Special Feature. Excerpt from the book
‘Manuel Gerena. La voz prohibida’,
by Manuel Bohórquez
Thirty Necessary Questions
Flamenco-world.com, January 2008
Excerpt from the book ‘Manuel
Gerena. La voz prohibida’ by Manuel Bohórquez,
published in 2007 by Pozo Nuevo (*)
Did you have a happy childhood?
Considering the circumstances, yes. I
had to grow up and be a man before it was time and I had
to work for a living as a plow boy, giving up things which
were fundamental for a child. I was a rebellious, restless
kid, and I based my happiness on that.
Do you recall ever having seen
a book of poetry at home?
I don’t remember it. I don’t
think so, because I’d remember it with no difficulty.
In those years, in the ’50s, there used to be few
poetry books in poor people’s homes. Some book by
Lorca or Miguel Hernández, for example. That was
unlikely. At the most, some Captain Thunder comic book
or another.
Did you ever go hungry in your
childhood?
Quite a bit. It was really hard to work
so much at such an early age, and on many occasions, without
anything in your stomach. Sometimes my mother would send
me to Fonda del Ocho, Doña Adela’s place,
for a hot meal, because it was a place where truck drivers
used to stop and eat. Since we came back late from the
field and you had to get up early, there was hardly any
time to make dinner.
Were your parents affectionate?
Of course they were. They gave me a lot
of freedom. Since my mother knew I was really rebellious
and restless, she used to prop the door open at night
with a chair, because she knew I’d come home late.
They were tough, too, when they had to be, but not so
much.
What did La Puebla contribute
to your cultural education?
In the intellectual sense, little. I
soon went to live in the capital, at the age of 13 or
14. I was educated in Seville, which wasn’t a bad
place to soak up popular culture, music, cante, theater,
cinema...
What image did you have of Franco
when you were at school?
His photograph was in every classroom,
and as is logical, I sometimes wondered what that guy
was doing there. I didn’t really know who he was.
I was already fighting against that individual and I didn’t
know anything about him. What the hell is this guy doing
here?, I used to wonder.
Did you use to sing in the taverns
when you were a boy?
Of course I did, like every Andalusian
kid in that era. At Bar Pachón in La Puebla, or
at Fernando’s El Central, we used to have a really
good time. Back then I used to sing fandangos by Antonio
Pérez ‘El Sevillano’ which were
really hard. But unlike other amateurs in my hometown,
I didn’t intend to dedicate myself professionally
to cante at all. I was already writing some lyrics, and
what I wanted was to be a poet, to write lyrics for others
to sing.
Manuel Gerena. Photo from
‘Manuel
Gerena. La voz prohibida’
Did you often go to Mass on Sundays?
Very little. They made us go there with
a card which they put a stamp in every time you went.
And when you filled up the card with stamps they’d
give you a shirt or a pair of trousers. Check out how
clever the priests were back then.
How do you recall the day of
your First Communion?
I don’t remember it. And I’m
glad I don’t have that episode of my life in my
memory, because I’m not interested in it at all.
I didn’t make my children get baptized or do their
First Communion; now they’re older and they can
do so whenever they want. They’re free.
Who encouraged you to sing on
stages?
In La Puebla, nobody. It was in Seville,
specifically in Carmona, where I used to spend many nights,
at Pensión Carmelo. I used to work there as an
electrician and I’d bullfight and sing in my free
time. I was encouraged there to enter contests in Cabra
and Mairena del Alcor.
Which cantaor from La Puebla
did you use to admire the most when you were a teenager?
I always had great admiration for La
Niña de La Puebla. She wasn’t a mirror
I’d look at myself in, because I was more interested
in Antonio
Mairena, for example, who was from another school.
But the one I liked most from La Puebla was Joselero,
who they call Joselero
de Morón, but who was born in my hometown.
I met him in Morón in fact when I used to work
there as an electrician at the cement factory. Joselero
was a short cantaor with a personality and timbre of voice
I loved.
Did you become a cantaor through
the influence of Pepe
Menese or through that of Francisco Moreno Galván?
Neither one nor the other. I began writing
lyrics before Menese started singing. When I came out
and they started to prohibit me throughout Andalusia,
where the eight governors agreed not to let me sing, Pepe
Menese was already quite famous and he’d recorded
his first albums, which caused a sensation among enthusiasts.
He was singing at the best Andalusian festivals and was
one of the new voices with the most strength. But I’d
been writing for a long time before that, when I hadn’t
even intended to become a cantaor. I wanted to be the
lyricist for Miguel
Vargas, another great cantaor from my hometown, but
it wasn’t meant to be. Among other things, because
he was also along the lines of Paco Moreno Galván.
At what age did you write your
first protest copla?
At 13 or 14. I was already working as
an electrician on farms in Seville and Huelva, installing
the power lines for them. I remember that the farmhands
put the farm’s own workers at my disposition to
dig the holes for the posts. When it was time to sleep,
since I was obliged to stay at the farm because it was
hard to leave and go to Seville every day, I used to sleep
in the stately part, and the farmhands, in one of the
attics, on sacks of straw and dressed in the same clothes
they’d worked in from sunrise to sunset. Pictures
like that encouraged me to write poetry and cante lyrics
to denounce all the potbellied exploiters there used to
be in Andalusia.
Do you remember any of those
early lyrics?
Barely. I recall one set: Carreterita
los Santos/ how am I going to forget you / if I had more
trouble along you / than our God did on Earth. It was
a highway that went from La Puebla to Morón, about
ten kilometers long, which I walked down many times to
go to and from work, to an estate called Morcillo. My
buddies used to sing those lyrics and so on, but in the
taverns and in the street.
When you were a teenager did
you want to be like communist poet Miguel Hernández?
At that age I’m talking to you
about I’d already gotten my hands on Viento del
pueblo, by Miguel Hernández, a fundamental book
in my life. I was impressed by El niño yuntero
(The Plow Boy), because I was a plow boy, a kid who used
to do a man’s job in the field, but who earned a
child’s wages. I mean, a pittance.
How and when did you know you
were a communist?
Ever since I’ve had the power of
reasoning. I started at a really early age to rebel against
injustice, against exploiters, against the bigwigs of
the world, against the rich young gentlemen, against self-interested
piety, which was constantly stepping on us. And I’ll
tell you something: nowadays I’m more left-wing
than ever.
What were you seeking when you
joined the PCE (Spanish Communist Party)?
To end everything I’ve just mentioned.
I was active in the PCE before becoming a cantaor, in
secret, when I was an electrician. I was in the countryside
commissions, in those of metal. I was a gung-ho communist,
the type who gave everything for the cause.
Did your desire to earn money
influence you in choosing to become a protest cantaor?
Not at all. On the contrary. I’ve
got three thousand concerts under my belt, I’ve
sold thousands of records and books, and I live humbly;
let’s say that I keep on making a living on stages.
When I gave up my job as an electrician and started singing,
I was in dire straits, because I devoted myself to studying,
to being with my elders to learn from them. I’ve
never thought about money, but rather about doing what
I like, which is to sing and fight on behalf of the weak.
What posture did the church take
with your struggle?
There were red priests, of course, who
were in the same fight as me. Some seminarians did their
doctoral thesis with my lyrics. I’m not Christian,
but I had a close relationship with that sector of the
Church which was with the poor, with the weak. El Correo
de Andalucía, which belonged to the Church at that
time, was always on my side and helped me a lot.
Manuel Gerena. Photo from
‘Manuel
Gerena. La voz prohibida’
Did you feel used in any way
by the anti-Franco movement?
Never. That’s something I want
to make clear, because that matter’s always been
lingering there. I always did what I wanted to do and
I did it with conviction, because I wanted to make my
contribution to the cause. I filled up bullrings and soccer
fields, and with millions of pesetas in revenues at the
box office, I only charged seventy thousand pesetas per
performance. The rest of the money went to helping the
prisoners, the prisoners’ families, and in short,
the party, the people.
Why did you leave the PCE?
I left the PCE out of coherence, and
I spent years without being active and without saying
I’d left it, so as not to disappoint the party.
Many communists still call me comrade when I go and sing
in towns in our country. There are people who haven’t
forgotten what I did, and that’s good. I’m
worried by some people’s lack of memory.
What led you to do a campaign
for the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) in 1982?
I was a professional musician and they
hired me to do some concerts.
Has providing services to democracy
ever been costly for you?
Never. And I’ll take advantage
to say that there are a lot of people out there with a
bad memory, who have forgotten how important some of us
were to the arrival of freedom and democracy in Spain.
But that work’s never been costly for me. On the
other hand, it has been costly for some people who have
never been left-wing. Even making them ashamed to say
they’re left-wing in public. I’m an artist
and I work, like everybody else, with public aid and without
it. I can assure you that I’m the least subsidized
cantaor in Andalusia. I’ve spent many years without
singing in Andalusia and I’ve tried not to complain.
Why is Andalusia so ungrateful?
Especially to Manuel Gerena...
It’s also true that I got too far
away from it, because I’m neither a local nor a
regional artist; I’ve always had a universal vision
of art and of life and I couldn’t be living in Seville
waiting for the phone to ring for me to be given a festival.
I do things my way. My native land isn’t just Andalusia,
because I’m Andalusian to the core and now I live
in Puerto de Santa María. And tomorrow, if I feel
like it or should the occasion arise, due to whatever
circumstances, I might settle down in Valencia. But to
answer your question, I do think that Andalusia is being
ungrateful to some of its artists.
Do you still bear resentment
towards flamencologists?
I rebelled against right-wing flamencology,
but the self-interested one. There used to be and there
is now, like there used to be and there is now in the
world of bullfighting. Rich young gentlemen continue to
exist in flamenco and in bullfighting; of course they
do. I now have a good relationship with flamencologists,
especially with the ones who are serious. Flamenco has
changed quite a bit; that’s the truth. And I’m
really glad.
Why haven’t you ever run
in the elections? Haven’t you had any offers?
At the beginning of the democracy I had
chances to run in the elections, especially outside of
Andalusia, where my voice had a lot of strength; for example,
in the world of Andalusian immigration. As I used to sing
in one set of my many lyrics, I don’t want to be
a commanding voice; I’m a town crier’s voice.
I’ve just been interested in singing. And that’s
all. And I’ve had a lot of experience in organizational
matters. I got a lot of people from the singing world
involved in the PCE and I organized a lot of concerts.
But I can’t see myself as a city councilman.
What do you regret, with regards
to your career?
I don’t think anything. Perhaps,
having hurt anyone with any lyrics or any action. If I’ve
done so it’s been unintentionally. I’m quite
satisfied with how I’ve acted at every point in
time, but I recognize that I might have made mistakes.
Did you sacrifice your family
for your personal struggle?
Of course. I got too engrossed in my
profession and I didn’t dedicate all the time to
my children that I should have. They’ve been brought
up like all the other kids of this time, they’re
very well-educated and they know perfectly well what my
times were like and what I had to do for the cause...
and for them.
Have they ever reproached you
for it?
Never. At least as far as I can remember.
If they reproached me for it, I’d understand it
perfectly.
Would you return to the fight
if an illegitimate government came to Spain again?
Undoubtedly. But I have to tell you that
I’m still fighting, but in a different way. Now
I sing for peace, ecology, love, old-time values. You
mustn’t lower your guard.
(*) Text reproduced in January 2008
by Flamenco-world.com with the express written consent
of the author. All rights reserved
