Alberto García Reyes

He's wearing a white shirt and a pair of boots worthy of Crocodile Dundee. He got up at eight o'clock in the morning "to work, because things aren't going well", and it's almost nighttime. That's a lot of hours of non-stop talking, which isn't the same as many hours of non-stop playing, at least for Raimundo. "It might not be such a bad idea if we hurried through the interview a bit, I'm at my wit's end" he says with his street-wise accent. Amador hasn't forgotten that verse which lent it's name to the group assembled by Kiko, the Catalonian - "Dame veneno que quiero morir, dame veneno..." ("give me poison, I want to die") - and he's holding a whiskey and water which is getting sloshed around with all the movement, at the same time that it's getting tired of waiting to be drunk. What the glass doesn't know however, is that the fingers that are holding it are the envy of hundreds of flamenco-lovers.

Photo: Anahí Cármody

"Un okupa en tu corazón" ("a place in your heart") - Polygram, 2000 - is the proof. "Here I play every kind of guitar. With the Gerundina I do my flamenco, with the electric one, funk, blues, jazz, and rap; and I've also gotten into acoustic guitar, which I had never tried before" explains Raimundo. But, which one is the hardest to play? "Well, that depends on what you're using it for. Usually, the flamenco guitar is the most difficult because the notes fade away sooner and you have to be quick. But the electric guitar also has its complications, because you have to know how to stop it. It's like playing the piano compared to an electronic keyboard. If you're accustomed to the keyboard, the piano is very hard, but if it's the other way around it seems like you sticking your hands into lard. Each one has its own thing".

ALWAYS CAMARÓN

The record also shows a marked improvement in the singing of the guy from Chapina: "The thing is, I've been singing for five years already, because before I never opened my mouth, I was too embarrassed. I mean, when I'd had a few drinks maybe okay, but nothing more than that". And needless to say, no matter how much Raimundo gets into diverse and apparently contradictory kinds of music, he never strays far from that which is his own... flamenco. "How am I going to sing blues without sticking in my flamenco bit? That stuff is for the forty or fifty thousand people in America who know how to do it". Between one thing and another the topic of Paco de Lucía comes up. "Don't anyone compare me to him, because neither I nor anyone else can even come close to him. Paco is Paco, period. I remember once I went to see him play in a concert here in Seville. I was just a kid and when it was all over I went to ask him for a cigarette. He answered "go on kid, get outta here". What a riot". Nor does has the guitarist forgotten about the singer who sparked a revolution which he had begun earlier together with his brother Rafael, with their group Pata Negra. "I miss Camarón a lot, I think of him every day because he was a giant. That's why I talk about him in one of the songs: "una chapita del Cordobés y una foto de Camarón" ("a Cordobes pin, and a snapshot of Camarón"). If it were Curro Romero, I'd also put a photo, but being el Cordobés..." says the artist.

On this recording he shared the recording studio with his buddy Tomatito for the song "A mi primo Tomate". "We recorded that straight through in a single take. He told me we should both play at the same time instead of mixing later on. And it came out so good that when we were finished I said "ole, that's really good" and afterwards the sound technicians left it on the record". He punctuates everything he says with a smile and a nostalgic look towards his neighborhood and his people. He talks about things like remembering when Manuel Molina advised him to stop imitating Paco so much and start playing for himself. And he even complains because he's starting to get a little paunchy. "So let's go, no?" And he settles into the black jacket that goes with his Australian boots while he fights with his face to keep from looking tired. Time doesn't stand still, not even for Pata Negra.

Photo: Anahí Cármody

The recording company directly proposed, well, they put it to me, that B.B. King play on Gerundina's record and I told them: "But this time we're going to do it differently, no?" because I was B.B. King's opening act here in the Cartuja Auditorium, no? And they suggested that I play with him, and he didn't buy it, gee, because he didn't know me... So this time, before saying anything about this, we sent him some of my tapes, of Pata Negra and all... In another it said: "B.B. Kind with Raimundo Amador", which I had recorded with the company. And then, well, he listened to some of my stuff, Pata Negra's record and whatnot... and then he said okay, and that was it. And that's how it was the first time, with Gerundino in New York, that was when I met him for the first time, just like that, one to one. And you know something? Ever since I was a little kid you might say, I was learning from him. B.B. King saw me and he couldn't believe it, you know? This guy, I saw him there and I said: "You ever heard flamenco before?". "Yeah, Segovia, Segovia" he said.

I haven't heard much of Segovia or classical music, but I like it. There are moments when I've caught the drift and little things have come out from Mozart, Vivaldi, Albinoni.

I went through this thing with flamenco. It happened that I was a little tired of it all and afterwards was when the Jimmy Hendrix thing and all, that I heard it and I got into the music that I'm doing and after that, I really liked flamenco a whole big lot.

Flamenco is fasionable now, but I don't want it to be fashionable, I want it to be like the blues. When it started out and it went on and on... climbing and climbing, until it reached the level of blues. Blues is very well-positioned and never goes out of style, you're always hearing blues, right? Know what I mean? That's how flamenco ought to be.

Alberto García Reyes
Translation: Estela Zatania