If Bob Dylan sang bulerías

Silvia Calado Olivo. Madrid, April 2002

Red velvet, crystal chandeliers, whisky. Peacock feathers, smudged mascara, black stockings. A cigarette burning, sequins, lipstick. The hallmarks at the presentation to mark the comeback of María Jiménez could be less blatant, but they capture the very essence of what she means by the title of her new release 'Donde más duele' (Where it hurts the most), a collection of songs written by singer songwriter Joaquín Sabina. Gonzalo Garciapelayo, the singer/cantaora's producer, knows where he's coming from when he affirms in the liner notes that "it's the best rock album I ever recorded". In his opinion "rock is gritty singing at high speed" in other words, and with a hint of Bob Dylan, "it's cranking up the blues". And he manages it using rumbas and bulerías, the two styles which form the rhythmical backbone of the compilation. And, of course, María Jiménez, a modern 'folclorica'.

María Jiménez with Enrique de Melchor,
Gerardo Núñez and Enrique Pantoja (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

She contributes both her technique ("the structure of rumbas has a musical element very similar to rock... and Maria is great at blending the two") and her emotions ("on this tearful disc, which María sings with real tears over her recent separation.") Those feelings reflect the singer/cantaora's biography -"acid lyrics about finding yourself alone but facing up to it, not whining about it"- but they were already explicit in the street poetry of Joaquín Sabina. Garciapelayo comments that "I always thought '19 días y 500 noches' (19 days and 500 nights) was a song with María's name on it". But that wasn't the only one, so he spoke to Sabina about "my idea: trying to find other songs a little more difficult to imagine with a flamenco flavour". He adds that Sabina "could imagine his songs in a rumba style, but not bulerías." And the result couldn't be better, since "there are no less than 65 cover versions of 'Nos dieron las diez' (Before we knew it it was 10 o'clock) and we're proud of the fact that the one he likes most is María's". And the secret? "In a bulería style, everything sounds better, it puts songs into a class of their own...".

Tackling Sabina's work marks, in the producer's opinion, "María Jiménez's return to contemporary circles". And the door to these circles was opened to her by none other than Pedro Almodóvar. Garciapelayo comments that even though María Jiménez was a shining star of 'nuevo flamenco' in the seventies, "she never had the fashionable press on her side, they considered her a lower middle class product". 2000 saw the release of the collection '40 grandes canciones' (40 greatest hits), accompanied by an article in the weekend supplement of the distinguished Spanish newspaper El País by the music critic Diego A. Manrique. This bore testament to a revival in a general sense of the Spanish spirit, led by the famous film director, and consequently a reassessment and revival of María Jiménez's style. And this revival was boosted considerably by her participation in the hit single 'El carro de la compra' (Shopping cart) by Spanish pop outfit La Cabra Mecánica. In one fell swoop, the singer/cantaora from Seville moved into refined circles and onto the dancefloors, "extending her career without her having to change". Without changing, but evolving: "Now she has a deeper understanding of the spirit of rock, I see her more a rock artist than a flamenco artist, freer from conventions". A good illustration of this is the sleeve of her disc - her idea, though Garciapelayo loves it: "She looks like a chorus girl during the interval". And it's for this reason she chose the Pasapoga dancehall in Madrid for the presentation of her disc - an ideal setting to showcase this evolved María Jiménez who is "Marlene Dietrich crossed with Almodóvar, glamour taken to the street. María has great intuition, it's pure Almodóvar spirit, or like Andy Warhol's idea of fifteen minutes of fame."

And it can't be denied that at this moment of inspiration, María Jiménez's dazzling presence under the spotlight -on the 'tablas'- hasn't changed one bit, as she clearly showed at Pasapoga that night of 24th April 2002. The same night that Sabina told an anecdote which summed up her style perfectly: "I told her I'd always loved her because when she sang her voice seemed to emanate from deep in her entrails. She replied that no, in fact, it was from somewhere just a little below that". And that's how she came to be known, when she set out playing the 'tablaos' circuit, as 'La Pipa'... It would've been an understatement to dub her 'sensual' in the prudish, censored Spain of the seventies, when she rasped songs like 'Me doy entera' (I give myself completely) or 'Háblame en la cama' (Talk to me in bed). An extract from her biography published in José Manuel Gamboa's 'Guía libre del flamenco' (Independent guide to flamenco) puts the idiosyncrasy into words thus: "Gonzalo Garciapelayo knew her selling points, launching her as the updated definition of a 'folclórica'. María knows how to sing a song that's 'aflamencada' bringing it up-to-date and adding a generous dose of eroticism".

And so to the term 'aflamencado', meaning flamenco-ized, or with a flamenco streak. And why not 'flamenco' rather than 'aflamencado'? Garciapelayo likes to use a comparison with the singer/cantaor Bambino from Utrera: "His thing was to take songs and give them a rumba or bulería form. Poetically speaking she uses similar language to Bambino's, talking about life on the streets, urban flamenco, adapted to the social backdrop of the time." And since she's from Triana, born and bred, "she doesn't think twice about singing 'bulerías de Jerez', nor those of Alfonso el de Gaspar, following in the Cadiz tradition of Pansequito or Juanito Villar". And in spite of the sensuality, in spite of the chosen material, the producer dismisses any suggestions that this isn't 'pure' flamenco, and adds that he considers the bulerías the cream of her repertoire.

So how does he support his arguments? For him it's the same as considering Ketama or Pata Negra flamenco: "Flamenco moved from the country to the city, just like the blues moved from Mississippi to Chicago, altering some of its sounds and some of its aims in the process. Flamenco used to be a countryman, now it's a city-dweller." And he backs himself up with a theory: "Flamenco is whatever the flamenco people say it is". An example: "Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera liked to sing 'cuplés' in a bulería style, they were light Spanish cabaret songs that sounded better 'por bulerías'". Yes it's flamenco, but contemporary flamenco: like the flamenco of modern bulerías, those of Lole y Manuel for example, or the flamenco of rock groups who gave Pink Floyd the Andalusian treatment with an "urban, joint-smoking, downtown flamenco".

María Jiménez with Sabina and Lichis

But maybe there's other evidence. María Jiménez doesn't only deal in rumbas and bulerías. Garciapelayo assures us that she occasionally comments "that she wants to sing fandangos del Niño Gloria, OK she says it to me jokingly, but... and I'm sure, too, that she'd sing a good soleá". He's sure that "she could be a fully-fledged flamenco 'cantaora' in the true sense of the word, I mean if you sing bulerías you can sing anything, but not the other way around". That having been said, the producer defends the every artist's right to "define their own territory." The backing musicians who accompany her on this and her previous discs are also definitive: "Some of the purest flamenco musicians". On guitar, 'toque', Enrique de Melchor and Gerardo Núñez, "two of the greatest we know today". And marking time on 'compás' and cheering on the singer with "tremendous 'jaleos' ", Enrique Pantoja and Ray Heredia's sisters. Just watching them in action is enough to know it's a 100% flamenco backing group. Garciapelayo remarks that "when they raise the roof during the closing bulería, they said that's what people are crying out for". And it's hardly surprising that the electric bass player and lead guitarist remember King Crimson - they learned to play with Robert Fripp...

Just because María Jiménez's current offering is understood by the public doesn't mean to say her work always has been. "Back then, people questioned whether you could put a singer-songwriter like Amancio Prada's songs to bulerías". Well it wasn't easy: "We had to do it very carefully, although Maria says you can adapt anything to a bulería, not everything sounds natural." 'Donde más duele' takes up the challenge again: "Everything that has a Mexican flavour is a safe bet, but giving the flamenco treatment to songs like those she sings with Estopa and Lichis, I wasn't too sure that was gonna work". An illustration that it doesn't always work is Sabina's song 'Calle Melancolía', "where they just don't end up sounding quite so natural". And it wasn't a matter of cutting back on "that ease of listening, that transparency" that the album contains. As it happens that album gives a new twist to New Age bulerías: "We try out a fusion of flamenco with ambient music" - with ample examples of this experiment to be found on numbers like 'Ruido' (Noise) or 'Esta noche' (Tonight). Garciapelayo defines his new sound as "a new type of sound within flamenco fusion, of the type that jazz musicians like Miles Davis and Bill Evans started in the fifties, without us even realising and without asking permission".

And that route, travelled by the jazzmen of the fifties, and trodden also by singer/cantaora María Jiménez, is the one to which Gonzalo Garciapelayo entrusts the future of flamenco: "You can't get any better than Terremoto, that's an animal the like of which you don't see these days, today's men aren't like that. He was a cave-dweller, a man so deep he must have come out of the ground. It's hard to better his cavernous growl, or the howling of Manolito el de María. Since that stuff doesn't exist these days, the evolution of flamenco now lies in the hands of men who come out of clubs or football stadiums". For him, a prime example is José Mercé's latest offering, in which he's convinced that "there isn't this obsession with the past, with the echo of our ancestors, with flamenco as music that transmutes the spirit". And he continues his line of reasoning, "If new fusion experiments aren't considered flamenco, flamenco's finished. There's good and bad fusion, but pure flamenco has practically ceased to exist. Those who revive it are from museums, not from the street. It isn't living flamenco, just like Goya's masterpieces aren't living art".

Living flamenco is the María Jiménez who stands before us, looking like a faded chorus girl, the one whose suffering shows in the lines of her face. Flamenco from the street is the Maria Jiménez who eggs herself on shouting expletives of 'jaleo', the one who forgets the lyrics and can't find the light switch at the presentation, the one who kisses Lichis on the lips, the one who unfurls her peacock feathers "wearing party clothes even to go to the corner store", the one who shows her pantys, the one who dramatises her graphic songs of losing love, the one who distributes a survival kit to all present comprising condom + cigarette-paper + band-aid, the one who leaves singing bulerías... the one whose singing voice comes from somewhere just a little below her entrails.

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