Interview: Pablo San Nicasio Ramos
Photos: Rafael Manjavacas
“Flamenco has to be renewed because it's done by people, not wicker chairs on a stage”
Flamenco’s elite are measured not so much in sales figures, which also count, but the number of references by professionals of the art. References which defend the figure of a specific person. That name tends to come up again and again in every conversation that deals with the question at hand and, since some time back, perhaps a decade, Señor Francisco José Arcángel Ramos has always surfaced.
The day Steven Jobs died, we spoke about flamenco visionaries and revolutionaries with a young man presenting his fourth record before the age of 35 after a 5-year recording hiatus. This “Quijote de los Sueños” is no longer afraid of anything, whether it’s giants or windmills that stand in front of him.
You say this record opens up lots of new territory and challenges. Yes, totally. There are several. First and foremost, this is the first recording I produced myself, the others were made under the direction of producers. This is because the time has come to do things completely according to my own criteria. I chose the pieces I wanted to sing, how I wanted to do them, the way the arrangements should sound, the musicians who would participate… Of course always leaving a margin for the opinions of people I’m surrounded by, I chose them precisely for this reason, so they could have the freedom to do what they want to express.
Then there’s the challenge that eighty percent of the music was written by me. Except for Isidro’s work and the occasional popular verse, I’m involved in everything and decide what goes. And of course it’s also a challenge to get back into the recording studio after such a long absence, and that has to show, because there has to be evolution.
Is self-production imposed by the current situation? No, it wasn’t an economic question. I did it because I was convinced it was the right thing to do. I think we need to take the reins of our own music and be the creators, the more we’re involved in our own music and our products, if they can be called that, the better.
You specifically defend new verses, and allude to the quality of the texts. It’s that…look…flamenco is begging for this, that’s for sure.
Why? Aren’t the traditional verses good any more? Have they become clichés? In actual fact, there’s everything. There are popular verses that are valid forever and ever, but the good ones are overdone…I feel like singing and communicating other things. Although we’re saying the same thing, maybe we ought to say it in another way. But watch out, the language we have to seek to express abstract things has to be accessible, which is why I chose Juan Cobos Wilkins, founder of the Casa de Juan Ramón Jiménez, who works for El País, and is an author whose work has been taken to cinema…but above all, I emphasize that with his language you can feel and imagine things perfectly. People have to understand what I’m talking about, like in the old verses. And no holds barred, you have to get into thorny issues sometimes…
Do you do that here? Yes, for example “No Consigo” refers to how hard it is to love a god above all other things. That commandment which is central in so many religions, and which for me and many people is so hard…or at least incomprehensible. It’s not about not loving God, but about loving him about all other things. It’s a suggestive theme, like in “Los Dulces Peligros de la Música” which is like a poision, something thansports us to places and memories…and we’re helpless to do anything. There’s music that…that carries us away, that… Something which is perfectly expressed in those verses. The texts, naturally, are adapted to each cante, there are some that are simpler than others as far as the length, but never in the content they deal with.
Lo de Quijote was for Paco Toronjo… Juan Cobos wrote that song, and I thought it was just perfect, but not only the title, but for the whole record, to dedicate it to Paco, you know what I mean… I really identified with that title. We all run up against giants that keep us from living in the world we dream of . Peace, equality…I’m not talking about projects or material dreams, this is something bigger.
“We all run up against giants that keep us from living in the world we dream of”
Why was Paco Toronjo Don Quixote? His relevance is beyond question. No one could have done more with so little. Sixty years singing fandangos de Huelva the way he did…I was 21 when he died, and was able to be with him a lot. He moved in a world of his own. He did things his way and sang what he felt, only his own verses, he wouldn’t be influenced by anyone, a real fighter like Quixote, self-sufficient in existential matters at every instant.
In flamenco are there giants and barriers? There used to be, it was a world that was too closed. Now that’s less true. You have to open up to renewal. Flamenco has to be renewed because it’s done by people, not wicker chairs on a stage. It’s as if my son went to a school in the future and didn’t know what an ipad is because I made him take notes the same way I did when I was a child. He’d say “but Dad, there are kids in my class who get ahead faster than me”, and it would be absurd for me to tell him to take notes or study the same way as before “because that’s how it has to be”. It would be totally ridiculous, I’d be making his life impossible.
And this you’re telling me on the very day Steven Jobs passed away. Really? I had no idea…. Look, progress can’t be stopped by anyone. Something else entirely is looking down on the past, which isn’t the way it should go either.
Some time ago I heard you say that “young people are disoriented now”. Young people are always disoriented, and now more so, because they’re having to face reality all of a sudden, and I’m not talking about flamenco, but in general.
In flamenco it’s the same thing, but we have it a little easier now because you become more tolerant. People starting out now, how are they not going to be different if they’re listening to reggaeton, heavy…and have thousands of songs on their ipods?
That capacity for listening to as much as you want, how you want…that used to be impossible. I’m talking about a flamenco singer who wanted to learn someone else’s cante, you had to trail behind the person, catch him or her at the right moment, and hope they’d be willing to sing, and to repeat… And mind you, that young person would have to remember the verses, the music…it was impossible. The following day something might be retained, but a week later… You’d have to do an exercise like at school: “Complete the sentence”. That’s where each person’s imagination came into play…and that made flamenco move forward. Now there are other paths to make it advance, but we also have to take advantage of the circumstances at our disposal.
“Flamenco used to be a world that was too closed. Now that’s less true. You have to open up to renewal. Flamenco has to be renewed because it’s done by people, not wicker chairs on a stage”.
And if you hear people say that young people remake more than create? Well whoever says that is wrong. Because precisely now things are being sought that are completely different. Before you only interpreted traditional cante most of the time. But now, almost everyone is looking to do new things. That’s how it is.
“Purity”, that problematic concept. José Luis Ortiz Nuevo refers to it as a consolation. Isn’t it also like throwing stones? Yes, it is. But it shouldn’t be that way. I understand purity as a concept that consists of doing something in the knowledge that that which you are doing is good. It becomes throwing stones when the purists oppose the modernists, or vice versa…people who attack anything traditional and say it’s obsolete. This can’t be, and that’s why I have the piece “Pa qué Tanto Discutir” [‘What’s all the arguing about?’] Modern flamenco can’t exist without the old kind, nor the other way around. It’s absurd to set both things up as rivals.
Speaking of purity, I don’t know whether you notice the dilemma of the fandango not being accepted as part of the body of flamenco… There’s nothing to argue about, the fandango is, and will always be flamenco. Anyone who doesn’t think so has a big problem because it’s obvious, no matter what I or anyone else says. Fandangos have a lot to do with all this, and it’s the basis of so many things.
The record includes the collaboration of your regular back-up, but also some new names…. The Makarines are there, I love them, Dorantes, José Antonio Rodríguez, my regular musicians, the Mellis, Miguel Ángel Cortés, Dani Méndez…and Antonio Orozco with whom I have very cordial relations and who sounds very flamenco here…it’s going to surprise a lot of people.
