Paco Lira
Interview by Berit Böhme

"As I am not a tale-teller, the only thing of which I can speak is of what I have lived through ". And anyone who would have lived through what this 72 year old man has lived through would love to boast about it. Paco Lira's home has been a historic site of the world of Flamenco for 50 years now. But his bar is not only famous within the world of Flamenco: it is also famous in other musical circuits, as well as in the world of cinema, art and literature. Today it is the only "casa"(bar) in Seville where you can listen to live performances every day.

	Antonio Mairena, Photo by Colita

Paco Lira: I was born in Seville. But both my father and my mother came from a little bit further north, from "Casa de Sierra". Their job was to work the fields. "Casa de Sierra" does not have a big flamenco tradition. It is a tough town to live in. One of my mother's brothers was a cantaor (flamenco singer). His artistic name was "Carmelo de Sevilla". My mother also sang. Women at work, while doing the household work, cleaning the windows or doing whatever, always used to sing. I was removed from school at an early age; I was there until I was ten.

Berit Böhme: And at the age of nine or ten you already liked flamenco?

Paco Lira:I was the assistant of one of the transportists who owned a carriage drawn by several mules. He was a gypsy who sang the soleá de Triana in a fantastic way, his name was "El Papero". I was very impressed by this man. For no matter what dramas he was enduring, all the problems, he would alleviate by singing and by making up those lyrics with a very rigid structure. "El Papero" was a genial man. Of course, genial within the limits of his poverty. He was poor, but he bore himself with a great dignity, with pride and with nobility. When he became older he no longer worked with us. But there was always a good reason for him to come to our yard, and at anyone's party he would be present and would sing.

Berit Böhme: Did you ever have difficulties concerning the political groups that would meet in your bar?

Paco Lira: My place was open to all the political tendencies. That is: a truly free place. I was never a member of any group. But my place served as a refugee place for all the intellectuals who could not speak in other bars. There would even be groups of seven different political parties at the same time, you know? But against Franco they were all united.

B: How did it become known that your place existed? Was it mouth to mouth?

Frank Zappa

PL: It has always been through oral propagation. I have never done any publicity for the place. Sometimes I am forced to use it because of some compromise with a friend, but I'm not interested in it. Because it brings with it a foreign public who will never be able to understand this. It will take them many days before they learn the coplas... And look, for us, without making any publicity... all of the greatest musicians from everywhere have passed through my place. For example Pete Seeger. I met him in 1962, 63. I mean Frank Zappa, the modern people, the modern movements, Frank Zappa used to come to my place a lot, and even Peter Gabriel was here not so long ago, but I enjoy Frank Zappa much more. Frank Zappa was an intellectual. He was also a very humble man, not like the artists of today, who are all exhibitionists.

B: Is there any formative intention in what you do? Perhaps so that young people can understand flamenco...

PL: Yes, yes. Because they are being lured in all of the artistic fronts, you know? (he says this with some anger)

B: And is this the reason for presenting traditional cantaores like "Juan de Coripe", to educate the young ones?

PL: Yes, this has always been so. Always, always I tried to tell of how the cante (flamenco singing) is performed. And at the beginning of "La Cuadra" I saught a man who would sing in many of the different styles of flamenco song. I was very interested in this because of the new, young people, because students came who had absolutely no idea... I would bring "Niño de Alcolea". He was a waiter and a magnificent artist. He performed all types of cante, he was "fandanguero", but he also knew well the other types of cante and each of the other styles of fandango and the styles of the other cantaores of the time. And so I would pay him and he was the man in charge of the bar.

B: Don't you think that it is difficult for the young ones to understand the old, traditional things? For example, what Juan de Coripe sings.

PL:Yes, but it is even more of a shame to bring the best guitar players, and that they play five palos, and that's it. When there are almost hundreds of palos. When Juan de Coripe came here the first day, many of the guitar players that were here could only accompany him in two or three things, and not in the rest.

B:Your aim is to attract to your place many young people, and not only people who can pay 2000 ptas (about 13 U.S. dollars) to come and see flamenco, isn't it?

PL: That is my aim, which I have maintained throughout so many years. I am interested in a place to which people who want to learn come without having to make a big effort. The drama of my place, the reason for which we have always been so hard up economically, lies in that we never go up to someone and tell them "What will you have to drink?" or "this is how much it will cost you to see this". Those are things that have never been done at my place and to maintain that for the 50 years during which I have been doing this is difficult.

B: Why did you like Antonio Mairena so much?

PL:You know, when flamenco is so well-known from within by someone... I was very interested in Antonio Mairena because he possessed that didactic sense that the professional must have so that people like what they are seeing. Informing about the cante, as well as making us enjoy it. I don't know if Mairena copied us in this sense or if we copied Mairena (at this point, he smiles). Because I... when Mairena would come you did not know who he was. I knew that he was interested in this type of thing, because he came.

B: How were Fernanda and Bernarda?

PL: They were wonderful. Their parents didn't want for them to become artists, and they were already grown up, and they were still not allowed to become artists. In my opinion, Fernanda is the true artist of recent times. Antonio Mairena and Fernanda. Also, Fernanda and Bernarda used the lyrics of Andalusian songs, put them in flamenco, even though this isn't really flamenco, but they were nevertheless perfectly combined. That is good and it's valid, and it has been valid.

Fernanda de Utrera

B: Which of today's artists do you really enjoy?

PL: Well, of the artists of today I really like Joselito de Lebrija, for instance. Because he's young, because of his potential, because the kid hasn't been bored and destroyed by people, even though they have tried to do so. I mean, you have to realize that in the competition of the Bienal, of the penultimate Bienal, he performed perfectly the cantes, the romances por bulerías, of Lebrija, you know? They are a type of bulerías al golpe. And of the members of the jury there was not a single one who knew the type of cante that that man was singing.

Of the guitar players of today I really like, for the respect that he shows towards flamenco: Martín Revuelo, of the good guitar playing. In the baile (dance) area, Carmelilla Montoya, daughter of Carmen Montoya, who is a magnificent bailaora, but who hasn't danced for a long time now. It is a crime for this woman to be treated as an outcast, when she is such a great professional.

B: And what about the old flamenco guitar players?

In the field of guitar playing there are, in my opinion, masters like Diego del Gastor or Morao, don't you think so? Or Parrilla or Luis Habichuela from Granada. Luis Habichuela is perfection. Can you believe that celebrations are held in which they don't even recall Luis Habichuela? And if they do, they think of his children. It's today's great lie, you know? Diego del Gastor, who was a strange, serious man who didn't play just in front of anyone no matter how much money he was offered, used to come to my place. He played for the simple people, just as did Niño Ricardo; when the bar closed, they would stay inside my place to play

I am still not very flexible with respect to flamenco... Lola Flores, for instance; every time she released a record it was brought to my place so that we would know about it, and we never played it, no sir. I never considered Lola as a good cantaora or a good bailaora; she was a very temperamental and very Andalusian woman, no doubt about it, but there is a great difference between that and flamenco. Well you can imagine that if I didn't stand up with Lola, how am I going to stand up with all the bullshit that the administration of today wants to sell to us as being flamenco, you understand? I am not a very tolerant person regarding Flamenco...

And now, after 17 or 18 or I don't know how many years of democracy in our country, and still not one single decent show has been made. The only serious TV show that has been recorded, is from the times of the dictatorship. It was done for a cultural elite minority audience, a program recorded by Televisión Española. It was called 'Rito y geografía del cante' (Rite and geography of the cante). It is the only serious one left from the times of the dictatorship. And at the end of the dictatorship, there was a show presented by Mario Maya called "Camelamos naquelar". It is the only serious dance show...

Before, the relationships were not... you did not live like today, where everything lives off falsehood. Now, great amounts are spent on publicity for no use. There is a celebration of great shows which are not worth being celebrated. The worse the show is, the greater attention it gets. As usual, it is flamenco which ends up suffering the consequences. These shows are given much attention and support so that they produce economic benefits, and when someone with dignity comes trying to defend their art, they are left alone, completely alone to face the indifference of those who organize things, and who do not feel the things they organize. There are guys who would never have gotten anywhere, like Enrique Morente, for example, but who are greatly supported within the existing uncertainty of what flamenco is. According to the media, he is the best cantaor. He would have been a good Andalusian singer, but never a flamenco one. Because he doesn't even know how to "darse una vueltecita* (to dance spontaneously following the rhythm), he doesn't have a sense of rhythm. After having studied for many years, during his whole life. Because to make flamenco you don't need anything else than to be flamenco, and anything, a table, anything can be your instrument. You don't need a guitar or anything.

B: Don't you think that flamenco can be learnt?

PL: Yes I do, but you can always tell. Well, of course you can learn. I could tell you about hundreds of people who have learnt... Enrique Morente, the little that he does know... he is a guy that comes from outside of flamenco. And likewise, I could talk to you about so many, but I don't like hurting anyone. But there are many who are false. I call that !mimetic flamenco". They learn the moves and gestures, they even learn the sound that the voice can make. But you can tell that there is no core...

B: Tell me something about Camarón. You knew him when he was a child, right?

PL: At the age of nine and ten Camarón was a guy who sang really well. Just like his mother, with reminiscences of La Perla, and of a cripple, who was called the cripple Farina from the Isle of San Fernando. I didn't know he was an artist, but once, he tried to sell us potatoes (chips), little bags of chips at a cent each, you know? And when we got to the dessert, after having had lunch at a restaurant in the Venta de Vargas in San Fernando... I was with several friends, and I said "that kid is an artist". "But Paco, how can you say that he is an artist, when nobody has seen him". And I said: "Yeah, because he has been going around several of the tables and he is the only one that has stopped at our table to sell us a thing that he knows we will not eat, and, moreover, I feel it as the attitude of a gypsy, we have been to Jerez, we have been with hundreds of children, and I didn't say of any of them that they were artists, and I do say so about this one".

So we kept on talking with him, and at the end I wanted to invite him to a glass of milk, because back then I had five children of my own, you know, I have eight children, but back then I had five, you know? And he became very angry because I had invited him to a glass of milk and he asked who we thought we were. I said: "Look, I am the father of five children and I don't want any stranger to invite them to alcohol, and that is why I don't invite you to it either.".

Camarón changed constantly. He seemed like a man to me with only ten years of age. And when he was 20, or 25, I began to get to know a child, a child who was as a toy due to the drugs and to his nobleness. He allowed himself to be easily influenced by others. He was very noble, and he was unable to simply talk so as not to disturb. He was a very straight guy, very honest. Nobody talks about these things about Camarón, but Camarón was an incredible human being. And they destroyed him within his own world, and later with the harder drugs...

B: And did you notice a change in his voice?

PL: When he first started, he had all of the rigor of flamenco, of the best flamenco of the 1950s. Camarón was very good almost until the time of his death, up to about five or six years before he died. But the music corporations were forcing him to do things that he didn't feel any more, but he did them because he was easily influenced, he was very noble, and very simple.

B: So what he recorded during the 1980s isn't for you...

PL: No, I am not much interested in the last things that he has done because he hasn't kept up the rigor of true flamenco. He used to come to this place a lot. He would leave his white Mercedes there at the door and he would come inside, especially many days in July. The days when there wasn't too many people in Seville, that's when he liked to come. On the same night that Tía Juana la del Pipa died, he was here with his wife. That was the last time he came because gypsies are very superstitious, and since he had learnt about the death of Tía Juana here, he did not come back during his last years. But I did see him in some of the music festivals.

Translation by Pekka Odriozola

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