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Ojos de Brujo's rumba 'Ventilador R-80'

'Barí', to the sound of the visible and the invisible

Silvia Calado Olivo. Madrid, November 2002

"Barí isn't seen... but it's there. Its color is compared to that of a jewel. Like magic, it appears and disappears but... it dazzles when it's there. Strength, thrust and courage like flamenco. Essence and virtue like children. Light and wisdom like the old. Barí isn't taught; it is learnt from". The mix between the natural and the supernatural explains the contents of 'Barí', an album by Ojos de Brujo where flamenco, hip hop, funky and ragamuffin are intertwined with crushing fluidity... With the aim of consciously fleeing the rumba, a work appears plunging into the range of flamenco styles: from soleá to Triana tangos, from zambra to bulería. Marina la Canillas and Ramón Giménez analyze this new spell.

Ojos de Brujo in concert (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

How has it evolved with regards to 'Vengue'?

Ramón: I think that 'Barí' is the progression of that study by Ojos de Brujo. If something characterizes 'Barí', it's that it hasn't followed the natural process of a song. Normally, you create a song, you put in on a record and then you play it live. With the rhythm we had, we created a tune and played it live directly. Afterwards we did hard production work to put it on a record without losing the essence of the live performance. And that process gives it a much more energetic nature, since it's already been done live. That rhythm of development is what gives it a shape and a hue. Even on the tour we included more songs from this album, so it has a lot to do with the people who contributed. If people like Muñeco and Beto took part on the first one, giving it a more Latin flavor, in this case there have been new additions, as is the case of Max, Sergio... who have different musical knowledge.

Tell me the contents of the album... or sing them to me.

Marina (who doesn't hesitate to clap her hands in a tango): The musical contents go along the same line as the first one as far as the flamenco studies from Ojos de Brujo's particular point of view. It's true that on this record we've run away from rumba a bit, the rumba catalana, a genre that we identify with a lot. It was intentional because it was at a time when it was really "in". You hear it a lot in Catalonia. Everybody does rumba, everybody borrows from rumba... and we just said "let's just relax". There might be eight rumbas on the next record, but there are few on this one. To shake off the label of mestization a bit - we're a little fed up with it - we ourselves have put a label on each song.

Marina sings (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

So as to dissect them. And Marina, who is the one who writes and sings, enters the fray...

'Tiempo de soleá' is a hiphopped tango. That means that, more or less, where the guitar goes and where the time goes, it could be a tango; but the lyrics are hiphopped, they're not sung. We put in the drums by Sergio Ramos, in a more hip hop line, more electronic. And the bass line by JuanLu the same; it also has a more obsessive mood.

'Naíta' begins with a traditional Triana tango; it even starts with traditional lyrics from way back when, typical ones, and there are two more sets of lyrics that I also did for Triana tangos. From there we put in a base and go to peteneras... not peteneras in the strictest sense, but we go to a sort of electronic rumba.

'Bulería del ay!' is a bulería with a lot of funky bits. It's called del ay because it's an expression that is used for so many things... It's universal; wherever you say it, they understand you, since it's a sigh which can express sadness, pain, joy, pleasure, horror. And it's very flamenco at the same time. I think the song has a comical side, in little noises, in how it is performed. It's short bits all the while, cut-off measures... a funkied bulería.

'Zambra' starts off with a guitar which has a sense of an old zambra that transports you and suddenly, it's a journey. It's more of a trip than a song because it goes by a load of stops and ends up finishing where it started, with a little guitar that goes (and she hums the flourish) tararaaan, which takes you to the zambra, but turns out to be a trip which goes through more Asian sounds, more hard core metal... and flamenco.

'Ley de gravedad' is like a little ballad our way; a little slower, a little more intimist. It was really hard for me because it's really easy for me outwardly, but with things deep inside I'm much more reserved. I remember that I was even embarrassed to show it. "I did some lyrics" (I said with my lips drawn tight). And then we loved it. We were going to leave it for ourselves, but in the end we decided to put it on the album.

'Memorias perdidas' is a two-guitar bulería. A really beautiful, very flamenco tune with a lot feeling. (And Ramón adds that) Zoltan Lantos, a violinist who is in the Amalgama project, collaborates and is too good. The hard thing was weighing things up when production time came around because you couldn't include everything. There's also the collaboration of Antonio Restucci who also comes from Amalgama. He's a Chilean who plays the mandolin and the guitar, a tremendous musician. His hue is really present there, his interpretation of flamenco.

'Calé barí' is a really beautiful song that closes the album. Normally we close the live show with it, since it summarizes the mood of this record...in fact, that's where it gets its name. It has reggae tangos and then... What would you call the fast part? (Ramón can't answer). The lyrics are very flamenco; they're like a kind of homage to flamenco and to the people who have been flamenco artists and have left their art. But it's like really modern at the same time. The lyrics say "the thing is that he has a lot of art alone, in that way he marked the rhythm in his chair, starting off with tonás, martinetes, deblas, livianas, soleá, how he grooves with the caña, gypsy cante, good cante, beautiful cante". I mean, it's very... It could really be sung in any style because the lyrics are tremendously flamenco, but it sounds here from a modern interpretation of flamenco.

We have a very curious collaboration; that of Cheik Lo, an African from Senegal, who we met by chance at a presentation in Barcelona. We were finishing the concert and starting 'Calé Barí' and a friend of mine told me to bring him up on stage. I saw him there, jet black, with dreadlocks down to here and I said "well come on then, come on up", but I didn't even know what was going to happen. I thought that we might have screwed up. Anyway he came up, we gave him a microphone and improvising on the song, we all flipped out; it was like getting on a spaceship and taking off to the moon. Both we and the crowd experienced something really beautiful; something like really magical, it was like a trance. We all ended up with our hair standing up on end. Since it seemed so beautiful to us, we invited him to collaborate on the album. The like universal mood it has is curious: a homage to flamenco and to the gypsy people who have left art there and just then an African comes along and sings the chorus to you. Olé. He's singing and his ayeos are like the ayeos by Tía Anica la Piriñaca. There's a similarity in the roots.

magazine@flamenco-world.com