FESTIVAL SUMA FLAMENCA 2008. LA MÚSICA
DE LOS ESPEJOS
Enrique Morente & Luis García Montero
From poet to poet
S.C. Madrid, June 9th, 2008
A poet isn’t just someone who writes
poetry. A poet is also someone who sings it... or that’s
what it seems like when the one doing it is Enrique
Morente. And the thing is that he has the extraordinary
ability to make a verse declaimed by its author not sound
at all like the same verse reinvented by this throat.
It happened just as soon as the face-off began in the
third installment of the ‘La música de los
espejos’ (‘Mirror Music’) series. Poet
Luis García Montero threw some verses out at him.
And Enrique Morente turned them into guajiras in a valiant
display of improvisation. “It isn’t necessary
to live, sailing is necessary”, he sweetly proclaimed
amidst the branches of the hundred-year-old olive trees.
Enrique Morente with Luis
García Montero and Paquete at Olivar de Castillejo
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
A poem. A cante. A poem. A cante-poem.
Poet and cantaor got involved in a dialogue of verses,
some from the village, others by poets inspired in the
village. García Montero recites about Granada.
And Morente gives him back a granaína. A statement
against the local, a look at the Andalusia which was at
the same time avant-garde and traditional. Falla. Lorca.
And if there’s a cantaor who knows how the one from
Fuente Vaqueros feels flamenco-style, here he is. Por
bulerías, excerpts of La Romería from ‘Yerma’.
And Paquete’s guitar and Bandolero’s compás
helping the cantaor soar.
Then, evocation of Antonio Machado, of
his sad death in exile in Collioure... where he still
lies. Morente goes away until ‘Despegando’,
the groundbreaking album in which he breathed new life
into the verses from ‘Yo escucho los cantos’.
Here the cantaor converts and grows and then withdraws
in ‘Ausencia’. But with a lot of shivering,
hounded by the unexpected cold of this spring. And the
journey ends where it begins, in Madrid, the city which
the cantaor came to in order to draw on the old sources
still flowing here, and starting with them, to build his
own. García Montero provides the verse. And Morente,
the cante. The malagueña de Chacón,
the one originating with “¡Viva Madrid que
es la Corte!”. But since this cantaor is so restless,
he had to recreate it his way, making the box drum a nearly
hip-hop base. Those new rails were traveled upon by his
cante, which ended with Lorca’s echo of “Yo
vuelvo por mis alas, dejadme volver”.
Luis García Montero
and Enrique Morente
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
