Miguel Poveda gold-plates his album
‘Coplas del querer’
S.C./ Flamenco-world.com, October 29th, 2009
Martirio, Carmen Linares, Pitingo,
Amargós… were some of the colleagues who applauded
Miguel
Poveda when the president of his record company handed
him the gold record at the SGAE’s modernist headquarters
in Madrid. As the shiny plaque attests, the double album
‘Coplas del querer’ has managed to sell over
30,000 copies. And it’s a double achievement. Firstly,
because of the present economic situation and the cancer
of illegal downloads, which have lowered record sales by
at least thirty percent… including those of flamenco,
unfortunately. Secondly, because of the genre in question:
the copla. Which, according to its defenders, has been reviled
by those who brand it as the soundtrack of Franco’s
regime.
Miguel Poveda (Photo
Daniel Muñoz) |
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When he came up to the mike, smiling and
radiant, he thus remarked: “It’s not just a
joy for me, but for a genre which deserves it, beyond political
matters which don’t agree with music”. And to
endorse the current vitality of Spanish song, he stressed
the name of his stalwart Martirio
and also that of Carlos Cano for having “brought this
genre closer to the crowd with a different treatment; he’s
made it pretty easy for those of us who have come afterwards”.
As he had already explained in an interview
for Flamenco-world.com, his aim with this album is just
“to show people they have this other way of reaching
the copla, through my music, Amargós’s and
Chicuelo’s”.
And of course, his lead guitarist didn’t
miss the act. With his instrument, he accompanied Miguel
in a mini-recital - flamenco-style, that’s to say,
vocals, guitar and clapping - which illustrated the ‘ceremony’.
He performed songs such as the potpourri entitling the album,
‘Los tientos del cariño’, a more bulería-style
version of ‘A ciegas’ - a song which is part
of the soundtrack of ‘Los abrazos rotos’ (‘Broken
Embraces’) by Pedro Almodóvar - and lastly,
‘Tres puñales’. He finished singing and
once again found himself surrounded by cameras and mikes,
an infrequent situation for a cantaor... who, from the mere
fact of being one, usually arouses little interest in the
media. But Miguel Poveda has already gone beyond that incomprehensible
barrier of indifference, like what happened in the end to
Camarón who, by the way, returned to the front pages
today due to the premiere of the documentary which celebrates
the 30th anniversary of ‘La leyenda del tiempo’,
and which also happens today to Bernarda de Utrera…
but unfortunately, not because of her art, but due to her
death.
Miguel
Poveda and Chicuelo
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
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