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Despite the greater variety in the repertoire, the bulerías are in command once more. What do you like about that style?

P.A.: In flamenco, I simply think it’s the top style in rhythm and one of the hardest ones to perform. The bulería makes you vibrate, lifts you up. It might just as easily get joy across to you as make you weep from the unexpected. It’s a really versatile style whose different rhythmic forms and its times can be played with. The bulería has magic.

Pepe Torres, dancing (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Which are your own new creations?

P.A.: Well, there are a lot of little details in some of the musical arrangements of songs like the sevillanas and the tarantos... songs belonging almost entirely to El Mellizo and Diego, and there are also a lot of arrangements in other songs where the Cuban tres is the boss. Really, the completely original songs are ‘Soleá del amor’, in which Raúl provides the idea and most of the music, ‘Tanguillos de la frontera’, a creation of mine in which my tres-playing colleague contributes part of the chorus and ‘Bulería en rama’, which is another song I contribute in its entirety. As regards to the baile, the song ‘A los viejos maestros’ is a creation of my cousin Pepe Torres, who together with Manuel and Moi adds a great many ideas to the scores.

The role of the Cuban tres is eye-catching once again. Is continuous ‘research’ required to adapt it to the idiosyncrasy of flamenco?

R.R.: The work with the tres is giving me huge satisfaction because it’s managed to join us in a really natural way. And I can sense that it’s here to stay. The mechanics I have to seek with the instrument to adapt it to the ethics and the esthetics of flamenco is really complex but really nice, really creative. It has the nature of pioneer work; it’s a lot of work for me because I don’t have any precedents to base myself on. I have to make up the ways and compose a unique technique to be able to play all that music with, which is a big sacrifice, very demanding and requiring a lot of involvement. It might be for that very reason that it’s really beautiful and really satisfactory to do, discover and surprise yourself again. In time and with dedication, you gain new mechanisms and details along the way nearly without realizing it and which join in by themselves. And those are the greatest things. It’s a magical instrument. It adds life.

You’ve always insisted on the concept of a ‘group’ versus that of a ‘cuadro’. How do you work to compose?

P.A.: In a group, everyone has a say-so and everyone contributes his musical ideas. Each of us works in his area and we try to give some idea that suggests something to us freshly and which doesn’t lose flamencura. Every part is important and indispensable, from the clapper who dances to the cantaor, with the flamenco tres player and musician, guitarist and bailaor in between. I think that’s the secret to composing things which are true, pure and at the same time, innovative. It’s a constant search which lets us do the music we like and we believe in.

The rehearsals have been done “in the Lime Furnaces of the quarries in Morón”. Tell us what that inspiring place is...

R.R.: We spent a couple of weeks polishing the repertoire at the little house on the side of the Sierra which the Lime Furnaces Cultural Association of Morón has. It does a really interesting and really nice job of recovering the craftsmanship of lime in Morón, rebuilding several furnaces, documenting the history and the pictures of the limestone quarries and helping us to understand a little better what was and what is the inner world of one of the most important activities for so long in our land. With a lot of affection, Manuel Gil Ortiz (a great photographer) and the friends of the association lent us their place so that we could isolate ourselves from the world and soak up the music of lime.

Paco de Amparo (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

The recording was in Morón. How was that phase of the album carried out? Was it recorded the old-fashioned way, like live at the studio?

P.A.: It was a mellow, relaxed phase, without any pressure. And the entire album, just like the first one, is recorded live.

R.R.: We recorded in Morón because to make this record, we wanted to be close to our lands, but maintaining the crew, with the same recording engineer (Manolo Camacho) and mixing engineer (José Peña), and with the same trust and collaboration from Nuevos Medios and La Nota, who help us to work at ease. We all recorded together in the same room and worked on the version we liked most, without a metronome or recordings. It’s something that happens more and more every day; I think we’re recovering our taste for music just as it is, as something alive.

You’ve toured a lot of countries since the group was born. How are you received abroad? Do you think flamenco benefits from being associated with the label ‘world music’?

R.R.: We’ve played in Havana, New York, Chicago, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Miami, Mexico City, Oslo, Arles, Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Jerez, Morón... And they’ve understood us really well everywhere; we’ve enjoyed ourselves and they’ve absorbed the message perfectly of what we do, which doesn’t leave flamenco territory, nor is it so far from what is being done in other cultures with deep-roots music. When it’s done from love for those roots, it’s work which is greatly appreciated everywhere because it connects us with what we are, with our collective memory. And that need is alive all over the world. Abroad, people’s ears and hearts are now very open and more used to flamenco art. And flamenco is granted that category, which it naturally has as alive deep-roots music with a great artistic level.

	Raúl Rodríguez, Moi de Morón and Manuel Flores (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

And it might be here where we realize it the least and we still have to learn to better appreciate what we have. Our flamenco music is enormously wealthy, encompasses many artforms and at the same time has a trademark very much its own, offers the most contents with the minimum elements, and gets things across with potency and power which very few types of music in the world manage to do. Many kinds of music are included in world music which have to do with the exploration of their own roots and their connection to the other types of music, which is an inevitable anxiety in the time we live in, where everything changes so fast and everything moves so much. They’re festivals which already have a path and experience, and a stable circuit where you can work really well, and which open the door for the music of our homes to be appreciated in other countries.

Is the future of flamenco music in researching its past... or is it just an option?

P.A.: I think its essential and really important to look back, listen to the old-timers and learn. They’re wise and a solid base to be able to gain knowledge. Without researching its past, flamenco has no future. I sincerely think it’s the only possible option. You have to look back to bring information to the present and focus it with great care and respect towards the future.

R.R.: ... Know how to walk backwards to be able to know how to walk forward.

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