A record that is a mausoleum, says the title. Do you sing the obsequies to flamenco?
I understand that flamenco is dead and that one way to honor it is to erect an ‘In memoriam’ mausoleum. In recent times I have read about mausoleums of artists and politicians, and I have visited them, and what they mean aesthetically speaking has caught my attention. The ones by Antonio Mairena, Pepe Marchena, Camarón… I really like the one by Joselito El Gallo. That geometric thing, like square. And the idea of dedicating something magnificent, sumptuous, to an important figure who has died. Although here it is rather an intimate, humble mausoleum.
What did the flamenco die of, or who killed it?
The flamingo is born dead, or in a coma, or with the threat that it will die. Caracol, Marchena and Mairena established the guidelines, but nobody does that today. Those people died and they are the referents that I have used. But I’m not reformist in spirit, and I’ve never understood why the word ‘flamenco’ should be reformulated. Acknowledging the death of flamenco helps us understand its value. That’s how we work.
Has flamenco been the victim of an overly rigid canon?
There’s part of that, and that the cantaores have died and their way of doing things too. There is an exercise in understanding that essentiality, and you can only make a record like this if you recognize that death. If you keep fooling yourself, you can’t do a job like this. Is it flamenco or isn’t it? Let them call the dog what they want. I immerse myself and rejoice in the ashes of flamenco.
He produces the album Raül Refree, with whom he already worked on ‘Antología del cante flamenco heterodoxo’ (2018), and who also plays the guitar. The sound is very raw, punk, even out of tune in, for example, ‘Alboreá in articulo mortis’.
On the album there are a lot of guitars from the world of improvisation, from the ‘ruidisimo’, from punk, which we like so much. Now the trend is the opposite, and I wanted to embrace flamenco as a radical element. The flamenco guitarists of the early years had an attitude and approach that today’s guitarists have gotten rid of, because they understand that they are poor. For us it is the opposite.
That ‘us’ includes the other guitarist on the album, Yerai Cortés.
It has the foundations and the grounds to become our hope in the world of flamenco. Not in the line set by Paco de Lucía, but in the one we like, essential and minimalist.
Is virtuosity an enemy of flamenco?
Yes, from the musical soul of guitarists. And that idea of the cursed guitarist, who is studying all day, struggling with the instrument… In the case of Manolo Sanlúcar it was a philosophy that he tried to impose and that has done a lot of damage to the psychology of guitarists.
Rosalía appears as a guest singing ‘Seguiriya madre’. Because she?
It’s a composition that Raül and I made based on a reference to Antonio the Dancer, and she wrote the lyrics. She understood that she had to be there, because of what she represents for us, and that it had to be one of the most radical songs on the album. Also for what the seguiriya represents.
Represents?
It is one of the primitive songs. Flamenco cannot be understood without the seguiriya and the soleá. Rosalía appears because she has known how to sing about love, death and celebration through flamenco, and we understood that her singing belonged to the disc’s discourse. We didn’t have to explain anything to him; on the contrary, she helped us to make it more substantial. If we had chosen it because of her name and for media reasons, we would have chosen a more commercial theme.
Rosalía, that artist who, apparently, gives concerts without musicians. What did you think of the controversy?
Imagine, these are controversies that one cannot understand in the 21st century. But it’s the search for ‘clickbait’ and that shit: there are still journalists who believe in it, or who need it to charge for an article. And you say: “My goodness, what a level”. Getting into that debate is like arguing whether the earth is round or flat. I can understand it at a bar with a couple of drinks too many, but in a serious debate about art it seems a bit out of place.