La Paquera de Jerez triumphs in Japan. Audiences applaud fervently. The 67-year-old cantaora is stunned. A documentary film captures her experience.

An artistic voyage in Tokyo

Daniel Gil. Tokyo, January 2002

Tokyo. Sunday, 20th January 2002. The stage of the New National Theatre. "Paquela! Paquela! Paquela!", "Viva Jelez! Viva Jelez!". Flamenco singer La Paquera de Jerez is winding up the last of her four shows in the Japanese capital. The Japanese audiences, normally somewhat cold and reserved, yell for more. There is a fervent and lengthy standing ovation from the audience, who almost fill the 1200-seater venue to capacity. It's the triumphant end to an eight-day odyssey which set out from Jerez, and whose final destination is the same town in Spain's balmy Southwest. An odyssey which took Francisca Méndez Garrido, La Paquera de Jerez, 67 years old and one of the last living legends of the golden age of 'cante flamenco' to Japan, for the first time in her fifty-year career.

La Paquera faces the busy japanese way of life
(Photo: Fernando González-Caballos)

"It's full of lights, full of buildings and full of people running around", she observes of Tokyo. That night, before embarking on her 10000-mile return journey, she feels somewhat overwhelmed by a city that seems to her eyes apocalyptic and dehumanised. A far cry from her apartment on the beach at Rota on the coast of Cadiz, where La Paquera whiles away the long winter months and where she hides away from the hustle and bustle that summer brings to that coastline. It recalls to her mind an image: "It reminds me of the Puerta del Sol and Gran Vía in Madrid, with so many neon signs". There's a certain parallel between the feelings of the veteran performer and those of the young woman who took Madrid by storm in the seventies for seven thousand pesetas a night. Now, just as then, only an audience and a generous fee can lure her away from Jerez, away from her family, fishmongers by trade, and away from her bed and home-made stews.

Forty years earlier, in 1962, Yoko Komatsubara was a young Japanese lady from a well-to-do family. She'd recently arrived in Spain in search of a new life after falling in love with Flamenco three years earlier, when she saw Antonio Gades dance in her birthplace, Tokyo. The young ballerina dreamed of becoming a flamenco 'bailaora'. And in the process of learning Flamenco dance she met Antonio Pulpón, the first real agent for flamenco artists, who took her under his wing and showed her around Spain. And it was with him that she learned about flamenco singing, flamenco dance and the 'toque' of flamenco guitar. The most sought-after acts played in Madrid, at 'tablaos flamencos' - small flamenco clubs like the well-known Torres Bermejas, Los Canasteros, El Duende or El Corral de la Morería. And on one of those nights of immersion in the music she so adored, Yoko fell deeply in love with a woman's voice. "This is real flamenco," Komatsubara thought as she heard La Paquera sing for the first time. "I've never been able to forget her singing".

And that moment of artistic illumination was the seedling from which this adventure grew. "It's taken me forty years to convince her. She always refused to come so far. I feel very privileged. All of Japan should feel very privileged today" Komatsubara tells us, unable to hide her feelings of pride just minutes before La Paquera de Jerez opens at the New National Theatre. It's Friday 18th of January. This evening's is the first of the four performances which La Paquera will give as part of a dance show organised by Komatsubara, who four decades later is now a 'bailaora', choreographer and producer with her own company, a lynchpin of flamenco in Japan.

Jerez Airport. Tuesday 15th January. La Paquera and her entourage arrive, weighed down with luggage and ready to catch the first of the three connecting flights which will take them to Tokyo. "I'm going to Japan to earn a crust", she says, wrapped up snugly in a thick fur coat and pretty bubbly considering the unsociable hour. Already waiting on the airfield are the film crew for 27-year-old flamenco anthropologist and critic Fernando González-Caballos's documentary film on the artist and her odyssey in Japan. Its provisional title: 'Sin ojaneta ninguna' a phrase used to describe something of which every part is essential, with no disposable, worthless or imitation components; a phrase which he feels applies to La Paquera: "She always gives her all, she's completely sincere".

González-Caballos and the company Flamenco Libre are joint-producing an independent low-budget documentary. The two young cameramen are experts in documentaries - the Frenchman Yvan Schreck, who also directs, and Óscar Clemente from Seville. Their track records speak for themselves. Shreck recently worked on another flamenco project: his fellow countrymen Dominique Abel and Jean Yves Escoffier's film covering the 'Tres Mil Viviendas', the notorious Seville housing project. Clemente has received an award for directing a film about the ferry across the river Guadalquivir at Coría del Río, in the province of Seville. Both worked together on the state-of-the-art images which the young 'bailaor' Israel Galván used to accompany his performance of 'Metamorphosis', dance inspired by the Frank Kafka novel.

The journey to Japan is, for all three, as important, attractive and intimidating an adventure as it is for la Paquera herself. Furthermore, they're nervous about co-operation from the cantaora, well known for her reluctance to be filmed or interviewed. The scene at Passport control and boarding the plane serve to calm the young documentary-makers' nerves and even permit smiles of optimism. La Paquera already considers them part of the family. The documentary aims to capture La Paquera's originality and her unpretentious nature - unscripted, camera-on-shoulder, ready to capture such unexpected incidents or misadventures as might arise from such an event. They intend to premiere the film at the Festival del Cante de las Minas, at La Unión in the province of Murcia, which this summer will pay tribute to La Paquera.

During the flight, the three watch the world revolving around La Paquera while she, perfectly calm and collected, accompanies the planet's rotation with the odd comment or anecdote from her long, eventful life. "Take a step back - I look like the Michelin dummy filmed from so close!" she shouts to one of the cameramen who has clearly overstepped the mark. The cantaora is accompanied by a group of assistants and relatives to make sure her every need is attended to. The guitarist who accompanies her, her guitarist, her 50%, is 56-year-old Manuel Fernández, "Parrilla". A legend of Jerez 'toque'. The 'palmeros', the Flamenco artists who supply the handclapping, are her brother Pepe, also acting P.A., and her old friend Anselmo from Jerez, together with 15-year-old Pepito, La Paquera's favourite nephew, ready to make his debut performance. And to make sure she is properly looked after, her sister-in-law Francisca - Pepe's wife, and her friend Curra - a neighbour from Rota, up for anything. As this tribe looks on, the red-haired gypsy singer celebrates her adventurous audacity with a drink and a song in the transit lounge of Barcelona Airport. The gobsmacked passengers turn their heads. "Yeah, this is something else - fifty years of artistic endeavour and it's the first time I've been to Japan! Whoever would've said I'd go so far?" The odyssey has only just begun.

Wednesday 16th of January. Seven in the evening. A group of Spaniards arrives at the luxury hotel Keio Plaza Intercontinental in Tokyo. The twenty-six hour journey has left its mark on La Paquera and her entourage. The cantaora, going on seventy, isn't up to this kind of globetrotting. It was a different story when she started out, just 18 years old, playing bullrings all over Spain with a show called 'Así canta Jerez' (This is how Jerez sings). Her powerful voice, her physical stamina, her natural talent carried her voice to every corner of the theatres without need for microphones. A true delicacy. The composer Rafael de León told her in the fifties, "Your voice is so good it should be safeguarded and trained to sing Opera, but if you let that happen you'll lose all the purity of 'cante flamenco' ". Now, looking back, she knows what he was talking about. "Rocío Jurado is the best there is, but she doesn't know how to sing flamenco. Because La Paquera de Jerez says so. And I should know!"

The cantaora preserves that loud strong voice, for the most part intact, and even today she moves away from the microphone in a theatre and galvanises any audience with her powerful, unadulterated voice. Her magnificent physical condition is the direct result of the meticulous care she takes of herself. She sleeps endlessly "whether it's here, in China or in Czechoslovakia" she jokes with her brother Pepe. He and the rest of the family take every step to ensure the artist sleeps, eats and drinks whenever, however and wherever she wants. On arrival in Tokyo she went to bed at ten in the evening and didn't get up until four the next afternoon. She only woke up on two occasions. The first, early in the morning, she ate the entire contents of her room's complimentary fruit basket. Mid-morning she ordered eggs, bacon and croissants, made quick work of them, and promptly went back to sleep.

La Paquera sings for Yoko Komatsubara
at the New National Theatre of Tokio
(Photo: Fernando González-Caballos)

Friday 18th January. La Paquera warms up her voice in the dressing room of the New National Theatre, minutes before going on stage on her opening night. Her powerful voice reverberates down the corridors of the theatre while the first part of the show is going on. She takes a sip of whisky to prepare her throat. Another example of her meticulous nature: this sip is the only alcohol she drinks in the 48 hours before any performance. "Excess has brought down many a great artist".

The attention to detail for which the Japanese are so renowned means that a dressing room has even been provided for the documentary film crew. González-Caballos aims to utilise La Paquera's experience in Japan "to reflect from an anthropological point of view, and far-removed from traditional subject-matter, on the clash between a culture as chaotic as that of flamenco and a society as structured as that of Japan. A society where, paradoxically, an enormous market has developed for this artform." This market has given rise, apart from disc sales, to the springing up of countless schools of flamenco dance, above all in the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, 'tablaos' and even workshops producing handmade dresses, dance shoes and musical instruments. According to a study by the University of Keio in Tokyo, in 1996 there were a hundred dance academies, fifteen specialist shops and ten 'tablaos'.

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