2004 CAJA MADRID FESTIVAL
Esperanza Fernández. Chocolate. Paco Cepero

Light. Land. Rhythm

Candela Olivo. Madrid, February 18th, 2004
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

Esperanza Fernández on cante with Miguel Ángel Cortés on guitar. Chocolate on cante with Antonio Carrión on guitar. 'Calle de Alcalá' Award to Paco Cepero and guitar concert with José Ignacio Franco and Miguel Salado on guitar; Luis de Jero on percussion; and Luis and Ali de la Tota on clapping. Albéniz Theater. Madrid, February 18th, 2004. 9 p.m.

Nearly four hours. The second day of the 2004 Caja Madrid Festival was endless. And therefore, despite the quality of the offers, it was inevitable for the audience to diminish beginning the second hour. And the thing is that besides the fact that each of the artists convened offered an independent recital, there was a prize given in the middle. Light. Land. Rhythm. Esperanza Fernández. Chocolate. Paco Cepero. Tastes, of course, must have gotten their 'fill'.

The host, writer Félix Grande, gave Esperanza Fernández the gift of a poem by Antonio Machado. And among all its verses, one ended up entitling the recital: "Esa luz de Sevilla" ("That Light of Seville"). The bright throat of this woman - the center of the triangle shaped by Triana, Alcalá and Lebrija - reached right inside the audience, who cheered her on and applauded from the very first stage. The Sevillian came out unaccompanied, singing tonás. Not much time elapses between the warm-up verse and that other one in which her voice explodes, soaring to merciless heights. Now seated next to guitarist Miguel Ángel Cortés, for whose skillful sonanta there were also olés, she amused herself with a soleá, the one that her cousin Dorantes plays for her on the piano on the album 'Esperanza Fernández'. That old-fashioned, strong, sweet voice smacks of pipe clay, never finding any limits. She made the cantiñas funny, with old lyrics she sketched with expressive hands. But the joking around ended suddenly, through seguiriyas, "through the seven sorrows". She tucked in the moan, nailed it exquisitely between stages, made it explode. The guitar provided the prospective counterpoint to such an old cantata. The finishing touch was through bulerías, she standing, ready for the impetuous baile, to leave the microphone behind and let her natural voice be heard. The theater lit up.

"That music comes from the land". The poet linked Chocolate with the geological... and rightly so. The cante of the Jerez and Sevillian maestro smacks of stone, mineral, ground; he who it is a privilege to still see up on stage. The crowd knew it and waited patiently for him to warm up, for him to try and feel comfortable with the guitar (of an Antonio Carrión who attended to his whims with the best grace), for him to get rid of the butterflies in his stomach, like a schoolboy, between cantes. He began with the malagueña by Enrique el Mellizo and continued the warm-up with a taranto. The soleá flows forward until it leads to an impulsive, bloodcurdling finish. The peak was reached with the serrana, for the value it has to hear a style "that isn't usually sung in either festivals or peñas" and how it was performed. Covering the rugged paths of this cante, family of the seguiriya, the maestro seemed reborn, as if with new vigor. And he continued with "another hard cante, the Triana seguiriya, the cantes of Cagancho that Tomás Pavón used to do". The lesson had theory and practice. The "ay" was deep and long. Chocolate could not leave without sticking in a few fandangos, his "fandangazos chocolateros, those which you have to pay a lot of attention to because they're protests, they're about life". Infidelity, betrayed friendship... the message was being told masterfully, excellently, making one forget that he who was squeezing his throat already surpassed seventy years with cante.

Calle de Alcalá

Paco Cepero

"For the wisdom and mastery of his guitar". "For the mystery of his rhythm". Following the interval, the jury presented Jerez-born guitarist Paco Cepero with the 'Calle de Alcalá' Award which, more than with words, the prizewinner thanked with music. As Ángel Álvarez Caballero - a journalist who is a jury member - told in a recent article, "as a boy he used to cry seeking the rhythm". And, as Félix Grande added, "now he's the one who makes us cry through his rhythm". Wrapped up by a group - two second guitars, a large earthen vat and two on clapping - he offered the Madrilenian audience his now classic songs and new compositions that will make up part of an upcoming album being prepared. 'Noche andalusí', 'Cartuja', 'Aguamarina'... illustrate a way of playing that could be described with adjectives such as savory, sturdy, simple, sensitive, energetic; a way of playing which defined a now past time of toque but which, as was proven that night at the Albéniz, still has the same freshness that it did then.

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