3 stigmas 3. Dolores. Camarón. Paco de Lucía

There are three names branded in fire onto Jorge Pardo's music. The first is that of Dolores, the group from which his musical family derives. The second is Camarón, that giant of flamenco with whom he shared his curiosity. The third - by no means last, just to complete the circle - is Paco de Lucía.

1. One. Dolores "was conceived by Pedro Ruy-Blas, who gathered together a group of musicians without any well-defined artistic style, and from no single ethnic group or collective." The drummer, songwriter and singer, who borrowed his artistic name from one of Víctor Hugo's works, "came up with the name Dolores, which had been the title of the album he made in 1976 with Jorge Pardo and Jean Luc Vallet. And Dolores has served as a banner under which a string of musicians from that era passed, musicians mostly from Madrid or living in Madrid." Jorge Pardo pauses to count them and comes up with "fifteen or twenty musicians who were one time or another part of that group, which gives you an idea of its aims." Álvaro Yebenes, César Berti, Alvarito Tarquino, Rubem Dantas, José Antonio Galicia... For these artists at the vanguard of fusion sharing each other's company was the twist of fate that caused their paths to cross with flamenco duo Paco de Lucía and Camarón. "We had a lot in common, we met up once in a while and had a beer." Coincidence... but also curiosity: "They were flamenco musicians but they came from that generation which also looked at other forms of music and other musicians. And from that mutual curiosity was born that sound," which incidentally can first be heard on the album where Paco de Lucía pays homage to composer Manuel de Falla... "I must've been seventeen".

The arrangement's been working for more than twenty years now. "We spend so much time touring around the world together, and on a lot of tours, during those late-night chats in hotel rooms, we get talking about those things." None of it was planned. "The same comment comes up over and over again: what a coincidence. Nobody, not Paco or any of us there had plans or any idea that in the future we'd do anything. It was just another project to be done, an interesting one, a collaboration between artists who admired each other's work. And it's given birth to something that just keeps growing."

Paco de Lucía Septet. 1981

Paco de Lucía + Ramón de Algeciras + Jorge Pardo + Carles Benavent + Rubem Dantas + José María Bandera + Joaquín Grilo + Duquende. What's the link that unites the septet? "You could point to any one of a number of things... From a practical viewpoint, you could say the work we do. It's a group that's worked together, and as a result it's been successful and stood the test of time." From the other viewpoint, the one which Jorge Pardo refers to as poetic or artistic, the bond is "that mutual feeling of curiosity which keeps us wondering how far we can go, how long we can continue to learn from each other, how long we can keep surprising ourselves at the next concert... All the while we keep asking those questions, the group will continue to exist. And if there's work for us, all the more reason."

2. Two. "It was inevitable that sooner or later my path would cross with Camarón's. A lot of mutual friends were involved in the production of 'La leyenda del tiempo', we recorded for the same company, we saw each other around the studios... and Camarón also had a curiosity similar to mine, or ours. That's why we ended up working together more than once." He recalls some of those occasions "with fond memories because they were pretty unusual things as far as he was concerned." And he recounts a particular episode: "I remember a concert we did in Barcelona. There was Camarón with Dolores, Jeff Beck with Stanley Clark... and it was interesting. Basically we ran through the repertoire of 'La Leyenda', which contained a kind of bulería, there were a few styles which sounded like flamenco... whatever". In fact, back in those days "people didn't bother to question that. A lot of times you look back and question things and you have to do it, and do it as best you can." And at that festival he occupied "a privileged position, since he understood the language of the other musicians and was beginning to understand the language of flamenco." Strange thing was that "Camarón, a flamenco artist from a humble background, and with a strict flamenco musical training, was a great lover of all other kinds of music." In fact, "he was well-known for carrying round tapes of singers from the Maghreb, and of Indian and Bulgarian music... he drew influences from many types of music, which shows he studied in his own way. Usually, though, studying is wrongly assumed to mean going to University or having a teacher set you exams." Jorge Pardo comes to the tentative conclusion that "this curiosity Camarón felt toward other musical styles was what drove him to take part in this kind of projects, to say 'let's see what happens if I do this or that.' And that's what made him a kindred spirit with myself and a whole group of other musicians."

And there's no shortage of anecdotes: "At the press conference the journalists asked Camarón if he'd be excited about playing with Jaco Pastorius... and he replied, 'Who's he?' ". But this unfamiliarity worked both ways: "When we finished playing we held a party in the dressing room as usual, and we were raising hell, so much so that the guys from Weather Report had to come down to our dressing room and see what the hell was going on. And, of course, their faces showed expressions of astonishment and unfamiliarity with the sounds." Twenty-five years on the situation has changed radically: "Ask any American musician these days to show you the rhythm pattern for bulerías, and he'll show you without batting an eyelid. Just about everyone knows something nowadays about what a bulería's like, what a soleá is, or a tango, what a cierre means, or x y and z. Any musician, even if their style is free jazz, knows something about this stuff. But back then, just twenty-five years ago, musicians of that caliber reacted to flamenco as if they'd seen a ghost."

3. Three. After working with Paco de Lucía for the first time on the tribute album to Falla, "he asked us to come and work on a European tour he was about to start, and we started working assiduously," right up to the present day. Jorge Pardo can't "sum up what Paco means to him in one word, that would be too superficial... What can I say - that he's a great guitarist? It's such an intense relationship we have, with such mutual fondness and admiration we have for each other, so many different feelings that it's difficult to sum everything up in one expression." Maybe there's one you could use: " 'Tour after tour after tour' as Carles would say, 'tour after tour after tour' ". And I feel the same about the rest of the septet "We've done so many tours, played so many concerts, scored so many goals, caused so many sensations. And in the end it's like you're part of a family, where anything goes, everything's comprehensible."

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