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FLAMENCO FESTIVAL LONDON 2006. ENRIQUE
MORENTE
Feeling
Silvia Calado. London, February 16th,
2006
Enrique Morente: cante. Niño
Josele: guitar. Bandolero: percussion. Ángel Gabarre,
Pepe Luis Carmona: choruses and clapping. Flamenco Festival
London 2006. Sadler’s Wells. London, February 16th,
2006. 7:30 p.m.
Enrique Morente and Niño
Josele (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)
He wanted to convince the London crowd with classical cante.
And he did so. When he started singing songs like ‘Generalife’,
‘La aurora de Nueva York’, the bongo song and
even ‘Summertime’ through bulerías, it
was time for the encores. Until then, he had managed to drive
the audience mad that filled up three-fourths of Sadler’s
Wells with a strict jondo repertoire consisting of bulerías,
malagueñas, cabales, soleá, cantiñas,
seguiriyas. Enrique
Morente, in this his second visit to the city on the Thames,
proved that cante, like all music, “needn't be understood;
it needs to be felt”.
Below the overhead light, a circle of men. They clap as if
in a ceremonial. And the guru, in the middle, warms up his
throat through bulerías with a poem. This way of prefacing
the performance has impact. The accompanists take up their
positions. Enrique Morente remains standing in the center.
“You have no-one to kiss your scarlet lips”. Manuel
Machado. His singing slowly gains intensity. And the audience
interrupts with the first ovation following a spine-tingling
ayeo. Everything ends with a crescendo of crossing voices.
Strumming and dry drums by Niño
Josele and Bandolero.“The
guitar weeping begins”. He uses the tempo and the climate
of the cabales to delve deeply without drama into the Lorca
poem. His hands rock the verses, as much as his voice. Now
he just needs the guitarist. The sweet quejío sketches
a malagueña. He sings to despair, to the sound of convent
bells. The same old singing he will never do the same. Each
part sung by the Granada-born artist is a search, a shot in
the dark whose mark is hardly sensed.
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Enrique Morente and Niño
Josele (Photo: Daniel Muñoz) |
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He steps off stage for a moment to protect his throat from
the cold in the theater with a small purple shawl. The guitar
waits for him, warming up the soleá with substance,
with weight. The first lyrics are barely whispered. His throat
broadens progressively. He utters the lyrics for them to be
understood … though what matters is the feeling. There
lies his lyricism, his commitment to inspiration. He takes
advantage of the chorus through alegrías to take a
peek at the lands of Cádiz. The frolicking with the
‘taratatrón’ makes the crowd laugh. The
complicity between both sides of the stage is now unbreakable,
even when he shakes up the climate of the show and returns
to the sobriety of a style like the seguiriya. The troubadour
from Albaicín then appears resounding and dramatic,
inner and existential. Doubling the phases skillfully, he
leaves the stage.
The call for an encore isn't long in coming. And he responds
by going back to the beginning, with a circle this time through
tonás. A cante. Clapping. Just finger snapping. A crescendo
of voices that mix in the air. And the final quejío.
London cries out with pleasure, on its feet, before this intense,
raw, immense experience. The Spaniards at the theater shout
out all kinds of things to him. From olé to handsome,
with an insistent request in between: ‘Omega’.
And he satisfies them by singing ‘La aurora de Nueva
York’ with only a guitar and percussion, like he did
in Madrid scarcely a few weeks ago. Sublime. The temperature
of the song is taken advantage of for the beautiful track
‘Generalife’ off the new album ‘Morente
sueña La Alhambra’. With extreme smoothness and
delicacy, Niño Josele and Bandolero shape the song
Morente sings with thrilling subtlety. It looked as if he
were going to finish with the bulerías of ‘tambaleándose’
(‘staggering’), but the crowd's reaction is unbelievable.
And he doesn't hesitate to give away another bit of his marvelous
art to them. He chooses the Latin American airs of ‘La
canción del bongó’, a song for brotherhood
between peoples. Isn't he singing ‘Summertime’?
The audience can't believe it. Before ‘los fandangos
de Picadilly’ there's now ecstasy. Enrique Morente has
proven it. You just have to feel…
magazine@flamenco-world.com
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