They’re the native
tangos of Granada. Besides, we did them in that so unhurried
rhythm, which is how they’re done there. When they’ve
been recorded on certain albums, they tend to be lightened
a bit, but we wanted to do it that way. In fact, we stuck
in an old recording at the beginning and the same one
at the end so that it would mark that feature from there.
It’s a recording by Zambra de Las Faraonas, from
my family. And in those same tangos, further along, my
grandmother sings, but we didn’t take that section.
We just took the falseta at the beginning. It sounds like
the old-time pick-ups and then our falseta begins... like
before and after. At the end, you have to go back, because
that’s where it all comes from. Besides, the jaleos
by Curro Albaicín are there, which are brilliant.
These tangos have turned out really nice. It’s one
of the tracks I like the most. And they can’t be
sung halfway; they’re brave tangos”.
Nunca
fui a Granada
“It was also an assignment for
television, for a special gala which was done to pay tribute
to Alberti. We looked for poems and this one seemed really
appropriate to us because it mentioned Granada, I’m
from Granada and it talks about that pending meeting Alberti
had with Lorca, which they’d postponed and which
never happened because he was shot to death. You have
to say things. You can sing really nicely, have a really
good voice, but fifty percent of a cante is the lyrics.
Regardless of whether you sing it well or badly. There
are singers or cantaores who didn’t sing so well,
who didn’t have such a good voice, but they used
to say it really well. And what they said had contents,
had things to listen to”.
-How do you turn a poem into cante?
-There are some that you read and you’re already
listening to them. ‘Illo y Romero’, when I
sent it to Bola, I already told him to look at it por
bulerías because you read it and you feel like
partying, like dancing to it. The one by Alberti sounded
to me like bulerías, but not that high-energy bulería;
it was more like a variety song.
-Is it an easy resort?
-Not at all; it’s much harder than taking a refrain
and repeating it six times in the same cante.
-In ‘La voz del agua’
there are refrains, but they’re more measured-out...
-I don’t even see them as refrains, but as cushions,
as aids. The song isn’t based on those refrains
but on the music, on the lyrics, on the cante... on everything
else, except for that. The refrain is like another instrument.
“Me duele, me duele...” - she sings, jokingly
-. I’m getting long-winded.
Marina Heredia (Photo: Daniel
Muñoz)
De
antaño
“They’re pregones by Manolo
Caracol. I’ve been doing them for many years
because I love them and I love Caracol. I liked the idea
of recording them. Caracol is flamenco in essence. Caracol’s
personality was overwhelming; he was a genius and a figure.
I love him. Those really strong personalities catch my
eye a lot, like that of Lola Flores”.
-Does it test you vocally?
-They’re really hard, but I’ve really absorbed
them because I’ve been doing them live for a long
time. I thought it was a serious point for the album.
And every sound Paquito González sticks in is done
with the studio full of water; he does the rhythm in tubs.
Imagine the water splashing around there. Repeat! Play!
For an hour like that... We were up to our eyebrows in
water. The studio guy wanted to kill us. “We’re
going to get electrocuted!” It was a lot of fun,
Paquito happened to think of it and it turned out really
well. Besides, it fit in perfectly with the idea of the
title.
-And it isn’t the ‘typical’
toná...
-It was a cante which used to be done in the street, announcing
what was being sold. We do the candy ones, the grape ones...
And we also stick in the trilla “no lo quiero del
campo”. It was all really rural, like really down-to-earth.
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