DIEGO EL CIGALA & TOMATITO. VERANOS DE LA VILLA 2009
Cantaor, tocaor and more
Silvia Calado. Madrid, July 25th, 2009
‘40 kilos de arte’. Diego
el Cigala: cante. Tomatito: guitar.
Paquete: second guitar. Piraña, Lucky Losada: percussion.
José Maya: baile. Yelsi Heredia: contrabass. Veranos
de la Villa 2009. Escenario Puerta del Ángel. Madrid,
July 25th, 2009. 9:30 p.m.
Flamenco isn’t a sunny type of music.
The jondo blends better with night skies. How hard it must
have been for Diego
el Cigala to open the concert with some cantes a cappella,
the kind with drama from the forge and dark dramatic art.
It was still in full daylight in these foothills of the
Casa de Campo in Madrid when the recital thus kicked off.
Many of the two thousand five hundred people filling the
venue to capacity were still taking their seats and making
the metal structure creak of the large provisional bleachers.
The city was still sparkling to the left. You could still
discern how dull this new stage Puerta del Ángel
was which, outside the city, replaces the historical courtyard
of the Cuartel de Conde Duque as headquarters of the Veranos
de la Villa Festival.
Contrasting the repertoire, Tomatito
took over. The Almería-born guitarist, welcomed by
an audience now more into the situation, opened the channel
of communication stage-bleachers with one of his most emblematic
songs, the alegrías ‘La Ardila’ off his
no less emblematic album ‘Guitarra
gitana’. Clapping and percussions backed him in
his determined onslaught on stage. And then the face-off
announced on the bills began. Cigala and Tomate shaped a
classical picture, cantaor and tocaor. And they played at
ridding the spectators of all haste, first performing some
minero airs. Next, nearly under the night sky, the superb
soleá would come, a heartfelt dialogue sprinkled
with pauses, jondo flavor and personality in each of the
two instruments. Such a cramped atmosphere needed to be
loosened up. And it happened, curiously, through sevillanas.
Gypsy women and gold. The beach of Sancti Petri and the
Philippine Islands. The warmth which both of them had achieved
suddenly vanished and a script was missing to measure out
the dynamics and fluency of the show as a whole. On the
one hand, Tomatito used the group to pull out ‘Spain’.
On the other hand, even more disconnected from the whole,
bailaor José
Maya expanded alone with a chain of marvels with his
feet and hair accompanied by percussion, clapping and the
voices of Saúl Quirós and Simón Román,
among others.
After the interlude, the concert returned
to itself. Cigala and Tomatito, now in a group format, started
to shape up the repertoire which most of the audience demanded,
that flamenco crossover which has given such good results,
especially to the Madrilenian cantaor. Transatlantic overtones,
red roses, Salvaoras, Brazilian-style, fandango-style. And
all of it musically elaborate and sensibly fitting together.
With the bolero, Cigala tuned his ear-throat connection
to the max. The band makes up a new context for ‘María
de la O’, the crowd livens up. And the musicians generously
let loose both opening up in the rich world of the bulería
and softening up in a dear vidalita. The tangos were a flexible
space for the climax and the farewell, giving room to ‘Sé
de un lugar’ by Triana as well as the refrain from
‘Picasso en mis ojos’. But if a reference was
insurmountable in this concert, it was Camarón,
who Tomatito accompanied from ‘La leyenda del tiempo’
to the very end. Explicitly, he appeared in bits of his
repertoire, even in a chorus which referred to his “nothing
is eternal”. But tacitly, he was there in the picture,
in the musical attitude he bequeathed, and certainly in
spirit and in memory. And more so, when the cantaor and
tocaor came back out alone to definitively bid farewell
with an encore por fandangos which left the word “freedom”
lingering in the air.
