Song of Spain

Posted Friday, November 23, 2007

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On a recent night in Barcelona, Enrique Morente, Flamenco's vanguard bard, stood in a circle with his band of guitarists, hand-clappers, and percussionists, his bass player and a liquid-limbed young dancer named Alain Perez, who could pass for Adrien Brody. Shadows played on the stone curtain behind the stage of Teatre Grec, a Greek-style amphitheater on Montjuic, the mountain above the city, as the nine darkly-dressed members of the group held up one hand and snapped their fingers. A persistent humming was heard as the musicians chanted deep in their throats, liturgical vibrations that marked the time as they began to sing, riffing one by one. The spectacle recalled Near Eastern prayer, street-corner doo-wop, rapping, a patio rumba -- the kind of reverberations across time and place that flamenco inevitably releases like ripples on water.
In Spain, Morente is acknowledged as one of the last century's three most important flamenco innovators, along with Paco de Lucia, who placed the guitar center stage, and iconic singer Camarón de la Isla. Morente has recorded with a rock and roll band and set Federico Garcia Lorca's poetry to music. Throughout his career, he has -- often brilliantly -- bridged authenticity and experimentation, accomplishing, in the words of one Spanish critic, ``a musical and poetic revolution rooted in classicism.''
Morente has been key in flamenco's evolution from marginalized art form to popular music genre. He's contemporary flamenco's Bob Dylan, or maybe its Leonard Cohen, whose songs he has also adapted; a citizen-philosopher, a voice to be heeded. In concert, Morente sang of a world in which ''we count time with the bitter beads of tears.'' His set also included a version of George and Ira Gershwin's ``Summertime.''
In the summer, flamenco, in its myriad forms, is showcased at music and theater festivals throughout Spain. The abundant August performances in Barcelona and the neighboring towns of the Costa Brava -- though removed from flamenco's center in the south of Spain -- this year have ranged from the theatrical acrobatics of fashion-conscious dancer Joaquin Cortes to the anarchic flamenco rock of Martires del Compas. The latter, a garage band from Seville, rages against the corporate-imperialist machine with party music rooted in the traditional song forms of flamenco called palos. ''He who wants war has business with it,'' lead singer Chico Ocaña chanted from the stage at Forum 2004, a cultural world's fair being held in Barcelona through September.
Sucking in smoke from a cigarette laced with hash, Ocaña also ragged on the Forum itself, an event which has served as an excuse to renovate one of the city's most blighted areas, replacing derelict buildings with Miami-style condos by name architects and displacing indigent families in the process. The singer growled out a song from the band's new album Simpapeles.es/Compapeles.son, which is a platform for Martires to speak out about the tribulations of the world's emigrants. ``If the air doesn't have papers/Nor the sea, why should I need papers?/If my dreams are of freedom/Tear down the walls and borders and embrace a free world.''
All flamenco is emigrant music, created by the gypsies and other disenfranchised cultures who came together in southern Spain. The band Son de la Frontera, also on the Forum schedule this month, explores flamenco's ''world without frontiers'' in songs based on the tradition of the staunchly noncommercial Andalusian guitar master Diego del Gastor. Son de la Frontera is headed by Raul Rodriguez, the son of bolero singer Martiro (well known in Miami from her appearances at the Miami Film Festival), who plays the Cuban tres. The group's excellent debut album offers a fresh take on so-called ida y vuelta (back and forth) rhythms from the old and new worlds.
When Morente's daughter, Estrella Morente, performs, it's obvious why, at 24, she's being hailed as the new ''voice of flamenco.'' While the word duende, used to describe the mystical spirit of flamenco, is overused, it's an apt term to explain the emotion stirred by Morente's presence. During a recent concert in the gardens of a chateau in a seaside town called Palafrugell, Morente was truly enchanting, her muscular voice powerfully embracing the vocals of the traditional cante jondo, or ''deep song.'' While her interpretation of classic flamenco carries weight and wisdom beyond her years, Morente's rich sound is also perfect for pop, and she sang some lighter tunes, including one whose chorus spoke of flamenco song's spreading to destinations like ``Cuba y La Florida.''
Flamenco in South Florida
Meanwhile in Miami, Miami Dade College mounted its own summer festival, called Flamenco in the Sun, that included performances and flamenco dance and music workshops. This past Saturday, guitarist José Luis Rodriguez, percussionist Suhdi Rajagopal, and dancer Belen Maya staged Intimo at the Lincoln Theater. The performance centered on Rodriguez, a skillful and precise player. In the concert's best moments, he was joined by Rajagopal on tables and at times on cajón (a wooden box), creating a harmonic musical conversation across continents and centuries (the origins of the gypsies of Spain have been traced to what is now Pakistan). Unfortunately, the musicians moved swiftly from one number in the program to the next, and a couple of times cut themselves off just when they got into a groove. A similar buzzkill was manifest by Maya, who appeared briefly three times during the show in exquisite costumes, dancing a very stylized hybrid of modern dance and flamenco. Her movements were beautiful and original, but didn't flow; she maintained a self-conscious air that kept the duende at the door.