Santiago Sánchez Macías, “Santiago Donday”, was born in Cádiz in 1932. A blacksmith by profession, the son of amateur singers Seis Reales and María la Sabina, and grandson of Jerez singer Farrabú, he never wanted to abandon the forge, the last one to remain active in Cádiz, to become a professional singer. Nevertheless many followers of the most traditional sort of flamenco discovered and delighted in his primitive, wrenching delivery and a repertoire limited to basic styles. Investigator and flamenco writer Pierre Lefranc, author of “El Cante Jondo” (Seville, 2000), had the good fortune to hear Santiago in the intimacy of the singer’s home at a time when his voice and faculties were in top condition.

An afternoon of cante with
Santiago Donday in 1961

Text: Pierre Lefranc

Anzonini del Puerto took us into Cadiz, to Santiago Donday’s place. We arrived about 3 p.m. and found him with a handful of family and friends. The tape recorder was promptly got ready, not one word was said of looking for a guitarist, and Santiago began to sing, with the support of the palmas of all present, particularly Anzonini, a master for precision, energy and creative fantasy, all these in inexhaustible supply.

Santiago Donday with Niño Jero

No one else sang that day until someone came in at the end (of whom more in a few paragraphs). Santiago, who refused to sell his cante, had developed a repertory of his own – half Cadiz, half Jerez – within the gitano tradition : bulerías, bulerías por soleá, soleares, siguiriyas, martinetes and tonás. His style of expression was akin to that of Manolo Caracol, owing probably far more to parallel temperaments than to deliberate choice and imitation. Santiago was essentially a rebel, anything but a follower, and good cante by Caracol was hard to come by in records. One notable influence in his cante was that of Jerez, particularly in the siguiriyas. Jerez was where his father hailed from.

He kept his father’s forge alive in Puerta Tierra and did a lifetime of work there. A few contacts with the opulent afición in Jerez – no names will be mentioned – had left him with such dubious memories that he had vowed to himself, Never again. About those years, too, in 1961-2, José Manuel Caballero Bonald got hold of him for his Archivo del Cante Flamenco (which came out in 1968). The two men apparently did not get along very well : Caballero Bonald, who found Santiago too unruly for his taste, only included a handful of soleares by him and never published the rest. Santiago remained fairly unknown except locally.

In the early 1990s, I handed over to Luis and Ramón Soler a copy of the recordings made that afternoon, from which they selected four cuttings for their “Testimonios Flamencos” which accompany the Historia del Flamenco published by Tartessos (a fifth, more recent, recording was added). That belated publication put Santiago briefly in the news, for an old-fashioned afición who was running short of old-style cantaores worthy of admiration. Paco Cepero succeeded in persuading Santiago to sing for a commercial recording, for which of course we must be grateful, but time had taken its toll and this was the shadow of Santiago. He died two years ago.

Anzonini del Puerto (photo by Yane Lefranc )

The cante of his younger years presents two outstanding characteristics. He maintains at all times an unbroken grip on his cante and on what cante is about, never allowing his hold to slip and the tension to drop even for a brief second. Such grip I have found only in some records by Tomas Pavón and Manuel Torre. Also, there were moments when a mention of sonidos negros would be inadequate : he seems to stare into the very essence of darkness – darkness experienced and darkness beyond – and to report ; or again, to use a superb Andalucianism, da miedo cantando : his cante generates fear. His capacity to drift into creative unorthodoxy played against him.

Towards 7 p.m. there suddenly appeared, as if emerging from the wall, a frail old lady with a black patch on her left eye : Pepa “Seis Reales”, also known as María La Sabina, Santiago’s mother. She began majestically to intone a temple made of a single note without any sort of vibrato, followed by that invocation of long ago, “Con el yay, / Con el yay y el yay que yay, / Con el yay y yay y yay”, then went on into old-style bulerías, after which came old-fashioned fandangos. Everyone present was awed and delirious. After which, all imaginable summits having been reached that day, there remained nothing “to say” and the party adjourned. Pepa’s bulerías, too, are included in the Solers’ selection.

P.L.

• Cádiz: Special report