Manzanita

Tell me about your new album: "Por tu ausencia" (live)

It is a live album, and as such, it includes compositions that you cannot leave out from throughout my musical career, as are "El ramito de violetas" or "Verde", "Gitana", "Dentro de tu alma"," Para que vuelvas" and others. These well-known Manzanita compositions have been remade with help of the modern technological advances we now have and with very important contributions, such as the ones offered by la Barbería del Sur or by Paco Ortega. There is also a previously unreleased composition by José Losada, "No me lo creo". We have made a cover of a Ricardo Franco composition and one of Cociante. We have also recovered "La quiero a morir", of Cabrel, for the album. I have also recorded "II mio canto libero", which is an Italian song. So, you see, there is a bit of everything, what you would find in a live performance. A review of what you have done and are currently doing.

You've mentioned the contributions: La barbería del Sur, Paco Ortega... Tell me a little bit more about this.

Paco's contribution came to be when he invited me to play that composition which is in my album and which he also has in his album. And since he invited me to play the guitar for that song and he has been the producer of this album and is a guy that sings really well and a good friend of mine, so he finally appears in the song in which I played. In the case of La Barbería, we were thinking of doing "Verde" with them. I have seen those kids since they were small, because "el Paquete" is the son of my friend Ramón el Portugués, and we used to send that kid to buy us cigarettes when we were partying; I mean we have brought up those kids and now they are fabulous artists. "El Negri" has a very special way of singing, and I felt that he could contribute something powerful to the song.

Where did the idea of producing a live album come from?

Well, it was in fact Warner that came up with the idea. They went through my musical career and saw that I had done practically everything that could be done, but that I had never released a live album. At first I took it as if it was a means to sell more records, but, in fact, a live album has nothing to do with an album recorded in a studio. You are singing for someone, not as in the studio where you are singing for yourself and when you want to you can stop and repeat it over again. It means you have to be well prepared and you have to present yourself in front of the public and present the songs and sing. The warmth of the public can be felt with the album.

Do you feel like a precursor of what has come to be called "nuevo flamenco"?

Yes, in part, I do. I think that together with Paco de Lucía and Manuel Montoya (from Lole y Manuel), we were the ones that opened up the doors for the others to follow. But that doesn't give us the right to do whatever we want to.

Do you plan to release new songs in the future?

Yes. I still do. I mean that when we were about to record this album, I already had another one finished and recorded. But it is a very different album from what we were planning on doing. And since I was very much interested in this and I felt that I needed to put myself back in the limelight and that this was the easiest way to do it, I said yes. The other album is innovative and has little to do with this one; it is an album that has been left there and which we way release next year or later on.

Interview by Carlos. L. Mora.
From the World Music magazine.

magazine@flamenco-world.com