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2007 NÎMES FLAMENCO
FESTIVAL. ENRIQUE MORENTE
Cante you have to make up
Silvia Calado. Nîmes, January 26th, 2007
Related activities:
Diego Carrasco’s time
Enrique Morente:
cante. David Cerreduela: guitar. Bandolero: percussion.
Ángel Gabarre, Pepe Luis Carmona: choruses, clapping.
Théâtre de Nîmes. Nîmes (France),
January 26th, 2007. 9 p.m.
The 2007 Nîmes Flamenco Festival
reaches its zenith with the performance by Enrique Morente.
For a great many minutes, the theater unanimously applauded
the Granada-born maestro (until it got two encores out
of him and several greetings), following a cante flamenco
concert never before seen. And no, it isn’t that
he experimented, or premiered a new concept; it’s
just that he’s the only cantaor who makes up cante
every time he sings. The soleá is never the same
soleá, nor are the lyrics the same lyrics, nor
is ‘El pequeño reloj’ ever the same.
He creates as he sings. He sings as he creates.
Enrique Morente (Photo:
Daniel Muñoz) |
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The circle of men to the beat of bulerías.
You, him, Enrique Morente in flight. The quintet takes
up positions. Ángel Gabarre and Pepe Luis Carmona
standing to the left. Bandolero with his percussions to
the right. And Morente in the middle, with David Cerreduela
on guitar. A black-and-white picture, except for the cantaor’s
red shirt, the percussionist’s red tie and the tocaor’s
flame-colored guitar. The cantiñas are sketched
out in slow motion. The cantaor traces the mirabrás,
the choruses embellish just enough, the guitar stokes
up the flame prudently, the percussion balances the group.
An “ay” that drops. An announcement.
Poetry appears. The Lorca-style guitar
weeps. And the cante starts to take on new shapes. The
cantaor lays out his work as a choreographer’s.
He sketches out each set of lyrics within the ensemble,
seeking an image, esthetics and sense within the whole.
A whole which the Granada-born artist has thought out
intelligently to take classical cante - that which is
accused of being indigestible abroad - to any theater
in the world. All the cante’s appoggiatura is channeled
to making the concert a living being which feeds and grows.
And take note of the lyrics, which are anything but empty.
The journey to the mountains turns out
inspiring, especially for the guitarist, who came out
smelling like a rose in his first encounter - oh yes -
with the cantaor. David Cerreduela, one of Cañorroto’s
pillars, applied his school’s vivid resources, but
measuring them out, aware of the need for oxygen, of a
shoulder for the cantaor to lean on when he takes a hard
road. “I’m coming back with my pony, let me
fly”. And the tic-tac taranto. And the soleá
and the seguiriya alone with the guitar, raw and straight
to the soul. And the closing circle por tonás.
And applause and still further applause and the crowd
stamping their feet. And an encore and yet another encore.
And the tangos with a blue background, full of light and
energy. And a glimpse of Lorca. And another encore por
bulerías. Oh, I’m staggering. And he has
to come back. And he sings por fandangos. And what a chill.
And “the world has cast me aside because it thinks
I’m in decline, but I’ve calculated that the
world hasn’t ended and can turn around a lot. Lelelelelelelé
lelé leleleleléeee”.
Diego Carrasco’s
time
“Don’t say you
have compás. If you know what the past
is, what the present is and what the future
is, if you’re aware of time, you have
compás”. The theory is one of
the ones by Diego
Carrasco, who was at the Odéon
on Friday afternoon teaching the first of
his two master classes on compás. On
this occasion, he focused on the bulería
de Lebrija, “which is very classical,
very old-fashioned, very ancestral”.
And to do so, he had first-rate assistants:
José Valencia and Antonio Moya. Some
twenty-five pupils, most of whom are guitar
and baile students, put themselves in the
hands of the maestro, who has an interactive
class designed in which the practice begins
from nearly the first minute. To that end,
he chose the lullaby ‘Laea’. “Let’s
start off playing the clapping really lightly
and listening to our colleague next to us.
You have to discover for yourself when you’re
inside and when you’re not”, the
maestro recommends. Two maxims. One, “if
we value something, it’s silence: it’s
more important to be listening than to be
participating”. Two, “the most
sacred thing is the speed you start out with;
the base of the principle cannot be adulterated”.
So, time to get down to business. His palm
slides, his shoulders go with the flow, his
left foot moves forward and... “ea,
la ea, la ea, oh, la, la, la!”. As the
maestro says, it’s a question of breathing,
“of letting that biorhythm enter the
body”. And there’s the compás.
Though the festival’s cook’s compás
was really something. Yes, sir. Nîmes
is the first festival with a flamenco cook.
Alex Gamero, who takes over the kitchen every
afternoon at the Hotel Atria so that the artists’
stomachs don’t miss anything, was brought
from Triana. Spinach with garbanzos, giblets,
mincemeat soup, paella... And so on and so
forth.
Diego Carrasco.
Master class on Compás (Photo: Daniel
Muñoz)
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