Sandra Carrasco left the land of fandango to go out into the world. First, to the flamenco world, guided by maestros as illustrious as Arcángel, El Pele and Manolo Sanlúcar. Next, to world music, by the hand of Javier Limón, producer of her début album. A mixture of sounds from different parts wraps up her voice on this disc which isn’t strictly flamenco, but it “does have some very deep jondo roots”. And although she is already planning a future face-to-face with cante, she now upholds this letter of introduction in which she lays stakes on miscegenation and versatility, still sitting down on a chair beside Pepe Habichuela to warm up “por Huelva”.   

Sandra Carrasco (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

Three top maestros

Arcángel, El Pele and Manolo Sanlúcar are the maestros who have marked Sandra Carrasco’s first stage as a professional. “My early days in flamenco stem from ignorance, but also from liking. I had no knowledge, but I did have a very great love for it because it was the only music that filled me completely”, the cantaora admits. She comes from a home of good enthusiasts and in her bedroom, she used to listen to what she felt like, above all, Mayte Martín and Enrique Morente. So when she was called “to sing in a peña, I’d get there and started singing ‘Navega sola’ (‘She Sails Alone’), ha ha ha”.   

Shortly afterwards, she sailed guided by great captains. “Top maestros began to have me do choruses and that’s when I started to devote myself to flamenco”. Arcángel had just opened a school. Sandra registered and commuted from Almonte to Huelva every day to attend class: “I was always at his side, I was like his VIP student. I could tell the love he had for my way of singing”. The maestro got across to her his way of conceiving cante. “In Huelva there are some peculiar warbles; I don’t know if it’s the land or the elders we listen to. Those faculties are passed down from generation to generation”. In her opinion, “the preconceptions of fandango were shattered with Arcángel and a new world of tones has been discovered”.

Sandra Carrasco, interview (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

El Pele’s is another world, “a unique wavelength”. The cantaora considers him to be “a great maestro”. To her, being beside him up on stage is a delight: “Each artist has that special something and he’s very savage. And that savagery drives me crazy because he goes places that aren’t conventional, that aren’t expected”. But that quality is not incompatible with rigor, “because he’s very studious”. And discipline came with Manolo Sanlúcar. “He’s demanding flamenco personified. He has rebelled against the world, and that’s nice because his personality comes from there”. In her opinion, he is “the flamenco composer: I think ‘Tauromagia’ is sublime”. Demand… and emotion. The cantaora relates that “I’ve cried a lot with him up on stage… And we’ve also cried in the rehearsals because he’s really harsh, but he’s worthwhile”.

At the same time, she was a university student. “I wanted to be something more in life. Imagine one day I can’t go on singing”, she supposes. And she got a teaching degree with two specialties: Music Education and Religious Education. “I’m a firm believer and I think that religion is good depending on the way you get across that knowledge”, she reveals. But she recognizes that “my passion was my musical career”. That speciality “gave me good knowledge of technique: piano, solfeggio, flute…”. That is why to those who think that flamenco and technique are incompatible, she responds that “the studio is never going to subtract, but rather it’s going to add in every aspect”. While I was studying, cante was a hobby. “I was a normal person, doing my studies, I never liked to go out. I used to spend all day long in my room listening to music, playing with my dolls… I was a teenage girl”. Then she found out that “the most important studies are the ones on the streets”. And she took a crash course.

Sandra Carrasco (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

Fate, Madrid... and Javier Limón

She says that fate brought her to Madrid three years ago. “Here were the studies of solitude and those of oneself facing up to oneself”, she reflects. She considers it hard to make a living in the capital: “For the good artists that are there, the many tablaos and how active it is, flamenco isn’t appreciated”. Life was different in Andalusia. She used to live in Seville and she would work a little bit, “but everything fit together for me”. One day she was sunbathing in Matalascañas when she got a phone call. It was a friend from Madrid who told her that “there was a copla musical, that the casting was closed but that I had to go”. So, “I threw some stuff into my bag, caught a train, auditioned for Javier Limón and, two minutes later, he told me that as far as he was concerned I was in, that Blanca Li would see me, that I would do an acting audition, I did it well and I was in”. And she had never done theater or copla before. She asked her mother to bring her a suitcase full of clothes… and she never returned.

So far, the musical ‘Enamorados anónimos’ is the experience that is “the most beautiful one I’ve ever had, in which I met people I consider family”. And above all, Javier Limón. From the beginning, he took care of her: “He would always tell me “Sandrita, girl, you sing so well” and he would kiss me on the forehead, ha ha ha. I could tell there were good artistic and personal feelings”. So nowadays she affirms that “Casa Limón is my home”. But being a part of that house has a professional meaning: “I’ve been so lucky. I see the artists he’s brought out, their recognition, their awards… he’s a maestro producer in Spain”. But she clarifies what is important to her: “The work stems from love for things, so everything rolls, and what remains at the end is the person”.

The first album

Sandra Carrasco (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

Yes, Javier Limón signed Sandra Carrasco. And they forged her first album at Casa Limón. Before that, she gained experience reflected in recordings such as ‘Mujeres de agua’ and the live shows of “staff” artists like Buika. The line of the album is related to all of that. It isn’t the typical début of a young cantaora, the demonstration of knowledge of the base. “It wasn’t the moment. There are such good young artists singing now, like Argentina, Pitingo, Guillermo Cano… that I don’t think I would contribute anything… this year”. It is in her future plans. “I’ll do it later on, we intend to put together a DVD which I do my cantes on”, she announces. “I feel it and I want to do it, but I need two years of study, for my faculties and knowledge to be in charge, and not for flamenco to confine me”, she states.

So the challenge of this first disc was not to go back to what had already been done, but rather “to try and contribute something new to music and I think we’ve achieved that”. She admits that perhaps “on my own I would have done other things, but I’m being led by the hand of a maestro and you have to go with the flow”. The flamenco is exhibited differently; it’s in the tessitura of her voice, in her sketches, in the rhythms and in some collaborations, but all of it is intertwined with a miscegenation of sounds from other cultures, including pop. “There’s a fandango, a zambra with a seguiriya, bulerías…”, she goes into detail. And the flamencometer reaches its peak in ‘Fandangos con el tío Pepe’… Pepe Habichuela is the one who accompanies her on guitar in this cante which takes her back to her land.

The recording with the Granada-born maestro is a memorable episode. “We recorded together at the same time, me in one booth and him in the other, face-to-face. He’s the purest and, all of a sudden, he does something really modern that stuns you. He’s deep roots, but at home he has a genius of the modern who is his son Josemi Carmona and he’s assessed by him. He has glory in his hands and something special in his person”, she relates. Personality… “What I like most about artists is that you recognize them immediately; you say that’s Pepe, that’s Paco, that’s Vicente, that’s Estrella”. And you can tell it’s Pepe from the very first chord. “I sang with him first and once it was nailed, we left him alone at the studio, and he did his stuff on top of the basic guitar. You can’t imagine how Javier and I flipped out listening to him!”.

And curiously (or not), Pepe Habichuela is one of the fathers of the dialogues between flamenco and world music, his album ‘Yerbagüena’ being proof of it. “We had a presentation in Gerona with Anoushka Shankar and he does some granaínas with her. Moreover, he’s there with Dave Holland… He’s the most modern old guy in flamenco”. And it turns out that this route of encounters is - comparisons aside - what this disc of Sandra’s works on. There are twenty-six musicians from ten countries in the credits. From Granada to Madrid, from Tunisia to Turkey, from France to Puerto Rico, from Lebanon to Morocco, from the United States to Cuba, from Palestine to Israel. But she hasn’t made those trips, rather her producer did: “He takes a road and asks me to trust him. He’d tell me “I’m going to Israel today with Avishai Cohen (who, by the way, is a fan of Enrique and Camarón), and he’s going to stick a bass into the seguiriya”. And as he’s very expressive, he’d explain the music to me with his body and I lived it with him”, she admits. To which she adds that “he loves music and he sees the little details as big: he’s taught me that less is more”.