Juan Antonio Suárez
‘Cano’, flamenco guitarist. Interview
‘Son
de ayer’, track by track
by Juan Antonio Suárez ‘Cano’
S.C. Madrid, May 2008
Juan Antonio Suárez
‘Cano’
‘Luna’ seguiriya
“This seguiriya was created for
a play, ‘Bodas de sangre’, which was danced
by Merche
Esmeralda. And it’s a very special seguiriya
to me; it’s given a lot to me. I recorded it on
the album which Gerardo produced and I wanted to take
it back up again and do it a little more mellow on my
part. I think it’s a perfect way to start the album
because it defines me from the beginning. You come in
with that song and the sensation I had is that if they
wanted to know me, that was the best song to know me.
And moreover, opening solo”.
‘Sino’
canción
“It has lyrics by Rumanian gypsy
poet Rajko Duric. What those lyrics say seemed so true
to me... I already had in mind to do a remembrance and
a tribute to gypsies, to my people, and I did it with
a text by this so wonderful poet and the voice of that...
I don’t know what adjective to use to describe Lole...
of that so personal voice which is now a classic. I’m
lucky to have had the chance to work with her and to have
felt her here beside me singing. I enjoyed myself like
crazy with that woman. The moral is “in the face
of grief, joy”, which is typical of excluded peoples.
I begin with a lament, expose what happens and finish
with a real party with olés... And Lole, who did
it in one take, improvising. In the face of grief, joy”.
‘El señor de los tanguillos’
tanguillos
Juan Antonio Suárez
‘Cano’
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
“In reality, the full name was ‘El señor
de los tanguillos. Las dos claquetas’. But it’s
true, I play those tanguillos in four time and Caponata
Argamacho did the arrangement in three time, since tanguillos
can be used in a compound rhythm. They counted it differently,
they didn’t realize it, but everything fit together
perfectly. It was time for the film... with Gollum all over
the place. And they were tanguillos which turned into a
film with those wonderful arrangements by Caponata Argamacho
Trío. I think it’s a really different way to
conceive arrangements for something flamenco. It’s
like a parallel way to what the mother is, which is composing,
which has to be respected to the max; it’s something
very sacred. They’re two parallel worlds which are
joined up, but they shouldn’t be mixed. Now we call
all of us together Ensemble Hispánico Numen, which
was a famous string quartet from here in its time. It’s
a group from Seville with a soprano sax, viola and electric
bass, where each one comes from a different genre: Rafa
from classical, Mangu from folk and Nacho from old-time
music. All of them have worked with flamencos, with Lebrijano,
with Andrés Marín... and they decided to join
up. They make a kind of music which I would define as world
music. And upon joining up with me, we’ve done a different
way of arranging flamenco music. They’re parallel
roads which combine perfectly”.
‘Conclusión’
bulería
“I started it because I wanted
there to be a bulería on the album. I had a bulería
more towards the back, in the middle, but I wanted to
do one upwards, in me. I began to come up with it and
just then Andrés
Marín started getting ‘Asimetrías’
ready and he wanted me to give him a song. So he gave
me the reason to finish it”.
‘A nuestra Mari’
elegía
“In reality, it’s a duo with
Pablo Suárez on piano. It’s about a tribute
to a first cousin of ours, Mari, who left us very soon.
Both Pablo and I wanted to do something in her honor.
And we picked out a phrase from a song we played for her
at her wedding. We put together that duo from there and
called on the entire family for them to do that little
chorus, for them all to remember her by it. It’s
really simple but very, very touching”.
‘Almaire’
tangos
Juan Antonio Suárez
‘Cano’
(Photo Daniel Muñoz)
“Since I like playing tangos so much, I began and
I did them a little for baile. But then it ended up as a
guitar solo. And I’ve always really liked the lyrics
sung by my aunt María, which were always a part of
the tangos, the thing is that their place has been changed.
To me, those lyrics are the sweetest part of the album.
Those Portuguese lyrics flip me out (“Procuro e não
te encontro”), I love my aunt’s voice. And besides,
it’s really nice for mother and son to sing together.
She wasn’t going to sing it but suddenly, he brought
his mother for her to guide him and she started singing
there, her son started doing vocals for her and that’s
how it turned out. It was something that arose like that.
The lyrics come from a fado and the Portuguese gypsies transferred
it to their partying, to their tangos. There are a lot of
voices; there’s Guadiana,
there’s Aurora’s sister, Samara and Vanessa,
Juan de Pura, Saúl Quirós, Mari Vizárraga...
To me, the choruses are wonderful; they’re really
wild. I didn’t want those choruses to be pretty at
all, in the sense of preparing them a lot. I had each of
them sing as they wished. It’s one of the liveliest
songs on the album, with less complication, perhaps. Although
gathering everyone is hard enough as it is”.
‘Mi pequeño mundo’
suite
“It’s the story, just as
I felt it, of the people who went to America in their
time and brought back round-trip cantes. What it includes
most is the journey. That suite is a journey. It goes
through a bunch of climates, of shapes and it is, as a
seguiriya, one of the songs which can speak about me the
most, one of the most conceptual, most contemporary, most
open ones”.
‘Soledad’
triphop flamenco
“It’s a song by Pablo Suárez
which I’ve had a lot of affection for since he composed
it. Since I know him so well, I felt his music really
close. I’d wanted to do something with programmed
music for a long time and I thought it was the perfect
song because it made sense in itself and what he wanted
to say was really deep. I took the song, gave it to a
Dutchman to do the arrangements who’s a guy who
does wonderful work, Jaap Van Keulen, and starting with
the programming he did for me, I put the guitar on top.
Then the song transformed. If you listen to Pablo’s
beginning and this one, the concept nearly changes, but
it’s there. I wanted to give my own point of view
on that music because what I’d heard by the flamencos
going into that world of electronic music hadn’t
convinced me. I thought it could be done better and that
I could say something in that kind of music”.
‘El punteao’
tangos con aires de Villafranca de los Barros, Badajoz
“‘El punteao’ is played
by Pablo’s mother, my aunt Adela. And the ones singing
are Pablo’s father, my father and a great uncle
of mine. And the choruses are all by my family. My aunt
Adela is from Villafranca de los Barros, where there used
to be a lot of gypsies, and there was a family there in
which two sisters used to play the guitar. One of them
nicknamed La Tijera is still alive at the age of ninety
something and she still plays. And she plays wonderfully.
My aunt used to listen to her, then she would go home
and play what she remembered, but giving it her style,
all the flavor, the air and the contents which those three
notes had in themselves. What three notes! ‘El punteao’
is the first thing I learned to play. And I’ve never
been able to give it even one percent of the sound they
bring out in it. It was something I wanted to maintain
and say “gentlemen, this is a part of flamenco and
it’s there”, besides the fact that it’s
partying of my family’s. It’s a little bit
anthropological. Taking advantage that I knew there was
something important there, I gathered all my family, a
real gift for my first album. For me and for Pablo it
was... incredible. I took all of them to a studio in Barcelona;
a luxury. And my uncle Ramón el Cumbreño,
who’s the last one who sings, the artist in the
family, has an old way, very much like Porrinas, with
that speed, with that musicality. Listening to that once
again nowadays, which remains in a certain way in El Portugués
and in Guadiana... People in Extremadura are really musical”.
‘Pavana’
“... with shakuhachi, which is
the traditional Japanese flute. At the age of fifteen,
Hideo Sekino made the music for one of the films by Kurosawa.
I met this man in America, at a remembrance of a person
who had died. There were a few of that person’s
friends and of his wife’s, a common friend, and
a few of us went to play. When I saw that man there in
San Francisco, dressed as a samurai, he takes out that
flute, he plays it... that sound stuck with me. What manners.
I saw the light of life. His sound reached me as if it
were a thread of life, drawn as if it were the marrow.
And in my mind I sought something of mine which would
be ideal for that man to play. And I had ‘Pavana’,
music I brought out to criticize the unjust death of children
at the hands of power. And it had a lot to do with the
circumstances in which I met him, with his music being
life to me and, moreover, it was traditional, millennial.
That’s how I decided to close the album; with that
sound”.
