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Previous | ‘Viento
del Norte’, track by track, by Jesús Torres
What
does each of the collaborators contribute?
Jesús Torres
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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Encarna
Anillo performs in the bulería por soleá,
but it was originally going to be recorded by Montse Cortés.
But due to a scheduling problem, because she was on tour
with Paco de Lucía, it was impossible. I called
up Encarnita and she told me not to worry, that she’d
do it. Besides, I like her a lot. I’d already worked
with her. I got to Madrid, I sang the song twice for her
with my lousy voice, she understood it right away and
we recorded it that very evening. The same with Miguel
Poveda. On a tour in New York I told him that I wanted
to have him for a song on the album I was recording. And
he told me I could count on him for whatever I wanted.
I did jabera lyrics for him for a malagueña which
I had. I wanted to finish it off with jabera, which is
a cante I really like. I don’t know why I used to
listen to it a lot when I was little and it’s hardly
ever recorded. I sent him the lyrics, I went to his house
to measure them up and it was all wonderful. It’s
great luck to have people like that, who have helped me
like that. I asked everybody how much they’d charge
me and when they told me nothing and I saw that it was
true, then I accepted. It’s the only way to make
it feasible. That’s the way it was too with the
clappers, Carlos Grilo and El Lúa. They came to
Seville, they didn’t want to charge me anything
and in the end I gave each of them a leg of ham. And a
cheese! They cracked up with the gift. I also called Manuel
Gago, in the bulería. I gave him the lyrics and
the melody, which I did myself, he came to Madrid, recorded
and it was all really simple. We have some choruses by
Carmen Amaya, Remedios’s sister, and Ana Mari González,
who I’d met at the Compañía Andaluza
de Danza a great many years ago. I wanted the choruses
to be female. In the song they collaborate on there’s
a part where they’re not in their tessitura; it’s
a little low for them, but I like how it went for them
and so did they. They’re all really generous people.
Besides the vocal touches, there
are a lot of instrumental colors...
Antonio
Coronel is a professional I like a lot because he’s
a type of percussionist who you don’t realize is
there, but if he isn’t, a big hole is created. He’s
very subtle, but he’s there, doing just the right
thing when he has to. There’s nothing gratuitous
or pretentious. A friend of mine from Madrid, cellist
José Luis Rodríguez, also collaborates,
which is really nice. Pablo Suárez is there, who
I asked to do the string arrangements for me for the bulería
por soleá and the zapateado. And he also did me
the favor of helping me because I have no idea how to
do arrangements. I can know what I like, but I don’t
know how it should be done at a musical level. And his
piano is there in the lullaby, played with great taste.
He has a way of playing I identify with; very melodious,
very subtle, very tasteful. Luis Escribano has stuck in
the contrabass in a couple of songs. He was really up
for it; I’d already worked with him before. In another
song there’s a bandoneon by a guy José Luis
recommended to me; he’s an old Argentinean who lives
in Madrid. His name’s Jorge Lema. I flipped out
with the way he and his house look. He lives in twenty
square meters and has a mess which isn’t a mess.
On seeing it work, what at first I thought was chaos,
was terrific organization. He recorded me on cassette
and to do the tests, it was like a ritual. Not knowing
him, so unhurried, I got nervous at first. Until I started
playing for him, he started playing the arrangements for
me and it turned out wonderful. I wanted a bandoneon that
sounded Argentinean and I got it. Besides, he hasn’t
got a clue about flamenco. He did what was best for the
song.
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Jesús Torres
(Foto Daniel Muñoz) |
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There’s very little, but Amir’s
bouzouki is there. I wanted a touch of that instrument
in the malagueña. When I recorded the vocals for
the jabera, I told Miguel to do them as he wished and
he recorded really long phases. So I had to work on the
way of sticking in the guitar because I didn’t want
normal accompaniment. I though about giving it different
colors and for one of them to be the bouzouki. And it
turned out really well. Ha ha ha. Of course I’m
talking to you about my son. When you do it with taste
and without aspirations... The only thorn left in my side,
but which is something personal, is that I would have
really liked my mother to have heard it, but she passed
away last year in January and it wasn’t meant to
be. I left home really young, I was always the spoiled
child in the family and she was always on the watch for
me. I saw her very little because she was always traveling.
She must be out there listening to it anyway...
Where was she from?
Seville. They’re all Sevillians.
My mother left for the Basque Country pregnant with me.
My father emigrated to work in the blast furnaces in Biscay;
first he went alone, and once he’d found a job,
he brought the rest of the family with him. Everyone except
me is from Écija. And I dedicate the lullaby ‘Alhama’
to her which I first did in a show by Isabel Bayón.
And she didn’t dance to it; it was a wardrobe change
on stage, but really special, really intimate, really
smooth. As it had that sense, I developed it into a complete
piece, since at first it lasted very little, and I named
it with my mother’s maiden name. I start with my
father and I finish with her.
The title, then, refers to your
biography …
The album’s called ‘Viento
del Norte’ (‘Northern Wind’) because
I was born in Barakaldo, in Biscay, and because it’s
one of the first songs I did when I left home. I’m
from the north although all my family, my origins and
my way of feeling are Andalusian. Besides, I’m really
in tune with the way of life in the south. But the truth
is that I spent twenty-four years living in the north.
Did you bring flamenco from home?
At first I neither understood nor liked
flamenco. It’s always been listened to at my house,
but not serious flamenco. Even though I was five years
old, I remember my father playing records by Valderrama
on the portable record player, which he used to love.
And there was always flamenco there. But I didn’t
understand how it worked. When I was twelve my brother
gave me a guitar as a present and I started playing rock,
pop, everything that came to me, songs from TV. Until
one day a neighbor asked me if I played flamenco. I told
him I didn’t and he suggested for me to learn it.
That neighbor used to tell jokes and sing sevillanas and
fandangos. He saw me on the stairs... and I told him OK.
He left me there with a man from Barakaldo who used to
teach flamenco guitar, I was with him for a little over
a month, he taught me everything he knew, which wasn’t
much. But it was the door that made me discover I liked
it. Until I saw it in my own hands, I didn’t know
it. And that neighbor took me as a guitarist. He used
to go to bars. He’d go up to the owner and ask him
if he wanted to put on a show with flamenco and jokes.
He didn’t ask for money, but rather a bottle of
cognac, another of whisky and another of gin. He’d
say yes. And what he used to do was put together the tables
in the bar to make a stage. He had some strips of paper
and at the end he took out the bottles and raffled them.
Twenty-five pesetas and so on. And that’s what we’d
earn. I must have been about fifteen or sixteen years
old. I even worked in a traveling circus; we used to go
to places which were a little bigger with a star, a juggler,
the one telling jokes... more pathetic than anything else.
And they used to set up the stage on those village carts
whose sides fold down. Until I met a person who danced,
Elvira Andrés, who went to do a course in Bilbao,
and she asked me if I wanted to go to Madrid. I listened
to her and went to Amor de Dios, I sat down beside the
guitarists to see what they did for baile. Until I definitively
decided to come and try to make a living out of it.
Jesús Torres (Photo
Daniel Muñoz)
And headfirst into baile…
Exactly. I was with the Antonio
Gades Company on a couple of tours in the year ’96,
through Elvira Andrés. I flipped out with him.
I like all of his shows. It’s incredible how he
explains, how simple he makes it. But from the inside,
you see how hard it is to make it simple. Without stage
design, with a few mirrors, with very few things, how
he’d explain. Anyone could understand what was going
on. And how he’d treat the details; he knew a great
deal about lighting. Being beside him and seeing how he’d
run the rehearsals was incredible. He noticed things which
slipped by others. I remember one detail with Candy, who
was the bad guy in the story. He was going around with
two who had long black boots. And the three of them had
really shiny boots. And Gades told them that the only
one who should have shiny boots was Candy, that the other
ones shouldn’t have them entirely clean. And of
course, at first you think it’s nonsense, but afterwards
you sat down to watch the rehearsal and your gaze went
exactly towards the one wearing the shiniest boots, who
was the most evil character of all, the one your attention
had to go to. He seemed like a really special person to
me. And regarding work and as a bailaor, really good.
I was lucky to be there. And with a lot of other people,
like María Rosa. All the old-time professionals
passed through there; he had a company all his life. Wow,
I’m really starting to ramble...
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Previous | ‘Viento
del Norte’, track by track, by Jesús Torres
