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No less than the gloomy chords, with that unbearable harmonic, of the rondeña
by Ramón Montoya, one of the great compositions of this art, open 'El pequeño
reloj' (EMI-Virgin, 2003). Next joining the crackling of slate are the oneiric
voices of Estrella and Enrique
Morente, saturating with suggestions a piece in itself suggestive.
Because it's Morente, because we know him, is why we don't dare (like that, in
public) to be overwhelmed. After all, people say, he's a genius.
'El pequeño reloj' is the reflection of a mature
performer, in technical and vital plenitude, on his art. And on the passing of
time. An open, conceptual album which converses with the past ("what isn't
tradition is plagiarism") and which looks forward. The old slate guitars
of Ramón
Montoya and Manolo de Huelva. The 'dance' machines programmed by Carlos Jean.
New and old things from this art and this artist turn between these two extremes
as if in an immense jumble. Texts and cult music, from León Felipe to Beethoven,
embellishments with a marchenero stamp in the voice of the father and of the daughter,
classical cantes, even extinct or absolutely unknown such as the policaña.
The Caribbean airs of Jerry González and Caramelo. The avant-garde of baile
flamenco: the feet of Israel
Galván. The guitars of Tomatito and Sabicas. References to the most
immediate reality: a statement against arms improvised in the recording sessions
coinciding with the beginning of the invasion of Iraq.
Nobody gives so much in this art today, not even close.
The best thing of all is the open, spontaneous, scattered nature. It's characteristic
of the art of our time. Gone are the closed works, the nineteenth-century sagas,
the symphonies by Brahms. Reality, this is the art of our time; it is fragmentary,
incongruent, ghostly. A work underway reaching the status of masterpiece, its
greatest perfection in its unfinished nature. Comprehensive and fragmentary, multidisciplinary
and contradictory. As we said, like the times.
More information:
Enrique Morente
launches his new album in Madrid
"El pequeño reloj is an outline for a possible good album"
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