FESTIVAL SUMA FLAMENCA 2008. LA MÚSICA
DE LOS ESPEJOS
Luis Eduardo Aute & Marina Heredia
“A throat of mud...
Silvia Calado. Madrid, June 2nd, 2008
Agenda. ‘La música
de los espejos’
Luis Eduardo Aute: poetry. Marina
Heredia: cante. José Quevedo ‘Bola’:
guitar. Festival Suma Flamenca 2008. ‘La música
de los espejos’ series. Olivar de Castillejo. Madrid,
June 2nd, 2008. 10 p.m.
Marina Heredia and Aute
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
... is broken like a mirror”. The
verse entitling this article was one of the ones recited
by Luis Eduardo Aute in the first duel of reflections
in the ‘La música de los espejos 2008’
(‘2008 Mirror Music’) series. And the singer-songwriter
was answered by Marina
Heredia ripping her voice with a soleá, “the
deepest thing in flamenco”. A verse. A cante. A
verse. A cante. That’s how the dialogue turned out
between the poet and cantaora on a cold night in June
at a place which seems like a dream, Olivar de Castillejo,
the last redoubt of the Villa’s old field, with
its hundred-year-old olive trees, its rockrose, its rosemary,
its marjoram. Who would have said so? About the cold...
and about the olive grove in the middle of the metropolis.
Marina Heredia and Bola
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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The singer-songwriter didn’t begin
with his verses, but rather with his reflections on flamenco
poetry, a genre which he has approached sideways throughout
his musical career. One sentence: “Flamenco is viscera,
heart and brain; it’s a song of life and death”.
And a verse: ‘Volver al agua’ (‘Go back
to the water’). To which the Granada-born artist
responds with one of the pieces off her latest album,
‘La voz del agua’. “What better way
to answer a poet than to sing to another one”. And
she chooses ‘Balada del que nunca fue a Granada’,
a startling poem by Alberti addressing Lorca. On toque,
doing the impossible to warm up his hands, Jerez-born
José
Quevedo ‘Bola’. Aute then does a discourse
about popular poetry which shapes cante, about the fact
that “flamenco is in itself poetic music”,
about the “non-border between the poets who can
be sung and popular lyrics, which are pure poetry with
the same poetic dimension as Lorca, as Machado, as Bergamín”.
And then he speaks of death... And the cantaora enters
the fray by the hand of the latter poet mentioned, alluding
to the bullfighter as the artist who best knows how to
play with it... with death. ‘Illo y Romero’,
por bulerías.
With the recitation of ‘No la boca
sino el beso’, Aute opens the way to the subject
of love. And for a kiss, another kiss. The response is
‘El calor de un beso’, a song with music -
and also lyrics - by Quevedo, to the beat of soleá
por bulerías. The poet is delighted by the vocal
sketches which the cantaora draws beneath the branches
of the hundred-year-old olive trees. And for vital feelings,
the ones expressed by the tangos of Sacromonte, “a
variety of troubles, those of hunger, those of love”.
The cantaora’s art brims over in this style which
makes it hard for the phases to float. Following up the
ripping vocals, the singer-songwriter recalled the romances
which cantaor Carlos Cruz had him do way back in the seventies,
grouped together under the title ‘Réquiem
andaluz’. “Andalusia is dead / Andalusia is
in grief / only the quejío is alive / which bursts
out in the village voice”. And then, the soleá.
Aute, Marina Heredia and Bola
at Olivar de Castillejo
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
Just the epilogue remains, the announced
surprise, the face-off in ‘Al alba’, the cantaor’s
popular song, the one which José
Mercé did a version of por bulerías.
“I always say that the original version is his and
mine is the copy”, the author joked. And he uttered-sang
it. And also Marina Heredia, rocking it flamenco-style.
Since the crowd burst out in enthusiastic applause, the
cantaora challenged the chill of the night air by doing
an encore, dedicated to the poet who she had just dialogued
with: “As I know he appreciates popular poetry,
I dedicate some fandangos to him, since there’s
nothing more popular than a fandango”. The last
reflection on a lyrical, bucolic... icy evening.
Suma Flamenca
2008/ ‘La música de los espejos’
Olivar de Castillejo. Madrid, June 2nd to
10th, 2008
June 2nd
Luis Eduardo Aute & Marina
Heredia
June 3rd
Felipe Benítez Reyes & Arcángel
June 9th
Luis García Montero & Enrique
Morente
June 10th
José Luis Ortiz Nuevo & Carmen
Linares
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