Interview with Miguel Poveda, flamenco cantaor
“I don’t feel like
I’ve made
my flamenco album yet”
Silvia Calado. Madrid, May 2009
He had already said so in the previous
interview. “I’ve come to flamenco as a result
of the copla”. So following specific contact such
as ‘Romance de valentía’ with Martirio,
it was just a matter of time before Miguel
Poveda would record an album devoted to this
Spanish musical genre so related to the jondo. In fact,
the copla which marked him was the one performed by cantaores:
the zambras by La Paquera, the couplets by Fernanda and
Bernarda. But of course, he hasn’t forgotten any of
the classic copla singers. And the thing is that, as a lover
of the genre, he felt obliged to contribute something to
it, to transfer to it the currentness, quality and universality
which have made flamenco evolve. Moreover, the circumstances
rule: “Since the National Music Prize I’ve felt
the obligation to do things like this”. So he involved
two of his most faithful collaborators, arrangement writer
Joan Albert Amargós and guitarist Chicuelo, in order
to “give people another way to reach the copla”.
Or rather, eighteen ways.
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Miguel Poveda
(Photo Maxi del Campo) |
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‘Coplas del querer’
is a double album with no fewer than eighteen songs plus
a bonus track. You’ve fulfilled your obligations to
the copla, haven’t you?
I don’t know when I’m going
to do more. I’m not going to devote my whole life
to making copla albums. It’s a genre I’ve had
so present since I was little from my home, from my mother,
that it’s really hard which one to choose and which
one not to. You select ten or twelve songs on a disc, but
a lot of songs were being left off that I wanted to sing.
In the end, I decided for it to be a double album. The record
company people throwing their hands to their head, Amargós
couldn’t handle it… But in the end I got everybody
mixed up in it and only two got left off it, ha ha ha.
And they’re presented in
a digipack as side A and side B with the look of an old
vinyl record…
Isn’t it cool? I wanted all of it
like that and that’s how the designers have done it.
I’m really happy.
So the hardest part was to choose?
Yes, the selection was hard. On the one
hand, there were a ton of coplas I wanted to record. On
the other hand, most of them were written to be sung by
women. On another, there are these horrible typical-Spanish
ones and then the bullfighting ones… I’m not
anti-bullfighting, but it isn’t a subject I’m
enticed by to sing now. In the end I chose the most tragic
ones... But there’s also the pasodoble ‘La senda
del viento’, which Farina used to sing dedicated to
Carmen
Amaya and ‘Sere… Serenito’, which
Camarón
recorded. I think it’s really funny how as shy as
he was and so young at that moment when he was only doing
traditional flamenco, he was grabbed by Rafael de León
and he did that rumba for him, he put him on a motorcycle
to sing it in a film with Lola Flores… And there’s
that little tribute to Camarón. It surprises me;
the poor guy must have been really embarrassed. So with
so many tragic coplas on a double album, without any songs
like that it would have weighed 3,500 kilos.
Are you aware of the drama of the
album as a whole?
Yes. It’s a pending matter I had.
I did the show ‘Romance de valentía’
with Martirio
and ever since then I’d gotten the urge to make an
album. At first the two of us thought about making a DVD;
but she began recording her stuff, and I did mine.
Miguel Poveda
(Photo Maxi del Campo)
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She told me recently that she encouraged
you a lot to record…
Exactly. Especially her. Always. And as
I’d done some odds and ends, I felt like making good
completely.
Musically, you form a trio with
Amargós and Chicuelo.
What does each of them contribute to the disc?
Amargós gives it a different vision
of the copla. He’d done versions of works by Quiroga
and I’d recorded the zambra with him, so something
close to the copla rang a bell with him, plus all the material
I passed on to him. I’m used to working with him and
I really like what he does; he was perfect for this album.
And then as I wanted other coplas to be more flamenco, I
needed a guitar and Chicuelo was perfect, since he’s
also worked with me and with Amargós for many years.
We know each other well… And how well he plays!, which
we already know.
What flamenco is there on this
album?
The voice and the intention might be flamenco.
The first coplas I ever listened to in my life were by flamenco
cantaores, by La
Paquera, Caracol, Valderrama, Farina… More by
them than by Juana Reina, Concha Piquer or Marifé.
The copla comes to me from the flamenco side. I’ve
done a lot of coplas by artists who have been cantaores
and at a given moment in their life they did copla, copla
shows like Manolo
Caracoll with Lola Flores and even copla films like
La Paquera. The flamenco’s on that side and also because
I come from that music. Of course, I’ve sung stuff
by Miguel de Molina, Concha Piquer, Juana Reina, Rocío
Jurado, Isabel Pantoja… the ones who are classic copla
singers.
There are some coplas to the flamenco
beat…
There’s one that goes por bulerías,
which is ‘Mis tres puñales’, which Marifé
de Triana used to sing. It sounded really flamenco to me,
and in fact, it’s a copla which I’ve always
heard por bulerías. Marifé, who recorded it
with an orchestra, was the only one who used to sing it
just the way it was. And then there’s a potpourri
I do with vocals and guitar by Chicuelo which starts off
like in a granaína tone with ‘Dime que me quieres’,
goes into a very slow Lole
and Manuel-type bulería with ‘Y sin embargo
te quiero’, goes into the world of flamenco milonga
with ‘Vino amargo’ and then finishes in the
most flamenco zambra with ‘Esta pena mía’.
Next, the song ‘Ay hermanita’ by Rafael Farina,
a copla which isn’t very well-known and which constantly
has sudden stops for him to show off his abilities. Amargós
has done a more current arrangement of it and when the quintet
comes in he had the idea to make it go por tangos. ‘Serenito’
is a rumba, ‘Tientos del cariño’ goes
to a tiento beat and for ‘Me da miedo de la luna’,
by Miguel de Molina, I chose a tanguillos compás.
Do you think you’ll convince
an audience who, like myself, aren’t very big on coplas?
Do you know why I’ve made this album,
in part? I know that the copla is linked to specific moment
in Spanish history; the Franco regime. Then it’s also
a genre which isn’t like flamenco; it’s younger,
less explored, some of its artists have been very exaggerated,
the stereotype of the folkloric has been developed, with
low-quality films… But if you take the copla out of
that context and you read the texts by Rafael de León,
who was an incredible poet, from Lorca’s school but
a little more popular, with music by Quiroga, with those
so Andalusian expressions… I find wonders there and
really nice ways of saying things, connected to the bolero,
the tango or even the ranchera.
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“What
happened to the copla also happened to flamenco in one
era; it was also associated with the Franco regime and
the marginal”
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What is true is that the tango has had
really good orchestras, really good musicians: Pugliese,
Salgado, Piazzola... The poetry of the tango has always
been accompanied by very good music, the bolero too, but
in the copla we’ve been a little boorish, with orchestras
with very few resources, with average musicians, except
perhaps on the oldest albums by Concha Piquer. And all of
that in addition to that time… has quite a few tacky
connotations.
Martirio has made a great effort
to make that image change…
Martirio has done so the most. And the
copla selection she does is very intelligent because she
knows which ones they are; the ones that are emblematic,
the ones that tell the truth, and the ones that are up to
other bolero or tango texts in her repertoire. She isn’t
going to sing Agustín Lara and then ‘Francisco
Alegre’, which is a really nice copla… to do
your laundry with. And it also happened to flamenco in one
era; it was also associated with the Franco regime and the
marginal. Then, beginning in the ’70s with Camarón
and Paco, people from pop, rock and other cultures start
to get interested in it.
Miguel Poveda
(Photo Maxi del Campo)
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Does singing copla demand a different
kind of effort in its performance?
No, because I’ve known the genre
since I was little. It’s the first thing I would sing
and the first thing I would listen to at home. I’m
really used to it; singing other things is hard for me.
It is true that you take on other attitudes, but as I find
so much proximity between one type of music and the other,
although there are differences… Since Fernanda and
Bernarda have sung so many couplets, La
Niña de los Peines, Bambino, Paquera, Caracol…
I don’t think it’s such a faraway world through
those cantaores, of course.
What can today’s flamenco
give to the copla, and vice versa?
I don’t know; flamenco music has
evolved a great deal. Flamenco has luckily coexisted with
other genres and we’ve done a great deal of research,
we’ve looked outside of our music, something which
the copla hasn’t done, and we’re more soaked
up with other things. So maybe we can give it… I don’t
know, make it more current, more prevailing, closer, besides
giving it the flamenco touch, perhaps more quality. I don’t
want to speak nonsense, either. The copla to flamenco…
a little bit less. Perhaps the texts by Rafael de León
and by Antonio Gallardo, which have a lot to do with folk
poetry.
Do you think you’re going
to reach new audiences with this album?
I don’t know, I imagine so, I guess.
I think it’s always happened with all the so different
records I’ve made. When I did poems in Catalan I reached
a different audience, with Bigas Luna when I did cinema,
when I did Alberti’s stuff, when I sang with singers
from other genres like fado singer Mariza, Santiago Auserón…
And the same thing might happen with this one; I’m
used to that.
The premiere is going to be in
Seville, at the Lope de Vega, a real sell-out…
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“I
have to give everything my personal touch; if not, it’s
no good”
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Yes, that’s what’s happened.
Antonio Álamo, the Lope’s director, proposed
it to me when he found out that I was going to start recording.
Seville and the Lope, which has had so many copla shows,
were the perfect place. But I would rather have reached
Seville with the thing more polished...
What does it feel like when an
artist like Pedro Almodóvar writes in the album’s
dedication that you have “the best of Caracol, Rafael
Farina, Mairena and Bambino mixed with something personal”?
I imagine he’s referring to me having
drawn on those sources, not that I sound like any of them.
And the part about the personal touch is true. I have to
give it to everything; if not, it’s no good.
And the copla should be knocked
up a notch, shouldn’t it?
It might sound a little arrogant, but I
had the need, as a lover of the genre, to do something for
it. It might not work out, it might not be what it needed,
but I had to do something for the copla. More than a tribute,
to contribute something. Although they’re coplas which
have already been done, which have already been sung. But
I don’t know, I wanted to show people that they have
this other way of reaching the copla, through my music,
Chicuelo’s and Amargós’s’. The
thing is that expressed like that it might sound arrogant,
but I’m a real lover of the music; I know the genre’s
flaws, I know it, I love it and I think I have to do something
for it. And since the National Music Prize I’ve felt
the obligation to do things like this. It’s a real
burden. But we’re there struggling to hold it up.
But you’re not leaving flamenco,
are you?
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“I
think I’ve made better albums of other things
than flamenco”
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In reality what I work on and make a living
at the most is flamenco. When people tell me I’ve
done this to make money I find it funny because most of
my concerts are cante recitals. Then through records I have
wanted to do other things like ‘Desglaç’
or ‘Poemas del exilio’ or the tango stuff with
Mederos or now the copla, but they’re things which
aren’t done on tour for a long time, nor do I make
a lot of money on that. I record what I feel like. And now,
for example, that I feel better prepared, what I’m
getting ready now is a traditional flamenco album.
That anthology you had in mind?
It isn’t an anthology, I think that’s
premature, but it is a dream for the future. Until the time
comes, I’m going to make a selection of more traditional
cantes with my ‘povedil’ filter. Honestly, I
still haven’t recorded the flamenco album I feel I
have to make. The one with Juan
Carlos Romero, ‘Tierra de calma’, is a good
disc, but they’re still pieces of his, with a renewal,
with a commitment, with all that stuff I love. But I don’t
feel like I’ve made my flamenco album. I think I’ve
made better albums of other things than flamenco. I do like
‘Tierra de calma’, but not the previous ones…
well, they have some odds and ends, but not overall. And
the time has now come to record the flamenco album that
I know I have to make. The audience will ask for it and
I need it, too.
