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EL PAIS (3rd June 08) - Review: MARINA and AUTE: “The word made meat”
By Fernando Neira
An enormous urban building full of rock rose, olive trees and shrubs in the very heart of Chamberí. Hush! The day the caretaker, the town planners or the Florentines find out, we are lost. It is good to take advantage while we can of this unusual natural redoubt for initiatives such as la Música de los Espejos (Mirror Music), a passionate fraternity of flamenco and literature inserted in the third edition of the Suma Flamenca Festival. Maybe one of the top executives lodged at the Hotel Eurobuilding popped their head out of the window (whether to delight at the unexpected gift or to protest) as soon as Marina Heredia began to sing.
Never has flamenco enjoyed such noble treatment, and never has it been more deserved. Even the rain, which left the carpets soaked and caused the organizers some panic, had an rare attack of shyness and stood down to allow the leading role of the veteran bard with the greying beard, the delicious guitar from Jerez and the immense Marina. The master Caballero Bonald sat quite satisfied in the second row, wearing his inseparable woollen peaked cap and a half smile always gleamed across his kind-hearted face. One day we will have to thank this man, apart from his capital novels, for his contribution to the expansion of flamenco into other families and new latitudes.
Dressed in grey and passion red, Heredia empowered the night without any fuss or bother. Her voice flows naturally, limpidly, flaming like a sudden blaze. Since the evening was dedicated to poets, her repertoire had a deep lyrical background: from Balada del que nunca fue a Granada (Ballade for those who have never been to Granada), by Rafael Alberti, to the bullfighting of Illo and Romero transformed into verse by José Bergamín. Aute watched soaking her up and shyly tapping the beat under the table. He knows that flamenco is no so much to be captured or grasped as to be felt.
Like something that tickles from the mouth to the stomach, like the pinch of a flower. The word made meat in the form of a Buleria or a Tango, either free or popular verse.
The dialogue between the singer and the poet was not at all heavy. Aute philosophises on love and death, one of his favourite dichotomies, and the young woman from Granada replying with an emotional bullfighting song. The sung author was referring to love with a capital letter, “nothing to do with genital aerobics” (since fortune has created the expression), and the woman replied with the Tangos, love stories and the hardships of the gypsies of the Sacromonte. Both the generation gap and the style were of little importance, for there are few things that make better bedfellows than music … and poetry. And there on the small stage the three performers had all the elements at their fingertips.
“I will first have to burn all photographs with tears”, recited Manila with his deep tar-coated voice, that has made a fortune from many a generation of women admirers. It was also reminiscent of Réquiemandaluz, a romance written by Carlos Cruz thirty years ago when Andalusia was synonymous with famine and desperation. The intensity rose and Marina Heredia had no choice other than to strike up the Soleares, “the deepest and truest flamenco”. For this, the guitar of El Bola became an amazing box of spark.
But the best was yet to come. Aute dared his skin with Al Alba in a broken, heart-breaking and painful reading, and Heredia replied with the same theme but with a Buleria. Just like José Mercé, but even better. The daughter of El Parrón is just 28 years old, but her art last night was capable of even taking the cold away from our bodies … and almost, from the feet.
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