From the journalist and researcher of flamenco Dolores Pantoja We know the previous work, in this same collection of flamenco from Sevilla University, To sing flamenco you have to get ugly. The keys to communication of cante, from 2019, and another book with a curious title as well, since the author is right in finding attractive titles, El cante of a little room, edited by the Provincial Council of Seville in 2002. Three books that cover an important face of the flamenco, little studied: the cante intimate, the approach through its artists, their imprint and their opinions, a kind of intrahistory that has focused the research of his investigations, including the doctoral thesis.
On this occasion we have to thank the author for having decided to publish that part that serves as support for research, interviews with artists flamencos of diverse nature due to their age, artistic line, origin, etc. Hence the subtitle, A journey to the heart of the flamenco led by its protagonists, is even more valuable due to the fact that some have already disappeared, unfortunately, such as Chano Lobato, Chocolate, Lebrijano, Luis Caballero or, more recently, Pansequito, among others. Various generations from those mentioned to the young Miguel Poveda o Rocio Marquez, for example, artists of the cante In this case, they are the focus of Pantoja's interest.
Let us remember Luis Caballero por malagueñas, a singer who was also a researcher and writer, a rare case among artists flamencos, especially in earlier stages. We see it in this video:
«This is how we find out what they think about issues like the voice or the role of alcohol. For Chocolate, alcohol does have an influence, but Chano thinks it's not important. How Diego Clavel scratched his chest when his cante I was transmitting to him. That before that flamenco Gypsy and non-Gypsy did not matter, as Naranjito says. That the duende also appears in a theatre, in the words of Manuel Mairena.
An interview makes sense and is interesting because of the interviewees' responses, even if sometimes the answers are dull, brief due to reluctance rather than due to precise conciseness, or well-known and topical, but also because of the interviewer's questions. The author covers general topics of the flamenco, but particularizing some questions to the singers in front of him, as is normal, according to each specific experience.
The result is a lesson in what is flamenco, in the voice and personal feeling of thirty-one relevant artists, among whom we perhaps miss more women, there are only six, because they can contribute their vision. It is divided into five chapters: Classicism, The Revolution, Catalan Artists, The Relief and Eclecticism, the latter with The Tremendous and Rocío Márquez. Here we listen to Rocío with the version of a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez:
As says Cristina Cruces In the prologue, we are faced with semi-structured interviews, or as the author says, relaxed talks, which remind us of those of Manuel Herrera Rhodes, published in a book in Almuzara recently. Pantoja uses them as an instrument for her research, formalized for a doctoral thesis or similar research. As a book of interviews it takes on a new meaning, of recovery of flamenco memory, of vision of a state of the question through various stages of the flamenco with its protagonists in the front line. Thus we learn numerous anecdotes, what they think about issues such as the voice or the role of alcohol, among others: for Chocolate, alcohol does have an influence, but Chano thinks it is not important; how he scratched his chest Diego Clavel when your cante I was transmitting to him; that before that flamenco Gypsy and non-Gypsy did not matter, as they say Orange; that the duende also appears in a theater, in the words of Manuel Mairena; that the duende is nothing more than the transmission, according to Calixto Sanchez; and so on to a variety of opinions, some topics falling on the flamenco and their parties and meetings. There is everything in this book that is read with the virtue of immediacy, freshness, truth, as each one understands it, of course. Necessary also for other researchers and an air of joy, knowledge and pleasantness for fans.
Let's stick with an example, that of the singer Diego Clavel, for seguiriyas, a good farewell to our review.
→ Dolores Pantoja Guerrero, I am in charge of my art, Publications of the University of Seville, 2023.
