Fernanda de Utrera

Fernanda Jiménez Peña. (Utrera (Seville), 1923/2006). Singer

Many consider her the best singer of soleares of all time, which is now difficult to know, as we have no knowledge of how her predecessors sang before recording was invented. Granddaughter of Fernando Peña Soto Pinini, sister of Bernarda de Utrera, she has all the genetic credentials required to be a purebred singer. La Fernanda really is excellent at cante por soleá, and also notable in some other styles: bulerías, tangos, the cantiñas of her grandfather Pinini -, and at fandangos she is extraordinary. You have to put your heart into it, she says: "I have a fandango recorded, the one a mis niños no me los abandones (don’t abandon my children) ..., as I can no longer sing it since a sister of mine died, because I remember my sister who left her children alone. People ask me and I sing it reluctantly; but I begin to shudder and I feel like I am about to fall apart so I cannot, no I cannot". The soleares of Fernanda de Utrera may be memorable. In her best times, her dark, torn voice, almost always insufficient, but full of duendes and mystery, was an instrument that transmitted emotion and has hair-raising in each one of the thirds. González Climent described it as follows: "The whole of her is rebellion, insatisfaction, search, a struggle for very expression. She does not have normal powers. To reach the "form" of the cante, just that, is a triumph for Fernanda. She feels much more than she is able to say externally. However, by paying the price of much anguish, disorder and exhausting internal search, she manages to say it (...) The singer of Utrera makes impossible demands on her hoarse, torn voice, extreme in her psychic concentration, she violently scratches the human strength of her shouts and reaches cruel, almost barbarous levels. La Fernanda is physically convulsed, flings out her arms, closes her eyes, evokes the duendes, seeks elementary undertakings that allow her to rise and fall upon herself until she scratches out the valuable jipío. She has a temple voice and rajo. She masters the great sense of harmony, although without hindering it against her vital audacity, she imitates absolutely noone. She picks from the very initial temper. Her jipíos frighten. Her silences are as heart-wrenching as artistic (...) Her flamenco management is a suffering from which we cannot escape. Management or communion - may it be correctly understood - may only be sustained in the same emotional orbit in which La Fernanda is, and places us. In a few seconds she drags us to the bottom of her mystery. She pulls down on us as if she were the tide of mood surging back. Her zone of influence is implacable. La Fernanda blocks, invades, wounds". She has acted in films.

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