Interview with Gerardo Núñez

Interview with GERARDO NÚÑEZ

The Jerez guitarist has just recorded
“Andando el Tiempo”, a “guitaristic”
record as he calls it. The title reflects the fact that despite
being a very prolific guitarist, he’s taken five years
to bring out this latest work, mostly due to his involvement
in so many other projects in various fields such as jazz,
accompanying Carmen Linares, la Nueva Escuela de Guitarra
in which he throws his support behind young hopefuls, in addition
to being, without any doubt, the flamenco guitarist who has
given the greatest number of concerts in recent years, all
of which has occupied most of his time.

Gerardo Núñez Trío – Cepillo & Gerardo
& Pablo Martín

Why has this recording
taken so long to prepare?
When you aren’t completely sure, something keeps you
from going ahead. There were times I had two or three pieces,
but not a complete record, and it gets sidelined until the
inspiration comes.

Is it possible you take on too
many projects?
Perhaps it’s a way of not facing up to it, I get angry
with myself, I should have recorded more. Now I’m committed
to making the studio part of my work, like an obligation…recording
is very important.

“Andando el tiempo”
includes compositions of the last five years that you had
on the back burner…what exactly does the record contain?
There were a few pieces that were on Jazzpaña with
a jazzier format and which I included on the recording, but
in a more “guitaristic” way. If you notice, there’s
only one collaboration with Perico Sambeat and Paolo Fresu,
on the first piece, and the rest is the trio, Pablo, Cepillo
and myself and guitar, guitar, guitar…no singing, no
‘jaleo’, none of that for a guitaristic record.

What about Ímpetu, Mario
Escudero’s composition?
That’s Mario’s original piece. In each record
we pay tribute to some musician, like in Flamencos in New
York with a Bill Evans pieces, or Jucal, with Remache, a siguiriya
singer from Jerez, and on this record, to Mario Escudero…all
people who’ve gone unnoticed. Mario was eclipsed by
Sabicas, and he had some very interesting compositions.

Templo del Lucero.
This is a soleá por bulería I recorded on Jazzpaña,
but now all the solos are of guitar, and that’s the
backbone of the record, a flamenco guitar – I have to
be careful of what words I use…’modern’…’harmonious’…

People are starting to realize
that technique doesn’t get you anywhere

The
press release says “just as times change, so does your
playing style”.
That’s perfectly normal, as you mature, your
playing changes.

What sort of advances are there?
Where are you headed?
I don’t set any particular goal…where I’m going,
I don’t know, nor do I care, I am what I am. What I’m
interested in is the artists themselves, not the styles but
enjoying art, friendship…and all that leaves its mark on
you, something always sticks, and when you’re home composing
it tends to come out, my music isn’t thought-out, I
don’t like to think it out.

In that same press release it says
“time has elevated you to the status of a modern flamenco”
Those are catch phrases people use to categorize everything,
modern flamenco, I don’t know…it’s true we play
differently from before, it really shows, young people are
shedding the clichés we’ve had up to now, of
Paco de Lucía, Sabicas….they impregnated young guitarists.
People are starting to realize that technique doesn’t
get you anywhere, but without technique either…people just
have to do music and tell their own story.

Jazzpaña II, ‘Cruce
de Caminos’…¿do you get calls, or is it mostly
your own initiative?
Cruce de Caminos is a project we did for the Bienal, it came
out of a jazz seminar for Seville’s Teatro Central.
The company was called Jazzpaña II, they wanted it
to be a continuation of Jazzpaña I which was very successful,
and they called me and Chano Domínguez.

A lot of guitarists complain they
don’t get called, that’s it very hard to bring
the concert guitar to theaters, but you do an average of a
hundred concerts a year. What’s the secret?
It’s the same story wherever you go. In order to get
jobs, people have to know who you are, and be familiar with
your work, and it’s the people in charge of programming
concerts who have to know you. To make a living playing guitar
you have to make it fit in a variety of places, not only in
flamenco festivals, which is really a shame, of more than
200 flamenco festivals we have in Spain, guitar is only used
for cante accompaniment.

What are the alternatives?
Classical guitar festivals, jazz festivals, world music, ethno
music…you have to get known in many circles, not just in
flamenco, you have to make your name be heard in a lot of
places and do guest spots with well-known musicians in other
specialties who pull your name along with theirs…it’s
a guarantee.

Spreading your name around is a long hard road and not everyone
is willing to do it, to cross the Atlantic to do a concert
and not even make enough to cover expenses, these are things
you have to do sometimes.

It’s really a shame, in
more than 200 flamenco festivals we have in Spain, guitar
is only used for cante accompaniment.

Technique, speed, virtuosity…these
are words people use when they talk about you. Some aficionados
say you lack excitement..to what extent do you think that’s
true?
If we compare it to painting, it’s like rejecting a
color, in music you can’t reject or avoid any sound,
you have a palette of sounds, that starts with the whites,
a note which occupies an entire compás until the semicircles,
elements used for expression…the trick is how to use those
elements to express what you want to say. If you go in for
a wide series of colors, that’s virtuosity, and it’s
a big problem if you don’t have enough technique to
express your message, that’s when people become envious.
Playing guitar is very hard, and dumping on someone is very
easy, but that’s sophomoric, what we must be concerned
with is seeing that our art transcends, beyond the fiestas
at Candela or Casa Patas.

Guitar
has evolved quite a bit, but not cante…
The problem is, when you speak of flamenco guitar,
no one separates the interpreter from the composer. So what
happens is, a guitarist who can play Paco de Lucía’s
falsetas very well, everyone gives him the thumbs-up and he’s
a great guitarist, but none of it’s his, or the reverse
situation, someone who composes well…they’ll tell
him his guitar doesn’t sound, that’s the problem
about guitar. In the case of cante, flamenco-followers have
always valued the most faithful reproduction of traditional
cante, to such an extreme, that they’ve forgotten about
composition, so when Arcángel does the seguiriya of
Pavón, and it’s an exact replica, everyone jumps
for joy, but creativity is side-lined. When a singer doesn’t
do a malagueña exactly like the original, he or she
is criticized.

The concept of a voice and a guitar…is
this no longer current? Is it old-fashioned?
A soleá of Fernanda de Utrera is much more contemporary
than Paco de Lucía, Al Di Meola and McLaughlin live
from San Francisco, because Fernanda is valid now, and twenty
years from now, the other isn’t. It makes no difference
whether it’s voice, violin or flute, only the medium
varies.

When it comes to fusion, everyone
says the same thing: “we do fusion but always respecting
the roots”. How can this contradiction be explained?
In flamenco it’s like a big family, there aren’t
that many of us, we all tend to defend our own thing, discarding
what everyone else does, as if it made what we do more valuable,
and this is a mistake. When people talk about defending tradition,
I suppose they mean what they themselves like, and that something
finds a place in their music, they value it even though they’re
doing fusion. To respect tradition you have to care for it…fusion
is something else.

In Jerez there’s a life-style,
a way of talking, of singing and of doing things that one
way or another impregnate your playing style.

You seem to be clear about what
your roots are.
Yes, certainly, I’ve never tried to do fusion, what
I’ve done is communicate with other musicians, each
one speaking his own language. The pact is harmonious, the
theme, and you can’t expect them to learn a whole soleá,
nor vice versa. I teach it to them so they can express themselves
within my compositions. If afterwards someone wants to call
it fusion, that’s of no concern.

Is it still necessary to live and
breath the ambience of Jerez to conserve this?
Yes, it’s important once in a while, you keep a kind
of life-style, a way of talking, of singing and of doing things
that one way or another impregnate your playing style.

Do you still get to Jerez?
Yes, of course I do, always, I often take singers in my show,
people from Jerez, my relationship with cante is very important.

In your biography it says you played
for Terremoto and la Paquera…just how does accompaniment
fit in now with you?
It’s not my main objective, because there are other
things I want to do, right now I’m preparing the Concierto
de Aranjuez which I hope to have published in December or
January. I already played it live and I want to record it,
I know it’s been recorded before, but I want to do it
as well. I’m kind of like the odd man out, I don’t
fit in anywhere, I like to start projects that appeal to me,
sometimes with jazz, but after a lot of concerts I get tired
of it. Last year I did a lot of concerts with Carmen Linares,
and this summer too…it depends on a lot of things.

Among singers, there are some well-defined
schools…in guitar it seems like the new generation only
have the school of Paco de Lucía.
No, not at all. There was a time when it was like that, but
before Paco it was the Montoya school, and Ricardo’s
was very important, Javier Molina’s. Then there’s
a confluence of the media and Paco’s record company
and you think that’s the only thing there is. Then there’s
Manolo Sanlúcar and others, now guitarists have a lot
of information and there are different schools…Moraíto
de Jerez is followed by many, now young people listen to Paco,
Vicente Amigo, Riqueni, Juan Carlos Rodríguez…there
are many people to look up to.

I’ve never tried to do fusion,
what I’ve done
is communicate with other musicians

Gerardo has a school as well.
I know a lot of people are playing my compositions, they set
you up as a reference, and this is beginning to happen. Many
of the students who come to my summer courses in Sanlúcar
arrive playing things of mine, looking for shortcuts, advice,
things you can’t get from sheet music or books.

The concept of a “school”
is also reinforced by the record you recorded “La nueva
escuela de guitarra” with promising young guitarists.
That’s a mix-up caused by the title, which has actually
been beneficial. A lot of people think those guitarists are
students of mine – some class that would be! The idea was
to find an outlet for their compositions, on their own it
would have been very hard for them to record anything.

Where do you feel most at home,
playing traditional flamenco, flamenco jazz…?
When I work with the trio, when I’m doing my own show
and playing music, sometimes you have to present different
formats. The trio is the basis, other times there are festivals
where Carmen Cortés participates, Rafael de Utrera,
to incorporate dance and cante. The other format is the “new
school”, the young guitarists from the recording. We
get together every six months to do some concerts in Germany
or wherever. We also do Cruce de Caminos sometimes.

You have
a studio called “El Gallo Azul”, the same name
as the record company you set up a few years ago.
When we made the record company, it was an act of defiance.
I wanted to record two records, there was material for “Jucal”
and I wanted to record. They send me a contract from a company
and when I read it, everything was so complicated, that’s
when we decided to take the plunge and we founded the company
which has been so rewarding.

Now you don’t need any record
company because you edit with ACT.
We recorded this last record, and the one of the boys…it’s
very good because of the exposure, in Germany, in world-music
circles, that there are companies that support production
and other facets. Always bearing in mind that you can’t
make a mega-production with a first record when you barely
have a name.

What about the studio?
The recording studio gives a lot of freedom to record and
publish, not only to me, but it’s available to all the
musicians who work with me. We just made Miguel Ángel
Cortés’ record, and Jesús del Rosario’s,
from the Nueva Escuela, Miguel Ochando is making a record
of old-style guitar, of Sabicas. After the summer we’ll
begin work on the second volume of the Escuela de Guitarra,
and next year there’ll be a third volume, using the
same format but with foreign guitarists who are doing flamenco,
it’s already a reality and they have to have their place.

Text & photos. Rafael Manjavacas
Lara

More information:

Gerardo Núñez's Discography