Interview with Jerónimo

Jerónimo starts talking even before
you ask him anything: memories, anecdotes, and little
by little we start unraveling just who Jerónimo
is…and “Jerónimo”, the name
of his record. The young guitarist who has been living
flamenco since the day he was born, always with the
desire to expand his knowledge of the guitar… as he
speaks he reveals the other “Jerónimo”,
the first solo record of this guitarist whose talents
were recognized early on but who has followed his path
unrushed and with wisdom. For his recording debut, he
has made a record that is basically flamenco with bulerías,
rondeñas, tangos, soleá, seguiriya, granaína
and zapateado.

The record brings back the art of individuals no longer
with us such as Indio Gitano and José Antonio
Galicia, who contributed their bit as did his uncle
el Yunque and el Ciervo. Jerónimo pays tribute
to guitar maestros like Sabicas, Ramón Montoya
and Paco de Lucía, or the cante of Planeta, without
turning his back on classical giants such as Mozart,
and he gives a glimpse of his range with a ballad-tribute
called Rey Chango dedicated to Django Reinhard where
he toys with jazz with the help of his brother Leo.

“There’s always
been flamenco in my family. We’re flamenco because
we are, because we were born, it’s in the genes”.

Jerónimo recalls the formative years when he
used to go to the bar Candela with his father to play
and see flamenco artists, but if he went it was always
with a condition: “I was lucky enough to have
been there and to have lived this, although the next
day maybe I fell asleep in class (he laughs) because
my father always made one thing clear: ‘Hey, you
come along if you want, but I better not see your schoolwork
suffering’” At school he was a good
student until fifth grade, “then I started
to get interested in girls and things went bad”,
but even at that time his teachers knew what his true
calling was and he got a scholarship to study music
at a conservatory. “I’m really grateful
to Sister María, she took me to the Real Conservatorio
de la Música and paid my tuition for two years.
After that I studied with a private teacher called Nacho
who taught me classical guitar”. At seven,
he fell in love with classical music: “There’s
a piece on the record dedicated to one of my greatest
all-time idols, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart”. Oddly
enough, Jerónimo was such a precocious child
people used to call him “flamenco’s Mozart”.

Jerónimo was born into a flamenco family where
his role model was his father, guitarist Felipe Maya,
and where he was surrounded by flamenco from the very
beginning. To be a flamenco guitarist he would hardly
have needed more, but he feels his conservatory training
has also been very important: “Knowledge doesn’t
take up any room. You should never think you’re
alone, you always need help every step of the way, you
need someone to follow, you need to communicate and
expand your knowledge. I believe that if it’s
possible and we want to, it would be good for everyone
to study at a conservatory because it’s a tremendous
help for many things you come up against along the way”.
Jerónimo refers to his creative facet as one
step on that road – all the pieces on the record
are his original compositions. “I think creation
is feeling transformed, you see something, you feel
something and you transform it, and since you’re
transforming something you’re feeling, you come
across obstacles and need help, and that’s when
you dip into the reservoir of help you’ve collected
along the way”.

“I
was never a child prodigy, my father always made that
very clear” .

To satisfy his desire to learn more about classical
music, Jerónimo had to be ingenious. At home
there was always enough, but little more and his father
went on tour for six months. “How could I
ask my mother for money to buy sheet music? Music my
foot, eat your soup boy! What I used to do (he laughs),
when I saw something new at the newsstand kind of lying
around, I’d go round the back, snatch it up and
go running home…and then I’d bury it at
a construction site that was next to my grandma’s
house”.

But when it came time to see and learn flamenco, he
had every advantage. “My family’s name
has been involved in flamenco since it was invented
a hundred and fifty years ago” and he starts
giving details. “I’m a direct descendant
of Don Ramón Montoya who for me is like Bach
for flamenco guitar, he’s the one we all have
to look up to when we. On my grandmother’s side
we’ve got roots in Granada and Córdoba,
the great dancer Manolete is part of my family, there’s
a mixture there. There’s always been flamenco
in my family. We’re flamenco because we are, because
we were born, it’s in the genes. I grew up listening
to la Niña de los Peines, Tomás Pavón,
Juanito Mojama, Manuel Torre, Sabicas, Niño Ricardo…
My father always had me listen to things like that”.

In addition to your solo career, you’ve
never stopped accompanying cante, have you? “That’s
another facet that I have to explain is very interesting.
At the tablaos Corral de la Morería and Candela
I was fortunate enough to have played for some singers
who aren’t that well-known, but who taught me a
lot”. Who? “Manuel
el Flecha, Sebastián Román, Pedro Montoya,
lots of people… Don Manuel, the owner of Corral de la
Morería treats me like family. I used to say ‘Don
Manuel, I’m going up for a while so I can learn
something’, because you have to learn, and there
I was, a fourteen-year-old kid playing with people who
were over forty, and my father alongside, who is one of
the best accompanists for dance as far as I’m concerned,
and the maestros love him, Güito, Manolete, Blanca
del Rey…and there I was with them, just imagine
what that was for me! I think that before you walk, you
have to learn to crawl, and a guitarist has to load up
with cante which is at the heart of everything. I accompany
cante because I like cante better than guitar, I’m
a frustrated singer, so I was listening to those people
since I was small. I’ve accompanied cante and dance,
it was like another school for me, then I played solo.
I played for my uncle Ricardo el Yunque who was also by
my side, ever since I was small, and he’s one of
the most respected singers».

“This record is the
synthesis of life experiences, a sort of digestion”.

On
the record el Yunque sings for the granaína “Algo
pa’ mí”. “Because my uncle
Ricardo is one of my first sources, he’s a walking
encyclopedia, and I say ‘hey uncle, read me some
of that encyclopedia you’ve got in your head’
and he answers ‘well son, there was an alegrías
cante from the year…’…my uncle even
has the old-fashioned records. I grew up with all that
at my disposal”. The piece titled “Antepasados”
is a tribute to his ancestors. “Antepasados
is a tribute to how we used to live in the old times.
I retuned the guitar to other notes and it sound Hindu
because they say gypsies came from northern India”.
The seguiriya ‘Planeta’ is dedicated to
one of the oldest singers, and the soleá, to
guitar maestros Montoya, Sabicas and Paco de Lucía.
“Those are the people whose influence I’ve
felt most, and will always continue to feel. But there’s
someone else, the one who taught Jerónimo the
most in every facet of his life. “My maestro
in life and in the guitar, my unconditional friend,
and after God the person in whom I believe, is my father.
For me he’s been the one who meant the most to
me, and always will, because he took from his mouth
to give to me”.

Because Jerónimo began so young and was rubbing
shoulders with people like Paco de Lucía at the
tribute to Sabicas at New York’s Carnegie Hall
from early on, he was often dubbed a child prodigy.
“I was never a child prodigy, my father always
made that very clear. I remember once when I was playing
and there was a veteran classical musician who studied
all classical music, and when he heard me play he said
I created like some musician from I don’t remember
what century…I was just a little boy so I stared
at my father. We soon left and like a typical kid I
asked my father what that was all about, but my father
played it down: ‘so what did he say?..this is
a man who has studied classical musicians, period, don’t
try to make a big thing out of it, what you have to
do is practice, because today you played this, that
and the other thing wrong, and it has to improve’,
and I didn’t understand…I went home thinking
‘I’m nothing…nobody’, but he
was right. My father is one of today’s great scholars
of flamenco guitar and he told me I had to improve,
and he was right…and now I still have many things
to learn. I didn’t used to understand, but now
I do”.

“From the first bulería
called ‘La Calí’ you can tell it’s
basically a record of guitar”.

It’s clear that traveling from so early on brought
him into contact with many musicians, not only of flamenco,
which afforded him the opportunity to exchange ideas.
“I love all kinds of music, I even listen
to Swedish groups”. And he always incorporates
that knowledge into his playing. “In my recitals
there are two clearly-defined parts. In one part I play
true solo guitar, which is flamenco, and the other part
is music, because we play jazz, or what we understand
to be jazz, with all my respects”. And this
is reflected in this record. The piece Rey Chango is
dedicated to Django Reinhard, the musician. “A
cousin of mine called Juan Maya introduced me to Django
Reinhard…he said ‘listen to this’…I
was about 9 or 10 and it was a flood of familiarity,
and I always say this record is the synthesis of life
experiences, a sort of digestion”. He defines
Rey Chango as old-style jazz, a kind of French jazz,
which he plays with his brother Leo. “Me and
Leo are kindred spirits, aside from having grown up
together in music, we’re like two halves of an
orange, we’re so spiritually connected it’s
almost scary”.

As he says, he was born flamenco, and without losing
that, he’s been digesting everything musical within
his reach: “I think music is so universal
and so vast that it’s capable of giving status
to a name, not an ethnic group, nor the place where
someone is born… music is so universal that it makes
room for the heart”. And on his record he
wanted no other means of expression than his guitar:
“I dreamt of making a record of guitar, just
guitar…I wanted to record it myself and finance
it myself”. And it took some time to make,
because with one thing and another, it took two and
a half years. When journalist Javier Primo offered him
the possibility to record on the recently created label
‘alma 100’, Jerónimo decided to make
this record. “Javi called up and said ‘Jero,
this is a lot of responsibility, but let’s go
for it’, and we talked about setting up a record
company, but with someone else as distributor. He said
‘Jero, you can be like the artistic director’
and I thought ‘I’ve always been a risk-taker”.

When Jerónimo saw some mixing needed to be done,
he decided to record almost the whole guitar portion
over: “It sounds alive because it was all
played on the spot”. But the guest artists
remained. “From the first bulería called
‘La Calí’ you can tell it’s
basically a record of guitar, I didn’t want to
add a lot of stuff, there’s Luky Losada’s
percussion, my cousins Joselillo Romero and Antonio
Maya doing palmas, tablas indias played by Galicia,
I called him and he agreed to do it, I feel very privileged,
because of José Antonio Galicia and also el Indio
Gitano, two individuals who have passed on to another
phase, and I say ‘see you later!’.
And you decided to keep them on the record.
“Of course, it’s not like including
parts of a song in the middle of nowhere…they
were singers’ introductions, and then the guitar
sounds. The rondeña is only guitar… I wrote
that when my son was born, and the ballad “Enamorao
del amor”. “They got a cousin of mine
who dances whose name is Kelián, he always picks
up the guitar and plays it really well. One day I heard
him play something I liked a lot, and it stuck in my
head, so I started to work it up, and the piece is dedicated
to him”.

“I think music
is so universal and so vast that it’s capable
of giving status to a name, not an ethnic group, nor
the place where someone is born… music is so universal
that it makes room for the heart”.

The final product is “a record for anyone
who feels like listening to it”. And although
flamenco fans will enjoy it, it will also appeal to
people who have no knowledge of flamenco. “My
idea is to make it accessible to everyone, because after
a while you learn to see via music. I see myself not
as a guitarist, but as a language. I pick up the guitar
and express a language, for me it isn’t just an
instrument, it’s more like telling a story, that’s
what this record is about…not thinking about the listeners,
nor about myself, but about something I wanted to express,
and I hope people like it.” What
about technique?…does it help you tell that story?
“The other day I saw the film “The Last
Samurai” and there was one scene that really cracked
me up…I couldn’t stop laughing and just kept
replaying it, like a half hour. There was this fight
and the main character was really giving the other guy
the beating of his life, and there was this little kid
nearby who was a trained samurai and the guy says to
him: “You think much in how to hit…think in
sword and movements”. The kid just looks at him
and says “no think” and walks away, I thought
that was hilarious. That’s exactly what I do when
I create, I don’t think of anyone or anything,
nor of pleasing the audience or even myself, nor in
more technique or less technique. I just have a story
to tell and technique is a vehicle to express feeling,
nothing more, but I can tell you this, I also feel I
fall short”. And once again he cites Mozart:
“There was an anecdote Mozart used to tell
and which is very clear…one day he was crying in the
park and his father asked ¿why are you crying?
and Mozart answered: ‘when I compare what I hear
to what’s inside my head, it breaks me to pieces”,
and just think of who was saying that, and that’s
how it is with all of us, that we’re far beneath
our own goals, but I think that maybe that’s a
good thing, because it encourages you to learn”.

Text: Sonia
Martínez Pariente
Photos: Rafael Manjavacas

More information:

Review
Flamenco Pa'tos 5

Review
Norberto Torres