FLAMENCO PA’ TOS 2009 10th ANNIVERSARY GALA
CARMEN LINARES, EVA YERBABUENA & MARINA HEREDIA
What women!
Silvia Calado. Madrid, June 25th, 2009
Carmen Linares
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
|
For flamenco and its audience to be able
to once again give a hand to the Gomaespuma Foundation’s
charity projects in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua, the tenth anniversary
of the Flamenco Pa’ Tos Festival had to be concentrated
in a single night. They hadn’t gotten enough sponsors
this time and if they hadn’t reduced the number of
sessions, as the comic duo explained their own way, “it
would have been an evil festival, the first one in history
to take away funds from the Third World”. But the
loosening up scarcely lasted just enough minutes for the
presentations. From then on, everyone present at the historic
auditorium of the Madrilenian Colegio de Médicos
(Medical Association) fell prey to an intense spiral of
emotions in feminine plural.
Poet Félix Grande recalled the Hebrew
roots of flamenco cantes like the petenera and the saeta,
before inviting Leilah to return five hundred years later:
“Welcome to Sefarad… Welcome home”, he
said excited/exciting. He made the crowd imagine that her
story dated back to the times of the expulsion, and now
she was returning to what was the home of her Sephardic
ancestors in the form and substance of a bailaora. But for
those of us who have seen her work and grow over the years
- not just at studios and tablaos, but also as a member
of companies such as those of Rafael Amargo, Farruquito
and Javier Barón -, what Leilah Broukhim best symbolizes
today is the effort which people from other whereabouts
make to soak up flamenco and become a part of it. She, in
particular, came from New York, where she was born in the
bosom of a family of Iranian immigrants and where she discovered
that artform which contained a part of her own roots. Now
she is a part of it.
Eva Yerbabuena
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
|
And she demonstrated so in her performance,
intense, heartfelt and flamenco… truly. Just compás,
the voices of Saúl Quirós and Ismael de la
Rosa and some lyrics alluding to the Sephardic accompanied
her in her first baile. Utmost simplicity for utmost emotion.
Regard, step and silence. Following an instrumental fandango
by the group, consisting of guitarists David Cerreduela
and Juan Jiménez, Diego Villegas on clarinet and
harmonica, Pedro García on cajón and La Arquillera
on clapping, she came back in with a classical soleá
which she performed sharply. Elegant in her footwork, determined
in her feeling, complete in her devotion. And the best thing
of all is that when the crowd gave her a standing ovation,
when her friend-maestra Fuensanta la Moneta hugged her when
she gave her a bouquet of flowers and when she could no
longer hold back her tears, her biography no longer mattered
at all.
Every climax needs its anticlimax. And
the respite was brought by Norwegian guitarist and singer
Bettina Flater, with music laden with sweetness. Breaking
all the ‘esthetic norms’ of toque - female,
foreign, blonde, a singer -, she presented a mini-concert
which combined a free solo and a composition por alegrías,
finishing off with a real rarity, a song of her own on bulerías
played and sung in a foreign language. And it was this ending
which synthesized her condition and her proposal: “In
this song I combine the musical knowledge I bring with me
with flamenco, which is more and more mine. What must flamenco
have that we come from everywhere in the world to seek it,
but we come with our suitcase full of our cultural identity”.
And of course, in that matter of getting together and mixing,
flamenco is unique.
Leilah Broukhim and David
Cerreduela (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
|
Triple female charm
It already keeps that rich miscegenation
within itself. That is why that cajoling Moorish quejío
doesn’t sound strange to us with which Marina
Heredia– who began her professional career at
this very festival - kicks off por tangos. She never does
them the same way twice, but they always have that substantial
something which makes them necessary. She stuck a cracked
“selling flowers” into them, and finished off
with an excerpt from Morente-style ‘Lorca’ in
a beautiful fade-out. But there was a brilliant before and
a brilliant after, always with José Quevedo on the
go behind the guitar. She opened up her voice por malagueñas
and fandangos del Albaicín. And as her spectacular
dress blocked the air (literally), she asked permission
to sing the seguiriyas standing. The spontaneous act bestowed
still further beauty, on account of dramatic arm movement,
to such deep cante. She put the icing on the cake with ‘No
me lo creo’, a romantic song por bulerías by
Parrita which she has done a version of for her next album
which, as she announced, will be released in autumn. And
she finished off the job ‘proclaiming grapes and candies’.
But the dose of vocal beauty would still
continue. And it would be from the hands of Lady Carmen
Linares, committed to this cause for a decade now. As soon
as she set foot on stage, the audience paid her their respect.
Which she responded to with words of gratitude “for
your generosity and for filling this place every year”,
and with a few select excerpts from ‘Raíces
y alas’, the album on which she transforms poetry
by Juan Ramón Jiménez into flamenco cante.
And the thing is that she had beside her the album’s
composer, Huelva-born guitarist Juan Carlos Romero, percussionist
Tino di Geraldo, guitarist Paco Cruzado and clappers Javier
and Ana Mari González. The whitewashed alegrías
‘Remembranzas’, the deep fandango ‘Moguer’
and the warm song por bulerías ‘Canto’
were the songs chosen for the occasion and which, despite
the neglected sound, she performed with great sophistication
and exquisiteness, providing the words with depth and the
ears with beauty.
Marina Heredia
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
|
The grand finale: Eva Yerbabuena. The Granada-born
bailaora - also committed to this festival since its beginning
- distilled from her latest show ‘Lluvia’ the
reinvented soleá with a cantaor trio, Paco Jarana
and Manuel de la Luz on toque, and El Pájaro on percussion.
That soleá she dances with her face and with her
hands, scarcely letting her body wriggle inside a black,
very black bata de cola. That soleá which redesigns
her foreshortening and the strength to look from other angles.
That which concludes in a trance, tremendously dancing the
very tremendous cuplés sung for her by Pepe de Pura,
José Valencia and Enrique el Extremeño. The
love was being broken… and the audience was screaming.
What a jet black gem. What generosity. What women!
