Artlcles »Tour dates in october and november 2001 »Review
of the concert at the Jerez Festival 2000, by Luis Clemente. Live
Videoclips »Colegio
de Médicos. Madrid
"I've got very fixed ideas, gazpacho is for eating, not singing" |
You managed to make a recording of cante cante. The way the music industry is these days that's no small accomplishment. As long as the bottom line comes out okay!… (laughter)... and that alone is something... Besides, I believe I've made the record I had in mind, it's difficult to have a company that publishes this, you can't imagine what I went through, you have to convince people that what you're offering has to have the highest possible quality. The record companies set the mark by the most commercial records, they have Merce's example which is the most commercial of all, but I wanted to make a record with new things that would sound flamenco. The single that was chosen is the most easy to listen to, tangos, but it's not commercial, and if you hear the alegrías and you put them on a single you get something that only my mother and father would buy (laughter), put soleá and even they wouldn't buy it. The easiest thing for the general public is rumba and tangos, but I refused to do a rumba, not because it's no good, but because I'm a flamenco singer! Your line of thought reminds me of Carmen Linares and Morente, both very wrapped up in their work. The thing is, I've got my whole life ahead of me to make records, and to sell big, if indeed I manage to sell at all, and if not this time around, then the second, or the sixteenth. This is a letter of presentation, the people get the feel of where you want to go. Obviously it's not the best record of my life, but I'm just 23 and it's my first record! It would be kind of sad. (Laughter) Would it ever! In that case my career would begin and end all in one stroke. In any case, there's a great deal of pressure. Perhaps the worst pressure is that which is self-imposed, I'm very demanding, but when I see that I'm reaching a certain level of quality that's acceptable I also relax, at least a minimally high level, that's all right. To go higher than that is just a question of time, the passage of time, of having more experience and gaining in depth and weightiness. I'm very finicky and of course there has to be an equilibrium between the technical angle and the feeling. In the last Bienal (2000) you sang in a theater production in which Isabel Bayón danced, and the cante was accompanied part of the time by a brass band. Needless to say, your first record isn't the best time to record something experimental, like with Omega. No, no, but I keep an open mind, everything which enriches is good, if it's bad you're better off not doing it. I look at my career in the long run, and that's what was so hard explaining to those "factories"... I want them to understand that this is little by little and, obviously, as I sing on the record, they should let me make my own mistakes, and I'll make plenty.
You recorded fandangos, a cante that you always do live. The title is very powerful, it's called "Huelva exists" and with all the reason in the world, because you can't imagine how irritating it is when they say "this guy sings some fandanguillos…", but man, do you have any idea what it means to sing that? Fandanguillo my foot! And did you know that from those roots we get granaínas, malagueñas, tarantos? Many things have come out of the fandangos, those commentaries about "unos fandanguillos"... as far as I'm concerned, that piece is just as important as any other on the record. I don't just do it because of my city, I'm not one of these patriotic types, you see, I like Huelva a lot and I have a wild time there, but more than a debt to my city, it's a debt to the cante. That form is very rich, it's profound, and it has an enormous variety of styles, and you can't just treat it like that. And musically it's very complete. The problem is, not everyone wants to understand this, some can't because their brains can't grasp it, but others don't want to because it's a little like going against the accepted line. It's the same as the record, I'm a little out of step with everyone else, I mean, I also like nice houses, good cars, women, money, okay, but what do you want? Want me to make a very commercial record? What for? I believe in what Manuel Torres said, in my hunger I'm the boss. I'm not for sale and I do what I feel like. There are many people who say they don't sell out, but who have never had "buyers", you've been able to demonstrate your cante in different ways and you've said 'no'. Yes, well that's true actually, but... it's that all that stuff about offers, that's a fake, do you really think that some multinational company is going to come and put a hundred million on the table for some unknown? Are we crazy or what? It's insane, impossible, (laughter). Make a record that's commercial and that's it! You're shooting for a solid career. I'm a great aficionado of flamenco, it's my life, I'd die if I had to live without this. Last night you were singing in private in a small place with Estrella Morente and Miguel Poveda. They're hot stuff those two! They're completely possessed by flamenco (laughter) and those are two singers I really like a lot, and I like a lot of people, like Mayte and Duquende, and lots of people say he sounds so much like Camarón, but if you analyze his cante there's no similarity: the placement of the voice, his turns of melody... perhaps José Parra, El Cigala, Blas Córdoba sound more like Camarón... I've been two days without sleeping and Estrella Morente and Miguel Poveda are to blame, it's that I get involved and start listening and it's like it absorbs your brain and you get out of place and time, and suddenly the hour doesn't matter. It's incredible. And I really like that, I even like old-style cante a lot, it's that I like everything, quality modern-style the same. I don't want to give up one or the other. Don't you think that old-style cante was artistically risky even though those forms are now considered classics? Yes, the only problem is that there are very few followers. There aren't that many people who have a basis for passing a well-founded judgment. How are they going to sell me a certain way of singing by saying they're pure? With styles that I've never heard from La Niña de los Peines or Chacón or anybody, when I'm completely saturated with Pavón, Pepe Pinto, Marchena, and no one sings like that. The thing is, something very strange has happened in flamenco... the cante was being interpreted by a bunch of very good artists, and suddenly Mairena came along and eclipsed everything, the Mairena movement brought with it the flamenco dictatorship. If you lay down the law you obstruct the freedom to create. Absolutely, and then came the Camarón movement. It's a funny thing, there are singers who are Camarón through and through and they say they're avant-garde, and then there's the other extreme, which is, shall we call them, the purists... "purists" for the sake of giving them a label. So it turns out, the singer who says he sings 'pure' is the complete antithesis of all that is pure (Arcángel starts singing some supposedly ancient, pure styles). No way! Give me some real cante! I've got my voice and I sing with my voice, if you like it fine, and if not, well too bad. And an unusual voice it is. It's strange... very strange. There are times when it can sound very flamenco, and others when, I don't know... But it's a very musical voice, now there's a bunch of singers like Marina Heredia, Estrella, Eva Durán, with great musicality, you can work in other kinds of music. That's fine, thank god, not having those limitations. This year I'm going to do a piece with Mauricio Sotelo, but something I would never do is get involved in areas I'm not familiar with. Do you listen to other kinds of music? I listen to Metheny, Jaco Pastorius. The stuff Pastorius was doing was great, as far as singers, it's more difficult, it's that pop music doesn't do much for me, maybe someone like Sting. So you like instrumental jazz. I like that stuff a lot, it seems very natural, it's as though in pop and rock they're mostly just trying to sell records. When it comes time to sing live, will it be with Juan Carlos Romero? Yes, I've got very fixed ideas, gazpacho is for eating, not singing, there's a coherence to the record. When you've got six guitarists, each one having been born with a different personality, you can really do something nice, but not express a specific idea. What I don't like is for example a bulería, four repeated falsetas, stick in a chorus and call it a "piece". Paco de Lucía, Manolo Sanlúcar, these are guys who know how to develop a theme from beginning to end. And that's what's good about Juan Carlos. I don't have his musical knowledge, but we try to be coherent. Even the seguiriya, which is sung in Manuel Torre's style, I respect his parameters, but with my own voice and interpretation.
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