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'TINO', THE FREE ALBUM

"I'm not trying to discover or invent anything,
but to do what I like"

Silvia Calado Olivo. Madrid, October 2003

Tino di Geraldo (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

How was 'Tino', your new album, made?

I did what I like, which is what I feel like, what I like and what I aim at. That sums it all up. There's no specific direction... it's music for music enthusiasts. It bothers me they said in an interview that you have to be a percussion expert to understand this album. As a music enthusiast, I've made it thinking of other music enthusiasts, not for professionals. I'm not aiming at more than that; neither to discover anything, nor to invent anything, but to do what I like.

It's taken me three years to make this record, although I wasn't doing just that all the time. I've had time to chew it over, digest, go back through and throw things out which I'd considered finished. I have no excuses about time or means, relatively speaking. I couldn't exactly go and record at Peter Gabriel's studio for eight months, but I was able to do what I wanted at a technical level and at a human level. I was able to have the musicians that I liked. When I had nine songs, a minimum length, I told myself "OK, it's all right here, I don't have to work my butt off any further; I'm capable of releasing it, selling it and having people listen to it".

The album is very eclectic as far as influences...

It's not premeditated; it just comes out like that. I don't sit down and think that "I'm going to grab a bit of everything and I'm going to mix". I've been like that since I was little; I might just as easily listen to opera as James Brown, flamenco or film music. I've always listened to a bit of everything and the more different it is, the better, because I love surprise, variety, change; I can't stand the same thing all the time. I love discovering new things. You go on enjoying what you already know, but I love discovering. And when doing so as a professional, I grab bits from here and there; I think it makes sense. Of course, there are a lot of things you like but you wouldn't release them or have the nerve to put them in a store with your name on them. I might be wrong or crazy, but I find sense in what I've made. It's neither a collage nor a mixture of things. Although for me it's all the same, after all: music, melody and rhythm.

What flamenco part might this album have?

There's only one song on the album that can be said to have flamenco. It's called 'Por digeraldinas', because a friend of mine from Salamanca named Jualo listened to it one day and he liked it a lot. Every time he saw me he said: "Play me por digeraldinas". In the end, I gave it that name because you have to give the songs a name, on the one hand; and I take advantage to pay tribute to a person who deserves it, on the other hand. There's some flamenco there; he who wants to see it may do so.

And then, to me, flamenco is in everything, even if you're with an electric guitar really jamming, really heavy metal... Flamenco is in the gesture. Or, said with a very flamenco word, in the pellizco (feeling). Feeling is not flamenco heritage, it's in the way you are, whether you do heavy metal, punk, jazz, funky or whatever. That's why flamencos or gypsies often say "so-and-so sings so flamenco". And they say the same of Luz Casal, who flamencos love because they say she's very flamenco singing and she has no clue how to sing flamenco. She wishes. You don't need to be a flamenco to be... a flamenco. Diego Carrasco things all the songs are very flamenco. The one which is dedicated to him - because he asked me, he made up his mind the first time he heard it - is, in his opinion, very flamenco. And I think so too, but it's not a flamenco album. It's not an anything album.

And how do you believe flamenco can go on surprising?

Always. The further back it goes, the more it surprises you. The more you poke around in the attic, the more it surprises you.

And going forward?

	Tino di Geraldo (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

I can't think of anything that has surprised me lately. Enrique Morente surprises me, not just for the work he does, but what he is like. I might like the records he makes to a greater or lesser extent, because another person makes them; they're circumstantial. He surprises me as an artist, as a novel flamenco who tries to do different things. And then people surprise me for how they play. The surprise isn't always in the same place. Sometimes it's the music which surprises and other times it's the musician. Vicente Amigo surprises every time he picks up the guitar, no matter what he plays, even if he plays 'La bien pagá'.

Musically, it's hard. In flamenco everybody's milking the old cow, the poor thing... And it seems as if there's always still a drop left there. Also for the desire to make money, to become famous, to go as far as possible, to make it big, flamencos see it as a cinch. I can imagine the kids at home saying "let's see what we do". They're listening to funky, hip hop, they're with their machines... You grab a machine and you play any little rhythm, it's all pre-recorded, tacumtam tatumta and you go aayaayy. And the guy from the radio station comes to put a name on it. For the time being, it's nothing more than that. They're playing, cooking things up, but in the end you go with the traditional. We can try to make fabada (an Asturian dish made of beans, pork, sausage and bacon) with papaya fruit and it might even be good, but in the end you go with the fabada.

The kick ass thing about flamenco is that nothing is ever the same. That's the way flamenco is. And there are never the same waits. The white man comes around taking notes on everything, asking "how many measures do you have to wait?". And the flamencos ask him what planet he's from. Camarón used to go up to sing and decide up on stage. He sat next to Tomate and you could hear him tell him: "We're going to do some lyrics through soleá first. No, some through bulerías. In what key? Ahem. Give it to me in four. Ahem. No, in three". And that's it, as you go along.

Do you intend to perform the album live?

Intend to, yes. But it's complicated because it's more of a laboratory thing. It's not a band, nor are they songs that four of us get together and we do. It's as if you wanted to adapt a film like 'Terminator' to the theater. It isn't enough just to have the story and someone to tell it. Everything depends on everything. If you remove a piece, it falters, but all of it together makes sense, at least to me. If it were feasible, I'd set aside everything else. I have the script perfectly written. If there's dough, I'll do it up... I wish. There'd need to be sponsors to make it come true. But even if it's never done, I'm satisfied just with having the album.

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