“Imagine this scene: a block of flats and in the background you can see the field. In the middle there is a kind of abandoned embankment. That third space is that of possibilities, that of play, in which everything can still be done and it has few pre-established codes”. This is how the singer explains Rocio Marquez (Huelva, 1985) his Third heaventhe album that he has just published together with the electronic musician Bronchus (Santiago Gonzalo, Jerez de la Frontera, 1991). But it’s also your life status. to Rocio His eyes shine with this new job, because it is the door that leads him to a new, unknown space, but to which he is willing to enter. A few days ago he described it on his Instagram account: “Journey of no return to the very center of my being.”
Marquez has a solid career behind him. She started as a child, combining her training with local children’s performances. The first call for attention to the public was her participation in a cante contest, that of the Festival of the Mines of La Union (Murcia), one of the most recognized by fans and outsiders. She has several award categories and she took them all in 2008.
Then one would come career in which his restlessness has always led him to delve into vocal technique through continuous research on the very origin of flamenco or the work of singers from bygone times. Marquez She has a doctorate in Vocal Technique in Flamenco by the University of Seville. Each album, each project, is an opportunity to delve into the flamenco or investigate their own limits.
But with Third heaven wanted to go further. The album began to forge from scratch, in a post-confinement encounter in which she and Bronquio gave themselves all the time in the world to explore each other together until they found a sound to pull from to build the 17 songs that make up the album. at the schematic level we saw him as a snake, like the change of skin to go to that third heaven. And in all those changes of skin all there is is instability“.
The result is three blocks of songs with three transition cuts between them, in which the rhythm of flamenco is maintained on which the cante and its sonorous clothing are built. “For me now the process makes a lot of sense, almost more than the final result,” he explains. “The result is to try to enjoy it, share it and accept whatever comes.” There is popular song, debla, verdiales, an aguilando, a proclamation, bulerías, seguiriya, toná… But all passed through the personal filter of the two artists and with the sound accompaniment of The Melli of Huelvato those who recorded clapping and jaleos so that the sound would be their own, as well as the percussions of Xoan Sánchez and the guitars Lorraine Alvarez.
The meeting with Bronchus, a musician from Jerez completely unrelated to flamenco who has turned to electronics from the beginning of punk, was not by chance. They were first joined by the record company with which Márquez works, Universal Music, who proposed to Bronquio that he make a remix of The 40’s started one of the cuts from the previous album by Rocío Márquez, Seen on Thursday. Later, they coincided again in the tribute to the legend of time which organized the independent music festival in 2019 Monkey Weekend in El Puerto de Santa María (Cadiz). There was a connection between the two that made them consider sitting down to work together.
But things did not start well. The lack of time for both did not allow them to find the space to create something from scratch, which was what they were looking for. “If I get into something, it’s to get muddy,” says Márquez. Y then came the pandemic. The limitations that she imposed on the shows with the public and the time that she left them free gave them wings to meet at Rocío’s house for a week from time to time and explore. She says that they traced a scheme to find your sound: starting from the popular, “rituals”, to reach “paradise” and from there to the “third heaven”.
the letters of Third heaven They also have a lot of that idea. The authorship of the texts goes through Unamuno and Lorca, San Agustin or contemporary authors such as Luis García Montero, Antonio Manuel, Maky Chuca or Carmen Camacho, a poet who has been precisely in charge of revising and giving meaning and unity to the lyrics. And although Rocío says she tackles very diverse themes, just like with sound, the truth is that she can hear that search for inner connection in her lyrics (“I’m going to give birth to myself,” she sings in Hard drug), that idea of indulging in the game, of possibility, and the reflection that has guided Márquez for a long time: to question that notion so widespread in today’s society that consumption gives us freedom.
The new Rocio Marquez
The composition process of this album has also coincided with other personnel of the cantaora that can well fit into that change of skin that she compares to that carried out by snakes. The meeting with EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA, a newspaper belonging to the Prensa Ibérica group as well as this medium, takes place precisely on the day they go on stage to present the album for the first time. A performance as part of a festival organized by RTVE at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid on the occasion of International Museum Day. She is elated; she walks almost without stepping on the ground after getting off the stage. She isn’t even worried about the criticism that may reach the album from the most conservative sectors of flamenco. “My personal work at this time is very much about respecting how each one sees it and respect me a lotshe says assertively.I believe that when one allows oneself to do what one really wants and is calm… It’s just that I understand everyone very well. Glory blessed who does not like it, it’s normal “.
The smile does not fit on his face when he explains the change he is experiencing with this album: “I have realized that before I used to throw a lot of balls out, saying that flamenco is very limiting. And no, it’s not, I was limiting myself. Why? Because I wanted to get an approval, an acceptance, and I was very afraid not to have it. Suddenly you accept that and the problems are over.”
Some time ago, in another meeting, Márquez confessed how, in order to win at La Unión, he had to learn an extremely precise way of doing cante that even included breathing, but that after winning it, he got bored of always doing it the same way. Perhaps that is why his career has been a constant search that has led him to approach other types of music. Beside Lorca Project he approached jazz on his album Firmament (UniversalMusic, 2017); and from the hand of the viola gambist Fahmi Alqhai, to baroque music in Dialogues of old and new sones (Alqhai & Alqhai, 2018).
Now he has managed to break those limits thanks to electronic music. “It opens endless doors for me,” she confesses with a surprised face. “You think in any sound element and it is easy to get, and that invites me, as a cantaora, to find myself elsewhere“.
Bronchus He attends Rocío’s confession with amusement, because that is precisely his natural field of work. She would suddenly say that she wanted to try a bell, and he would get it for now at a sound bank. For him, the other half of third skin, this project is also a turning point. This is his first foray into flamenco, an art that is not alien to him for having born and raised in Jerez de la Frontera. “Flamenco is there in some way at parties, at school, folklore… Whoever has a gypsy relative who sings flamenco boasts about it and feels proud,” he explains. “I the flamingo I enjoyed it on an emotional level, but when I got to work on it, at the rhythmic or timbral level, it opens up an infinite palette of possibilities for working with the computer”.
Neither of them was clear where they would end up in the search. “We weren’t going for something in particular, we had the end of the album completely blurred in our heads”, explains Bronquio. The pandemic gave them time in order to develop it. “It has allowed us to learn from each other.”
Inhabit the body, inhabit the stage
Third heaven is also a change of skin in the physicalbecause it implies a staging that determines the very way of singing of Márquez. “I really wanted to inhabit my body,” she explains. “Not the space, but my body, to inhabit it in another way”.
To achieve this, he has worked with Anthony Ruiz, choreographer, and Robert Martinez, responsible for the scenery of the concerts. “Allow me that and see what connection can I have with the voice from the movement It has been another engine of this project. Think that playing a note from different positions with your head changes the sound… There are so many doors!”
Now they are preparing the presentations of the album live, another change of skin that they are working on bring your proposal to the stage. They will do it in theaters, where they will be able to take their complete staging, but also in summer festivals, to which they will go with a more limited format. “The space influences and the circumstances also -explains Bronquio-, but we are going to try to do the same thing in Jerez as in Paris. We are really looking forward to it”.