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What happened in 1999 for you to feel the desire to sing?

I'd never thought about it before. I might have thought more about singing opera or Cuban sound; everything but flamenco. It was a nearly casual thing. One day my brothers and sisters invited me to a party and between songs by Pata Negra and by Kiko Veneno, I started singing bulerías to my nephews and nieces and they started crying. Until then they'd been children and I was a grown-up. But that day we were all grown-ups; we could now share. The kids told my older brother and he took advantage of an assignment to make a record, ‘Navidad en Utrera’, and asked me to back him on percussion. There were people who didn't show up. And he asked me to sing ‘Los Campanilleros’ by Manuel Torre. And I refused. And one of Turronero's daughters, my brother's niece, wrote it down for me on a sheet of paper. When I heard myself at the studio I was surprised; I didn't expect that from myself. And it all happened really fast. The next day I met Antonio Moya and I told him about it. And he answered that if I really wanted to know what was happening to me that I should go with him to a party in Lebrija. I'd never done so before, but I had a strong desire. I stood up in the middle of the party and started singing. It was something intense for everyone. But what pushed me the most was an article written by Miguel Acal. To me, he was all the flamenco that used to come out of my father's transistor radio and I had great respect for him... In fact, I learned how to play the guitar by recording the programs with a tape recorder. And he wrote something really intense that I've saved and that's what made me move forward. I started singing and everything fell into place.

Tomás de Perrate with Diego Carrasco (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Do you think there was a place for what you had to offer?

Of course; I think I can take a place up where there are very few people. There are very few of us from my territory. Specifically in Utrera, things are on the decline. Gaspar, from Mont de Marsan, isn't doing very well. And Bernarda is really up in age. The kids who sing are more encouraged now that I'm there. Not one but several generations are missing. The youngest one, Gaspar... who's seventy years old. Things haven't stopped in Jerez.

What teachings by your father have you used to face flamenco professionally?

My father has his own way within cante. I'm really impressed by his attitude: romantic, sweet... Then he has his strokes of genius. I keep on learning things from my father every day. I've got some fantastic recordings and I always find things. It happens to me with Manuel Torre. At first I couldn't see it, but I wasn't going to be right and everyone else wrong. And I started studying him in conditions, melodies, where the accents were... And I had to surrender. I don't listen to modern people any more, just old-timers: Juan Varea, Manolito de María, Tomás Pavón... is what I feel like. The musical sketches of old-time cantaores are always easy for me to do, but I go with the flow of their attitude. It's as if I saw what attitude they face that with: the trances, the type of concentration they have when singing through soleá or seguiriyas. And I either imagine them or I really feel them.

How important to you is the guitarist that's at your side?

	"The other day someone asked me what talents a good guitarist had to have. And I answered, intuition when accompanying"

Very. If there's no complicity with the guitarist, there's no flamenco. The guitar is basic. The other day someone asked me what talents a good guitarist had to have. And I answered, intuition when accompanying. There are a lot of virtuosos, but less intuition. If you want to repeat some lyrics, you most likely will never do it the same. And the guitarist has to be there to give you silence or to extend or... I think the word is intuition and good sensory understanding, so it doesn't have to be set up very much.

Does contemporary guitar, which pays more attention to aspects such as harmony, fit in with traditional cante?

Yeah. I think we're used to the guitarist being the music professional in flamenco. And in fact, the guitarist has to spend many hours at the studio, while the cantaor doesn't. I think we're used to an evolution within the melodies that are done and we're open; we have enough musical training to understand a melody with a touch of jazz in a soleá. I love it. What you can't spoil is the accompaniment, but all the guitarists I've been meeting have the desire to learn how to accompany. I simply tell them to listen to cante. We're living in a really nice era.

And doesn't cante have the freedom to evolve the way guitar and baile have done?

Cante? I think it's the opposite; cante has to look to the past. A seguiriya is a seguiriya. Do you know how much material there is that nobody's sung? You pick up the ‘Antología del cante flamenco y cante gitano por Antonio Mairena’ (‘Anthology of Flamenco Cante and Gypsy Cante by Antonio Mairena’) and you see seventy different cantes through seguiriyas, all of them with different melodies, to the beat, well-done. What are you going to make up? If we have a great treasure... Are you going to touch its structure? I don't think it makes sense. A song, well, you do it flamenco-style. But the styles have already been invented; what you have to do is look to the past. I'm not going to sit down and make up anything; I'm going to copy, which is the best way to learn. Every musician in the world has done versions. It's the most honorable thing in the world. Everybody takes a reference from here, another from there and does his compositions. There aren't many people who are inventive. Everybody's learning from what's been done and I think that's perfect.

What are those other types of music that you like?

Everything. From Stevie Wonder to Freddie Mercury... I love María Callas. I like everything. And I really like the Cubans and the old-timers, even more so. I haven't had any preference; I've been a generalist, and it's had to do with the people I've gotten together with, with my gang. We were all the same, seeing what book we'd pass around to each other, and the same thing with records and with everything that was strange. I remember the impact when ‘Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants’ by Stevie Wonder came out or ‘Sultans of Swing’ by Dire Straits or how I felt the first time I heard Tom Waits who's...

Like Juan Talega...

	"Driving to Tom Waits is what I like most in the world"

I think he's more like Tomás Torre. I love him. I take him in the car; I don't take any flamenco. Driving to Tom Waits is what I like most in the world. Something like that, experimenting in that sense, I'd really like. Those percussions and those sounds. He might be what I listen to the most, but I don't have any preferences; I've always been open to everything. The person catches my eye more than the genre.

The strange thing is to be closed to everything that comes to us from the world, isn't it?

What makes me livid is that there are radicals. There are subjects you can't touch with a lot of people. I'm a close friend of Arcángel's; I really like the stuff he does, I like him, I think what he does is very good. But it's a conversation I can't have with a lot of people because he isn't a gypsy. And look at gypsies like José Mercé with the types of music he does. It seems very worthy and very well-done, records laid out really well. Well, you can't have that kind of conversation with some people, either.

But the cantaores that are now references never closed themselves to other things in their time...

They used to do fusion right away with everything. Flamenco is really young; it's two hundred years old, and that's very little time for a musical culture. We're just starting to open our eyes! You look at painting and the classics rule, but it doesn't have anything to do with what's being done now and it's also painting and it's also art. Flamenco needs a natural evolution. What has to be feared is that to do business with this, the cantes have to be spoiled, but doing things well there's no reason to. It isn't bad to be wrong. In every era there has to be a group of radicals, a group of opponents and a group of moderns.

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