Special Feature. 100 years: Diego del
Gastor, flamenco guitarist
A century of border toque
S. Calado, April 2008
1908. Arriate, a little town
in the Málaga-area Ronda mountains, bears witness
to the birth of Diego Flores Amaya, the son of Bárbara
and Juan, a cattle dealer. When the boy is four years
old, the family originally from Grazalema settles in El
Gastor, in the neighboring province of Cádiz. And
from that whitewashed town of his childhood and teen years,
he would take the stage name Diego
del Gastor; he who ‘revolutionized’ flamenco
toque from (and for) Morón de la Frontera.
Diego del Gastor (Photo
Steve Kahn) |
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There is evidence that the Flores Amaya
family lived in the city of lime and olives beginning
in 1922. But they had already inherited the arts of toque
when they arrived. As Ángel Sody related in the
book ‘Diego
del Gastor. El eco de unos toques’, “the
second of the brothers, called José, was the first
teacher Diego had. He initiated him in this beautiful
art of guitar, and despite never devoting himself to it
professionally, he ended up playing the guitar as a genuine
virtuoso of the instrument. He used to accompany every
cante, although what he used to do with great mastery
was to play music as a soloist. His reputation as a concert
performer spread to every country estate in the region”.
But there is an even more significant precedent in the
family; his great aunt Aniya la de Ronda (Ronda 1855 •
1933), cantaora and guitarist who became a figure at Málaga’s
singing cafés such as Sin Techo and Café
de Chinitas with her flamenco from the school of Ronda,
causing the admiration of Pastora Imperio herself.
Once the family had settled in Morón, they say
the teen Diego used to spend hours playing the guitar.
“Later on, his friendship with Pepe Naranjo and
Pepe Mesa made Diego develop and reach a very personal
style”, as Fernando González-Caballos specifies
in the book ‘Guitarras de cal’. It was thus
how he made contact with “the school of Moron, which
begins with Paco el de Lucena”. And also key was
his close relationship with cantaor Joselero,
who would become his brother-in-law, besides one of the
cantaores his guitar would provide accompaniment for.
Then in the fifties, he also made direct contact with
Niño
Ricardo, when the Sevillian maestro was working at
El Guajiro. “Diego felt great admiration for Niño
Ricardo’s art and when they ran into each other
at Siete Puertas it seemed like a duel of titans: they
handed the guitar back and forth to one another, exchanging
falsetas”, Sody explains. And although he played
for Manuel Vallejo, no agreement was reached. So he went
back to working with Joselero, at the parties in Madrid
in the forties.
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Diego del Gastor (Photo
Steve Kahn) |
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In 1953, right in the middle of Franco’s
dictatorship, the signing of agreements which authorized
the United States to establish military bases in Spain
changed the course of flamenco history in Morón
de la Frontera. “The arrival of Americans in Morón
made it possible to project the city’s cultural
and artistic world abroad. Part of the crowd of foreigners
who came to Morón concerned about flamenco art’s
genuine forms of expression and even interested in learning
to play guitar toques, was largely due to the window opened
by this event”, Ángel Sody narrates. Just
missing was the arrival in town of American writer and
flamencologist Donn Pohren to square off the story, since
together with his wife, bailaora Blanca Luisa Bargasse,
he used to throw flamenco parties at his estate for his
fellow countrymen. “Many of these parties were attended
by Diego, at which the guests, all of whom were interested
in his toque, recorded everything he composed and performed”,
the author of the aforementioned book confirms.
In fact, Pohren - who invented the personage
and made him know in his homeland as a guru of the pure
- is the author of this detailed description of Diego
del Gastor’s toque, published in the program of
Gazpacho de Morón in its fifth edition, dedicated
to him: “Diego has more soul than the toque of any
flamenco guitarist nowadays... Other facets contributing
to the greatness of Diego’s toque are: his exquisite
talent for accompanying cante and the fact that much of
the material he plays is of his own creation”.
And the curious thing is that despite
his renown being international, because of the military
base and Pohren’s parties ‘in situ’,
he hardly left any of his work recorded. In fact, the
only album available to fans is the one accompanying the
aforementioned book ‘El eco de unos toques’,
which has ten songs including soleares, bulerías,
siguiriyas, tangos, bulerías with alegrías
and zambra. There is also an interesting audiovisual document
in the DVD collection ‘Rito
y geografía del toque’, with a recording
from 1971 in which he plays por alegrías, por seguiriyas
and accompanying Joselero por bulerías and arboreá,
besides including an interview. The same television series
also recorded him accompanying Fernanda
de Utrera on toque at a family gathering. As she herself
stated long ago, “Diego and I used to be the couple
with the best mutual understanding in flamenco. Each was
in love with the other’s art. I was the strings
of his guitar and he was the moan of my voice. Nobody
has been able to draw out what I carry inside like Diego
el del Gastor... Long live God and Diego el del Gastor!”.
And the thing is that Fernanda and Joselero were on that
list of ‘chosen ones’ who enjoyed his toque,
together with other cante figures such as Antonio
Mairena, Juan Talega, El Lebrijano, Perrate de Utrera,
José Menese and Bernarda.
Diego del Gastor (Photo
Steve Kahn) |
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The archives of available material by
Diego del Gastor is completed with the feature from the
television series, recently released on DVD, ‘El
Ángel. Musical Flamenco’ entitled ‘Las
fronteras del flamenco’. It has a soleá
sung by Joselero, a portrait of the guitarist and a party
paying tribute to him held in Morón and with the
participation of, besides cante stars such as Camarón
and Fernanda, guitarists like Diego de Morón, Paco
del Gastor, Juan del Gastor, Raimundo Amador and Rafael
Amador.
And this list of participants confirms,
as Pohren had remarked, that his music “forms the
core of an authentic school or style of flamenco toque”.
It has been maintained by those with the surname ‘Del
Gastor’, as well as by other local artists. But
it has had a following beyond Morón... and nearly
beyond flamenco. An example of it is the ‘gastoriano’
echo breathed in the guitars of Pata
Negra, materialized on albums like ‘Blues de
la frontera’. More recently, it has been continued
by the group Son
de la Frontera (consisting of descendants of the family
such as Paco de Amparo, the maestro’s great nephew),
which does its utmost in the miscegenation between Diego
del Gastor’s musical legacy and the Caribbean aroma
of the Cuban tres. And in fact, they are the musicians
who have plunged most deeply into this school lately:
“The composing is based on Diego del Gastor’s
music. And beginning with his falsetas, we bring out every
strength that star has. We go in every direction without
getting away from his music, which has a lot of wealth
and, at the same time, a great need to be useful”.
The twist they give to it has the sense of “trying
to get to know him deeply and respect him for what he
is: a classic. Once again discovering the genius contained
in his original scores and his variations, and taking
them to the terrain of dialogue between the Cuban tres
and the guitar, which is our personal contribution. And
combining it with cante, baile and compás, once
again getting surprised from within his music and trying
to grow from there. The deeper you go, the more you get
to know the beauty contained in his music: I think that’s
the real discovery”.
But there are voices which rose up against
the admission of Morón’s toque as a school,
if it is only a way of playing. To which Son de la Frontera
clearly replies that “you have to look at it a bit
within the context. The only instrument there was in Morón
to develop folk music in the 20th century was the guitar...
and specifically, Diego’s. There is a school because
there’s a ton of the place’s own creations,
not just mechanisms. Since Diego was the only guitarist
to bring together all the music, the sound hole of his
guitar absorbed every influence. His most famous falseta
probably comes from ‘La Zarzamora’. And he
also used to play against Americans at the military base
in Morón, who brought with them a very modern,
very hippy, very countercultural concept of music. And
he had to seduce them. There are a lot of turns closer
to blues or rock than the ones done later on by many flamenco
guitarists. We have the idea that in Morón, Diego’s
guitar was the music box. And nowadays all you have to
do is open it and let it play by itself, for not only
does it have its own trademark, but also a lot of music,
at the same time very modern and very old”. So old
that it’s a hundred years old... at least.
“I was born in Arriate
on March 15th, 1908 at Calle Ronda nº 8. I
was later christened in Ronda, at Calle Sevilla
nº 120. My baptism lasted five days. It was
something tremendous” (*). |
(*) Interview
taken from ‘Rito y Geografía del Toque’
(1969) |
Cover photo: Cover
of the book ‘El eco de unos toques’ (William
Davidson)
Inside photos: ‘Morón 1967-1969’ Gallery,
by Steve Kahn
