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Remedios Amaya, she of the broken voice, she of
the legendary fathomless growl, is back. And her
hallmark hasn’t changed - the latest wave
of flamenco pop, which she’s stuck to through
thick and thin. No one can deny she’s a
first-class ‘festera’ - singer of
up-tempo ‘fiesta’ rhythms - one of
the best we have today, because the ‘compás’
which provides the rhythmic backbone to her songs
is simply wonderful. But in her singing of normally
euphoric ‘fiesta’ styles, there is
wailing, minor keys, an aftertaste full of woe,
and a sincerity that’s as crushing as it
is uplifting.
The astonishing voice of Remedios
Amaya converts a recent pop hit like ‘Sobreviviré’
into a standard, which never before sounded so
nocturnal, so painful, haggard and straight from
the heart. She can take a pretty conventional
flamenco-flavoured pop tune, with a catchy melody
and forgettable lyric – written by the likes
of Juan Manuel Flores, for example – and
elevate it to the status of a classic love theme.
She’s the queen of tangos, as she shows
in several tracks on this offering ‘Soniquete’,
especially the track that gives the album its
name, a reference to the perpetual rhythmic sound
in the background...
The disc includes several tributes.
To Alameda, the legendary group whose style came
to be known in the late seventies as ‘rock
andaluz’, with one of the band’s classic
themes penned by José Roca, who sings the
song as a duet with Remedios Amaya. To Camarón,
with Lorca’s Romance del Amargo ‘por
soleá’; she’s accompanied on
this track by Juan Manuel Cañizares, and
it’s the only original part of the disc
- live and improvised, just the way this guitarist
likes to be, without any resemblance to his own
guitarwork on the (second) original track by Camarón.
And she’s also thrown in
a few ‘tientos’, a couple of bulerías
from Curro Navajita Plateá, one of them
paying tribute (the third on the disc) to Luis
el de la Pica, recently deceased ‘buleriero’
from Jerez and outstanding personality in the
world of flamenco. And some ‘tarantos’,
little more than an improvisation by a trio which
has become a bastion of contemporary flamenco:
Geraldo-Benavent-Pardo. A relaxed, gentle, easy-to-digest
album, conceived by the grace of the multinational
music companies, who have an unerring faith in
duplicating the miracle of Camarón. A strange
paradox: they never did believe in the miracle
until they saw that posthumous profits were a
safe bet, and that this flamenco could be good
business if you just put in a string arrangement
(in this case la Oca stand in for the Royal Philarmonic).
A bet with safe odds, given that
it’s aimed at a young and uninitiated audience,
but wouldn’t offend a casual flamenco fan,
and given that it features the powerful, reliable
presence of an artist as great as Remedios Amaya.
But maybe her voice is the property of greater
concerns and she deserves to be confronted with
more challenging and substantial compositions,
even if it is using a repertoire which is strictly
‘festero’. She already showed it with
‘Vente conmigo’ (Come with me), her
best-selling release to-date. If we’re talking
about good business, that is. |
