“There are moments
when I’m as if at the edge of the abyss”
text: Manuel Moraga
I only knew him from his records and concerts.
I’d never spoken to him personally, but from his
work it seemed this was an artist with a rich and interesting
interior. I received his latest record late in the afternoon.
In order to listen to it with due attention before going
to work, I got up at 5 in the morning. No sooner did
I hit the ‘play’ button, than time appeared
to slow down. A few hours later I was face to face with
him. Vicente Amigo’s “Un momento en el sonido”
only served to reinforce the concept I already had of
the guitarist. This interview leaves no room for anyone’s
doubt.
How much time did you devote
to this recording?
I started working on it last year. Although I was doing
concerts and a dozen other things, whenever there was
time I’d take off a week here and there to go
to a place called Rocamador, in Extremadura, which belongs
to Carlos Tristancho and Lucía. They’re
two friends of mine who opened the doors to this dream
because it’s a wonderful place to vacation or
to go to compose. These friends opened the doors of
their house and it was there, surrounded by oak trees,
alone with my computer and my guitar, putting all my
ideas in order, that I was able to listen. Because I
have a lot of ideas recorded, but then I don’t
have the patience to listen to them. As long as I have
them there on tape, I let them sit…in actual fact,
on this record I picked up ideas I had twenty years
ago and developed them. Afterwards, I started to make
the record in Córdoba, in the studio I set up,
a small studio, but I think the equipment I have is
good, and the room is perfect for recording guitar.
In January I started recording and since then, up until
a few weeks ago, I was still at it, but taking it easy,
not every day.
Even though some of the ideas
are twenty years old, you have the feeling this records
tells a different story from your earlier work.
The thing is, although the farruca is from twenty years
ago, it’s only now that I’ve developed it.
It’s like the seed was there twenty years ago.
I had to develop it now, which I’m glad to have
done, I didn’t do it earlier because it didn’t
come out until the moment was right.
What I notice in this record
is a different emotional state that runs all through
the work.
I absolutely agree, and that’s what I was looking
for. The record is full of feeling. It’s what
I want. But above all, I wanted it to be moving, to
have an important emotional charge…it’s atmospheric,
almost mystical…
How to you compose? What
do you need? What distracts you?
In order to feel good all I need is to find the idea.
To have the guitar handy and some gizmo to record. Now,
with computers, we have the added advantage of being
able to go track by track, first making your rhythm
loop which gets you in the groove…it’s like
having an open window that shows you the way. The technical
advances are very good.
“Demipatí”…
A very well-balanced rumba. The percussion adds an edge
the guitar tones down and complements just right.
Basically, I planned on doing a record of just guitar
and palmas, and I had this rumba recorded with guitar
and palmas and it was fine, but then Tino di Geraldo
played, wow!, it’s full of life and enhances the
guitar. Without a doubt, Tino is one of the phenomenal
musicians we have in this country. And here I managed
to find a rumba with a very flamenco atmosphere, some
parts are very flamenco, but it’s essentially
melody and rhythm. It reminds me of those fusion and
jazz groups, but in my own style, because I never got
into jazz, I just enjoy it, Weather Report and these
people… I think it’s related to that concept.
“There’s music
inside me that has nothing to do with a soleá,
a taranta or a bulería, and I have to let it
out”
“Campo
de la Verdad”… It starts off like a kind of
“chill-out”. The guitar revs up when the
voice kicks in.
It’s a composition that starts, and you have no
idea what it’s going to be, and then it develops
into traditional bulerías. It’s one of
the rare occasions when I thought of someone in order
to compose. I conjured up the image of José Tomás,
of his bullfighting style, as if I were putting music
to one of his fights in slow motion. That’s basically
what I was after. Then it develops into traditional
bulerías where I seek out the music in the conventional
way, trying to order the notes in the traditional of
a straightforward bulería.
What is it that attracts
you to the art of José Tomás?
For me he’s in possession of the truth. He personifies
the bullfighter you see in all the storybooks, a genius.
“Mezquita” is
a soleá like in the old days… It tastes of
melancholy, the contemplation of sorrow, serenity, moist
eyes… Those are emotions difficult to find in modern
flamenco guitar.
Exactly. That’s a good reading. It’s nice
when each one interprets things in a personal way. The
art is as much yours as mine. Art without the receiving
artist does not exist. Here in the soleá I was
trying for the soleá of tradition. It’s
a like a tribute to the past. I always try to be respectful
of what I understand to be traditional flamenco, the
maestros, the veterans. The soleá starts off
with an arpeggio which doesn’t seem like it’s
going to be soleá, and then suddenly, when you
least expect it, you’re deeply into a traditional
soleá, with traditional chords and of course,
the responsibility of adding my own personal vision.
It’s as if the guitar
is trying not to get in the way. The music is at the
service of the concept. You’re a guy full of musical
“ideas”. I think you’re trying to
formulate the idea more than show off the music.
Of course. The whole record is like that. I search the
way a painter searches when he has to fill up a canvass,
that’s what I’m trying for on this record:
to paint my pictures. The recording is like a painting
exhibition.
“I have to search
inside myself for that certain emotional state…a sort
of trance to play the way I want”
“Tangos del arco bajo”.
This is a compostion full of tension. And always with
great musicality and very developed falsetas, very well-rounded
and beautiful.
There’s a little bit of everything in these tangos.
I tried to make them more flamenco than on the last
record, and I think I achieved it. There are some moments
where I’m looking for delicacy…it makes me think
of skin contact.. And then, there are some lovely bits
by Ángela Bautista. On the record I put “angel’s
voice” so as not to say “female voice”
or “cantaora”. And Antonio Villar gives
everything he’s got. I’m delighted there
are young people doing such old-style flamenco.
He sounds a little like El
Pele when he gets going.
Yes, there’s something of that. These are very
sincere singers.
“Bolero a Marcos”…
I’ve only listened to it a couple of times and
already it seems like an old jazz standard…the kind
of piece a lot of people can do and each one gives it
a personal twist. Something universal.
Exactly. And what’s more, that’s precisely
the idea. I’d be delighted to hear musicians from
other places and genres playing it. That was the idea,
to create a classic. In my other record I did a bolero
dedicated to my other child and it’s the same
thing. I remember once they called me from Japan in
order to ask permission because a Japanese singer was
going to do a version of the bolero in Japanese, and
of course I gave my permission, because that’s
exactly what it’s all about. From my vision of
flamenco I don’t want to close the doors to something
which is inside of me, which is music without labels.
I don’t know how to define that piece –
I call it bolero for romantic reasons, because boleros
are stories of impossible love…and this is the most
impossible, and the most impossible too is the love
for your child. It might be a little surrealistic to
call it bolero, but what I always try to do is not close
that door. Like I said, there’s music inside me
that has nothing to do with a soleá, a taranta
or a bulería, and I have to let it out and offer
it in the most respectful way possible.
It’s
one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve heard, I
really mean it. What’s more, I listened to the
record at 5 in the morning, fresh out of bed, in other
words, no added influences of any kind.
[He laughs] I think the record itself has a kind of
drunkenness. It looks for that emotional drunkenness.
But then if you have a drink, look out…
“Silia y el tiempo”,
the farruca, has a sort of forward-looking feel…but
at the same time it sounds like a classic farruca
I took on that challenge when I decided to pick up some
of those ideas I had stashed away for such a long time,
and it’s because I found another path which somehow
opened another perspective on what farruca had always
been, and furthermore, with the utmost respect. The
other day, listening to it with some veteran flamencos
they told me Gades was in there, that in this farruca
Antonio Gades was dancing…and that was very moving
for me. They took a reading that was as beautiful as
my original intentions.
Gades or Sabicas, because
at some points I think Sabicas is there as well.
Now that’s interesting because another friend
of mine said the same thing… And there’s something
there that’s classical music too, and which came
out of me in the searching process.
“Oriente Mediterráneo”…
Perhaps the most introverted piece, more musically and
personally open…
This number is a continuation of the zapateado from
the record “Vivencias imaginadas”, and it
has a lot of that line. It’s a bit like wanting
to recall what I started on that record while trying
to say something new and remembering that I’m
still the same person I ever was. I also think I give
my own personal vision of the zapateado. And here my
colleague Blas Córdoba shows what a great singer
he is. It’s very nice, in just twenty seconds,
when they’ve given you a script, to be able to
delve into it and synthesize and give what flamenco
you have inside, and in this case, I demanded it. That’s
one great singer.
“The art is as much
yours as mine. Art without the receiving artist does
not exist”
In “Rocamador”
there’s a lovely contrast between the density
of the bandoneón accordion and the clarity of
the guitar…
The bandoneón es one of the instruments I might
have played, if I hadn’t gone into guitar, and
it’s because it lets you express the largest human
emotions.
Not only that, but as Rocamador
unfolds, we see a temperamental guitar…
There’s a bulería there with standard chords,
in E position, “por arriba” as the flamenco
musicians call it. A bulería in E-F, which was
also a challenge for me, to play in the tones of Diego
el del Gastor and bring them up to this era, to my vision.
It’s really a very flamenco record.
“Un
momento en el sonido”. The taranta is done very
delicately, as if it were fine crystal, as if you were
afraid of breaking it.
In this taranta there are some moments when I’m
as if at the edge of the abyss, because I try to make
the chords ring out as long as possible. And if it lasts
a bit longer, I don’t even play the next thing,
you know? [he laughs]. Trying to savor that, waiting
and then coming in with the next thing in a natural
way that begs for the next thing, but at the same time
wants you to linger on what came before.
The sound is somewhat sequential,
while the moment is the stopping of the sequence, an
instant in which we may reflect on what we have, is
that the idea?
A friend of mine said this piece is like a prayer.
I get the feeling you were
very at ease making this record.. Most of the pieces
are 7 or 8 minutes. In other words, you were comfortable,
like someone who slips into his pyjamas and, without
any sort of haste, you just developed each idea to the
fullest…
That’s it. I didn’t want to cut and I didn’t
want to do 3 and 4-minute pieces. I had to trim some
things down for the radio. Some things. The numbers
that were most ‘playable’ according to the
Company, and, well, I had to cut them to make an ‘aperitif’.
But I recommend listening to the record just as is.
You’ve always been
a musician with straightforward messages. If it were
television, the comparison would be something like an
image without any lines or interference on the screen.
That’s what I try for. And I don’t know
how to be any other way….[he pauses]. I also have
to mention Potito who sings on the record. That was
a moment I also looked for in the sound, sharing it
with him. And in the piece with José Tomás,
Potito sings in a way that each time you hear it, it
really gets to you!
On this record everything
reaches a point of extreme meditation, from the rumba
to the taranta, from the farrruca to the bulería…
I’d never put it on for mood music, but to enjoy
it stretched out on the sofa.
I’m going to study this repertoire now to play
concerts, but what this record has is that I not only
have to be technically on my toes, but I have to search
inside myself for that certain emotional state…a sort
of trance to play it the way I want.
