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Every time I visit Jaén I evoke Pepe Polluelas. Memory keeps him on guard, stationed at the entrance to the social club. Peña Flamenca by Jaén and adopting a defiant position, perhaps because of that shyness that held him back from relating to the world. However, he was waiting for me, we would argue our eternal debates and, after toasting with a glass as a witness, we would be friends. Yes, exactly, because we were united by a sincere friendship thanks to the respect for the canteAnd I remember him in these lines because I have been waiting since April for someone to commemorate the centenary of his birth.
It has not been like that. But on the occasion of the celebration of the 18th of October next Friday 52nd Festival Flamenco which bears his name in the capital of the Kingdom, I rescue it from memory because oblivion in the flamenco It is not the fault of those who left, but the reality of those who have dead neurons.
Jose Ruiz Perez, which is his given name, was born on San Clemente Street, in Jaén, on April 26, 1924. He became fond of cante by his father, who was a saddler and a great fan, but above all by the shows of the Flamenco Opera and the subsequent Theatrical Era that the businessman from Cartagena started Alberto Monserrat, previously associated with his brother-in-law Vedrines, as well as the artists who were held in Jaén during the (in)civil war, including the Child of Madrid, from whom he learned the cante by soleá, Pepe Marchena, Enrique Orozco, Jose Palanca, Antonio de la Calza and, especially, Canalejas of Puerto Real, who even wanted to take him with his troupe, but Pepe –that's what his friends called him– could not abandon his mother, for whom he truly venerated and from whom he only left to go to military service.
At a very early age, Polluelas, a nickname he inherited from his brother for how well he imitated these birds, launched himself into the music arena at only 12 years of age in the farmhouses, while accompanying his father. Then he sang Green eyes, even though three years later he did it in the Main Coffee with the accompaniment of Nino Ricardo.
In 1940 he entered the only competition of his life, held at the Municipal Swimming Pool, and won the first prize of 20 duros of the time and a small medal –so he told me– of the Holy Rosary. However, all his activity was limited to singing in inns, taverns, brothels and provincial fairs, until in the seventies of the last century he began to appear in the festivals of Jaen.
In those early years launching the cante Through hovels and brothels, Polluelas shared honors with his good friend Pepe Marchenilla, standing out, despite the spaces mentioned, for never losing the dignity that it granted to this cultural heritage.
The aforementioned fact of preserving the flamenco essences with purifying zeal was what earned him the respect and consideration of the true fan and, mainly, of the Peña Flamenca from Jaén, a collective that created the Festival Flamenco Pepe Polluelas, which since 1991 has been celebrated during the Virgen de la Capilla festivities, although now it cites us at the San Lucas Fair, and which I presented in 1994 with a Jose Menese in teacher. I also remember that in April 1992 the Peña Jaén dedicated its VII Week of Studies to him “embodying the flamenco culture of the last forty years in Jaén”.
«He scrutinized the letters that were associated with his lived experiences, and managed his faculties, short, but looking for the flavor, the taste. And it is that Pepe Polluelas tasted the cante de pellizco, which is why at short distances it did not emit a cry or a stretch of melody, but a handful of sonorous pins.
These recognitions, as well as the documentary The last bohemian (2013), hosted by Fran Armenteros y Eva Llácer, happened because Pepe Polluelas died on February 22, 1990 at the Princesa Sofía Hospital in Jaén. He was buried the next day, and after we tired of repeating that he lived alone, in a hotel near the Peña Flamenca From Jaén under the tutelage of the entity, Pepe died misunderstood, a singer with no more history than that of the upstanding members of the Jaén club.
I asked him on one occasion why he had not married. The answer was that he chose to marry the canteAnd since in solitude he only explored his own thoughts, when he was happy, among his few friends, with his nose swollen and reddish from the fire of concentrated alcohol, he used to exclaim: "If these are wars, may they never end!"
My memories do not escape the smoke of that eternal cigar held between the fingers of his left hand. Rather, they remain captured in his gaze of a demanding devotee, in his words as a jealous guardian of the authentic, in his combative ways in the face of any discrepancy, in his peculiar lifestyle, in the way he held a glass of wine, in the ideas he hid under his cap and, of course, in his anecdotes, full of experiences and that special distinction that survival gives.
He was not satisfied with his recording appearances, such as the two with Lunar Parakeet son, such that Jaen sings, (1982), where he sings fandangos and soleá, and Testimonials flamencos. Vol. 07 (1995), which contains some soleares from 1980, apart from the later compact Pepe Polluelas (2015), compilation of fifteen cantes executed in the Peña Flamenca from Jaén between 1980 and 1987 and compiled by the great Paquillo Canadas.
Pepe had, in that context, an undeniable personality. I heard him many times in private, and as the patriarch of the cante In Jaén he put his expressive stamp on everything he touched, because he did not like copying for copying's sake. He also scrutinized the letters that were associated with his lived experiences, and managed his faculties, short, but looking for the flavor, the taste. And Pepe tasted the cante de pellizco, which is why at short distances it did not emit a cry or a stretch of melody, but a handful of sonorous pinpricks.
Pepe Polluelas was, in addition, a bohemian, and sang, consequently, out of vital necessity. In the cantiñas, for example, he looked for Uncle Joseph the Eagle, Aurelio Selles or to Pepe Marchena, and then continue with alegrías. Through tangos he evoked Antonio the Jacket and finished with tanguillos. The Cartagena native focused it on Mr. Antonio Chacon, like the taranta, and sometimes even finished it off with the malagueña of The TwinIt was recast with José Cepero in the granaína-malagueña, who used it to begin a series of fandangos, in which he included variants from Huelva or from Palanca, Marchena, Antonio de la Calzá, The Sevillian y Pepe Pinto, and in the same vein he recalled the Malaga styles of Hyacinth Almaden o The Lame Man from Malaga.
I insist that I am writing about the privacy of the meeting. And if for bulerías he adjusted to Jerez and the cuplé, and for tientos he had Cadiz and Jerez tendencies, for tanguillos he enjoyed The naughty cow, Vicente the Parrot, who lived in the Cerro de los Lirios in Jaén. He also performed Christmas carols in bulerías The Glory, and through seguiriyas he was looking for Manuel Torre, while the arrow was directed every Good Friday morning to Our Father Jesus of Nazareth, The Grandfather.
Su palo It was, however, the soleá. That is where Pepe Polluelas found himself again, in the integrity of the thirds that, although with nods to the Niño de Madrid, we grant to La Andonda, La Serneta, The Twin and JuaniquinAnd he approached them as if in the typology with his own letters he yearned for the desire to return to other times, such as the intention of this reminder, which is none other than to promote knowledge to rehabilitate memories and keep alive the memory of someone who was born in Jaén one hundred years ago.
