Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’, flamenco guitarist. Interview

“I don’t think my evolution
is incompatible with tradition”

Silvia Calado. Madrid, May 2008

‘Son de ayer’, track by track by Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’

Cumbres Mayores is a small border town between Huelva, Badajoz and nearly Portugal. Once belonging to the Kingdom of León - as Sancho el Bravo Castle still bears witness to - and today a paradise of Iberian ham, that remote highland place has one more charm. And it’s that it was the place where Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’ began to fall in love with flamenco guitar. There in the family home, an uncle of his had left a guitar which the boy started to play with. But it was hundreds of kilometers away in Barcelona, the place his parents emigrated to like so many people from Andalusia and Extremadura, where the game became a profession.

	Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’ (Foto Daniel Muñoz)

Then in his hometown, he took classes with Tío Remolino, with Manuel Labrador, with Pedro Sierra... and he graduated at Tablao de Carmen, where “I learned my trade by playing for people who are now top figures”. Following six months in Japan with Belén Maya, he settled down in Madrid, becoming a usual guitarist for different companies. But something started to change: “From then on, I began my facet as a composer, making music for plays. And I’ve made a lot of music for shows which have only been done abroad, for artists such as Andrés Marín or Merche Esmeralda”. The chance for him to perform solo arose in Holland, sharing the bill ‘Vanguardia flamenca’ with bailaor Andrés Marín and cantaor El Falo.

And it isn’t that he was imperatively restless to be a concert performer: “I’ve always considered myself a guitarist for baile, because that’s what I learned and what I like. And I started to compose, to play solo. It wasn’t something premeditated, but it’s something I love. When you begin to compose, you start to found what being a solo guitarist is supposed to be all about. The thing is that I like making music and playing music. And really, I like playing solo a lot; I really enjoy it”. The first chance to record his own music was offered to him by Gerardo Núñez, who presented him together with other young guitarists in ‘La Nueva Escuela de la Guitarra Flamenca’ (‘The New School of Flamenco Guitar’). “Going by the hand of maestro Gerardo, one of the great guitarists of this time, is wonderful. It’s an introduction because since we work so much away, enthusiasts don’t usually know us. And that album was a little bit “Gerardo says so”. And if he trusts these people, there must be a reason”. And then Canito started to be known “a little bit more”.

It must have been about five years ago, he decides to go ahead with a new project: his first solo album. “It comes about because, suddenly, I do a show which I take to theaters entitled ‘El almaire de los gitanos’. I put together what I had but, after some time listening to it, I thought what sounded was really cool”, the guitarist explains. But capturing that music was not an overnight job: “It’s taken me a long time to finish it because I’ve gone little by little, as best I could, gathering the people I wanted”. And that, what he wanted, he admits he always had clear. Something simple, but fundamental: “Being free; that’s what I wanted to tell with my instrument and with my music. Even though we’re in a democracy, we’re free to a certain point. And in the only environment I can allow myself to be totally free is in music. That’s what I’ve achieved and what the merit of the album is; doing just what I wanted, which was to be free”.

Why that title, ‘Son de ayer’?

I didn’t name it. I wanted an uncle of mine to do it, who knows me really well and knows my music really well. I didn’t dare to have a vision from the outside to give it a title, which I think is something fundamental. He named it ‘Son de ayer’ because it’s music which has been with me for a long time and which was there waiting to come out. ‘Son’ is a little bit of a play on words with the sound, the soniquete. And ‘de ayer’ (from yesterday) because really, it’s music which I close a stage in my life with and open another new one with a different evolution. That has now remained behind; it’s yesterday’s sound although it’s still a part of me. Now we move on; you have to evolve.

Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’ (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

And isn’t that incompatible with the evolution contained in your music?

I don’t think so; I hope not. And on the album, there might just as easily be an arrangement tremendously contemporary, avant-garde or really open harmonically, as you find my entire family singing por tangos like very primitive. I love tradition; it’s where we’ve learned from. But I’m also a music lover, of all kinds of music, and I don’t think my evolution is incompatible with tradition. I think it comes from there, in fact.

What is that new road?

It’s different. I couldn’t tell you very well what it’s like, because it’s a personal feeling and I don’t know how it can be seen from the outside. But I know that it’s different because the things I’ve been composing lately, even though it’s a subjective perception, I have the sensation that they’re different. I’ve changed a little when composing; I’ve left behind that way of doing it, though it’s still a part of me and it’s there. Now there are other aspects of mine which are surfacing and which are perhaps nicer.

But ‘Son de ayer’ forebodes something new not just in you, but in flamenco music...

Yes. I haven’t treated it as a conventional guitar album. I let my heart and mind do what they had to do. I tried to make a music album, the thing is that I’m a guitarist and I’m a flamenco. It is true that there are things which are more open. Call them ‘x’; I don’t like to define them. I say the new stage is nicer, without stopping looking towards there, something I do naturally because that’s how I feel it. It changes, perhaps, in that I’ve become simpler in certain things, at least for the time being. One tends to complicate with so much ease what, well, is better to begin simple.

Do you feel pressured to say something new?

	"I´ve never set out to do something new, nor to say something new"

No, no. I’ve never set out to do something new, nor to say something new. I play what I play because that’s the way it comes out. There are people who set out to do something new, and it’s hard work; the people who do so are really cool. I’m no good at that. There are prior layouts on how you can work, but not on the music that’s going to come out.

And pressure to compose a repertoire of your own?

I’m lucky to enjoy bringing things out. It isn’t pressure; rather, what breathes a little bit of life into me.

As Félix Grande says poetically in the booklet, do you suffer?

Mmmmm. I don’t suffer, I enjoy. What is true is that within that enjoyment, there are better and worse moments. There are certain ideas or images you want to capture in music which, depending on the idea or the image, take you to a state which you have to get across and bring out in notes and in sensations. It is true that you can go into a state more like that, but no, I haven’t suffered. For me, it’s enjoyment. I would give enjoyment a higher percentage. I wouldn’t say suffering either, but rather a little bit of trouble.

It’s great to have a text of his...

Félix Grande is a tremendous artist; it means having one of the most important writers in this country, it means having a tremendous artist. Just like having Lole, having Antonio Maya, having Los Cachapines, having my entire family, having Hideo Sekino... The truth is that I’m overjoyed with having the people and with the affection I have for them. It’s an album with a lot of affection. José Pablo Vega has done the design, which I think is very beautiful. I’ve captured it in a very nice way, as if it were a wall in my house and the painting is there in my house, because you come into my house, into my way of seeing things, into my music, into my life. The idea also provides a context. By nature, it’s all come out like that.

And the painting on the cover?

	"What I like best of all is the native ease I find in our partying"

It’s a picture by Antonio Maya and it’s the last painting in a work on gypsies. It’s a two-by-four-meter painting, a real wonder. I went to his studio because he offered for me to choose the one I wanted because he loved the record. Besides being a painting which stood my hair on end, it was the album and the sense of the album. What I like best of all is the native ease I find in our partying, what I like best of all in the world is to see the native ease of a gypsy woman or a gypsy man dancing por tangos. And it was in that painting. Everything started to fit together.

You say por tangos, and not por bulerías...

Those of us from Extremadura are more into tangos than bulerías. The bulerías we have there are the jaleos. But we from Extremadura are more into tangos; that’s what we do the most and personally, it’s what I like the most.

Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’ (Photo Daniel Muñoz)

One of the ideas going around now in Canito’s head is to be able to stage all the flavor of the family parties - por tangos - which were recorded for ‘Son de ayer’. Some foreign festival has already shown its interest in that happening although for the time being, what has been confirmed is a more intimate performance at the small hall of Madrid’s Teatro Español on September 5th: “I’ll try to adapt the repertoire as much as possible because it isn’t possible there with everybody”. But it might be at another venue. As the guitarist says, “there are a lot of plans, there’s a lot of desire. What’s needed is for the contracts to come pouring in. Ha ha ha”.

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