Maharaja Flamenca, La Macanita and Nuevos Medios add up
to flamenco at Pirineos Sur
Flamenco-world.com
Flamenco will acquire a degree of prestige
at the Festival Internacional de las Culturas Pirineos Sur to be held between
the 12th of July and the 3rd of August, 2002 in the Aragonese portion of the Pyrenees
mountains. The blending of the music of the Indian Rajastán with Arcángel,
Segundo Falcón and Paco Jarana, the collaboration between La Macanita and
the Macedonian singer Esma Redzepova under the banner "Divas Gitanas",
and the concert which brings together Diego Carrasco, Jorge Pardo, Carles Benavent
and Tino di Geraldo to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the recording company
Nuevos Medios, represent flamenco's presence at a festival that comes under the
multifaceted heading of world music.
Amidst gypsy instrumental pieces, Balkan sounds,
Sub-Saharan, North African, Jamaican Basque rhythms... flamenco. The Pirineos
Sur festival is making a place for the art of Andalusia in its ample program of
musical shows taking place between July 12th and August 3, 2002 in the Valle de
Tena. The first flamenco appearance of the event which is dedicating its eleventh
edition to gypsy music, is being offered by the Seville singer La Macanita on
Friday, July 19th under the title Divas Gitanas in a split bill with the Macedonian
singer Esma Redzepova, known as "the queen of the gypsies". On Wednesday
July 24th. the festival is offering a point of encounter for the Gitanos de Aragón
concentrating on rumba and flamenco, with the singer from León Manuel Tejuela
at the lead.
La Macanita (Foto: Daniel Muñoz)
The high point of this festival in the Pyrenees
is its flamenco facet which can be enjoyed on July 26th. 'Principio y Fin' [beginning
and end] is the title which includes the two concerts of the day: one which
returns to the roots, and another which searches for new paths to travel. The
first of these is Maharaja Flamenca, a concert in which the Indian musicians of
Rajasthan and those of Andalusian flamenco shake hands, specifically the group
Maharaja and the flamenco singers Arcángel and Segundo Falcón with
guitarist Paco Jarana, regular backup musician for Eva la Yerbabuena.
Since the first time it was held in Berlin's
Womex 2000, the fusion of elements has yielded sixty shows throughout Europe and
North America in addition to recordings, not only of Indian musicians, but of
flamenco musicians as well. One example is 'Al Compás de Sombra' [to
the rhythm of the shadows], a cante from Segundo Falcón's debut recording
'Un Segundo de Cante' (Karonte, 2002) based on trilla and toná
liviana and fleshed out by instrumentals and choruses provided by the Maharaja
group. As French journalist Stéphane Davet who writes for 'Le Monde' explained
in the show's review in the spring of 2001 in Bourges: "Far from being artificial,
this encounter unfolded a story"... about the gypsy exodus that landed these
people in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula.
The second concert is the reencounter of Nuevos
Medios alumnae whereby the recording company celebrates in live performance its
twenty years of existence. Singer, composer and guitarist from Jerez Diego Carrasco,
saxophonist and flautist Jorge Pardo, the multi-faceted Tino di Geraldo and bass-player
Carles Benavent, a trio incorporated in Paco de Lucía's septet, create
a bridge between flamenco and jazz.
Lanuza's Auditorium
revista@flamenco-world.com
