FESTIVAL DE JEREZ 2008. CALIXTO SÁNCHEZ.
CIRCLES AT LA BODEGA
Calixto Sánchez’s
road
S.C. Jerez, February 2008
Calixto
Sánchez can’t avoid teaching. And what
was at first conceived as a press conference to present
his concert ‘Andando el camino’ at Festival
de Jerez 2008 nearly turned into a lecture on flamenco
cante in which he stated his truths on the matter. And
the thing is that according to the cantaor from Mairena
del Alcor, “in flamenco there are many clichés
and few explanations”. The question setting off
the dissertation was the following: What do you think
young cantaores owe to you?
Calixto Sánchez
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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He made use of his teaching talent and
began by saying that “I apply analytics to cante
which normally isn’t applied”. And that road,
according to his words, has nothing to do with the usual
ones: “In flamenco there are fads, “in”
cantes and voices”. He criticizes that “there
are many techniques which cantaores learn by trial and
error”, something which he compared to advice which
children end up disobeying.
He recommended not paying any attention
to “poets who talk so much about the search for
tragedy in cante”, since what bad positioning does
is to “destroy your vocal chords”. So he upholds
that “flamenco has to hurt when you get into the
character, when you’re going to the beat and measured
out, where your voice is weeping, inside…”.
To which he added that “that’s why cante is
thrilling; not because you sing nonsense with a really
raspy voice”.
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| "Cante
isn’t thrilling because you sing nonsense
with a really raspy voice" |
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But he made it clear that “what
I’m saying isn’t anything new”. And
he referred to Tomás Pavón, Antonio Chacón,
Juan Varea, Manuel Torre, Manolo Vargas, Sernita and La
Niña de los Peines as maestros with “perfect
voice positioning”. As an opposite example he pointed
out Porrinas de Badajoz, who “had a forced voice”.
And he blamed it on self-teaching, “which is the
most harmful method”. That’s why he said he
had taken “the road of the cantaores who had the
perfect voice, positioned, with quadrature and modulation”.
He invited a test to be done: “Listen to other cantaores
who don’t follow that road and analyze them”.
Album, memories and Jerez
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Calixto Sánchez
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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Before offering such a master lesson,
he spoke about his latest album, ‘Andando
el camino’, his career and the references he’s
found in the cante from Jerez. He said he was “one
of the two or three very rare cantaores left from a generation
that started off in the seventies”. And he specified
that having been born in the Sevillian town of Mairena
del Alcor partly determines his cante. “In Cádiz
I’m told that I sing really strangely por alegrías,
but the thing is that in my hometown, we only used to
see the sea in photos”. But he recognized that now
“we’re all closer, more influenced and we
all learn from everyone”. And he says he applies
it to his work since “I don’t want to realize
when time has passed that I didn’t do something
because I was a coward”. A reflection of that is
‘Andando el tiempo’, an album on which “eighty
percent of what I sing is mine; it isn’t by anyone
else”.
And he referred to Jerez. He explained
that “it’s always been a point of reference;
one of the first cantaores to lead me up the garden path
was Antonio Chacón, who was a monster in melody,
positioning, advance”. He added that “any
cantaor always ends up doing something by him, even if
he doesn’t know it”. He also pointed out Manuel
Torre, who “captivated me with his perfect voice
positioning, agility, power, speed… And the same
for Sernita, who was another monster”. But the generation
of Jerez-born cantaores he lived with in his early days
was that of Fernando Terremoto, Sordera and La Paquera,
“whom I sang with many times”.
