Interview with José Antonio Suárez, CANO 'Son de Ayer'

He is without a doubt one of the most interesting flamenco musicians today. He belongs to a gypsy dynasty with firm roots in Extremadura.  In one single lineage we find every kind of artist: singers, dancers, pianists, even a playwright, Francisco Suárez.  His name is Juan Antonio Suárez and he has become known artistically as “Canito”.  And here he is with his first record under his arm, a very personal work, full of musical maturity beyond the normal.  The work is titled “Son de Ayer”.  It comes visually illustrated by Antonio Maya, a literarily by Félix Grande.  Guitarist and composer Juan Antonio Suárez now calls himself “Cano”, and this is the conversation we recently had one spring afternoon at the Filmoteca Nacional café in Madrid…

What’s it like nowadays making a record outside the industry?
To record outside the industry you have to have a lot of patience and be very motivated.  I first thought of recording in 2000 and started work in 2003.  From then, until 2008, that’s five years I’ve been pulling this together little by little.  It’s had  to be slow like that, because I wasn’t able to do it faster, for which I’m now glad, seeing the results, because there are things that have matured, and I’ve managed to resolve more satisfactorily.  The record is well-thought out because I’ve had the ideas in my head for a long time.

Where did you do the recording, is it a home-made job?
No, it was done in professional studios and a home studio with professional equipment…in Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, Huelva, Japan…in many different places, because there was a lot to tell.  Depending on the people I was recording with and collaborated with, that’s where I went.  It’s been a belabored work, but very interesting.

Like the Japanese cultural custom of letting time pass…
You might say that…

“Son de Ayer”…
I didn’t want to give the record a title, and I trusted someone else, a person who knows my work well, my music, to put the final touch.  The record was already recorded and we still had no title.”Son de Ayer” is because it’s a kind of music that is very old and it’s something with which I completely close out one stage of my life, and that person also knew it.  The word “son” also has the meaning of a type of music and rhythm. I consider myself a very rhythmic guitarist.

“With music you can dream and create images, smells, colors…”

You define yourself as a very rhythmic guitarist, but it’s not a commonplace record in many ways, one of which is that it’s not three rumbas and four bulerías.
I’m a rhythmic guitarist because I’ve played for dance all my life, and it comes easy to me, but the fact is when I compose I don’t usually emphasize that aspect, but rather another line, with another perspective.  The record doesn’t have a lot of bulerías and rumba because the concept was exactly what my mind, heart and soul really wanted, and I showed what I do.  I never considered that the record had to come out any particular way, or follow any particular fashion.  There are things we can do because we know where they are, but I felt like doing what I like, my own music.

You said it’s a record that’s different in many ways.  Another is the arrangements and collaborations…and there’s no saturation of instruments.
It’s another concept, and in fact it was conceived and worked to be that way.  I’ve tried to touch everything musically.  Even the last piece, which is a mixture, I tried to do it like that, without thinking in any particular instrument sounding louder than another for specific audiences…no.  And the arrangements, like you say, they have  nothing to do with standard flamenco arrangements, because the people I collaborate with are mostly devoted to other kinds of music, although they know flamenco very well.  And when it comes to making the arrangements, we do it in an absolutely musical way, always drawing from a base, which is my composition.  Then they take that bit and interpret the story trying to squeeze the most out of it, but logically, without necessarily doing it in a flamenco way, but rather parallel paths that complement each other very well.  That’s why they don’t sound like the typical flamenco arrangements.  For where I’m at now, I prefer this way of working, this other concept.

When there are several instruments, a polyphonic discourse is established…

Absolutely.  This is actually a sort of chamber music.  Each note is carefully considered.  The person who arranged some of the themes, Rafael Fernández, is a member of Caponata Argamacho Trío, a group from Seville I’ve been with for four years, and we’ve practically worked on every continent, more than 25 countries, and we have a large repertoire of guitar plus trio.  So it’s actually a chamber group.  Everything is done with that in mind.

See Cd – Listen samples in real audio

“I felt like doing what I like, my own music”

One idea that came to me when I was listening to the record I wrote down like this: each note has its space, the notes notes aren’t jumbled up or stepping on each other, they give color to each feeling.
That’smy way of feeling the music, of thinking it and building it, I always take that into consideration.  I like each note to have it’s time to sound, I like the silences, each thing with its own feeling and climate.

I think your music works like the sound track of a film, where the sounds highlight an emotion, a feeling…
The record is full of such compositions because since 1996 I’ve been collaborating with directors and choreographers who don’t only work with dance, but also with theater, so I’m fortunate to have had that experience, and it opens a lot of doors for me.  That kind of work showed me a path and a world that marked me deeply.  Today that experience gives me the possibility to dream and create images, smells, colors…  It’s a whole gamut of possibilities, and that’s where I feel free.

In actual fact, you don’t play ‘falsetas’, you paint ideas.
Like everyone else, I started out with falsetas, and I love falsetas.  But I’m more involved in composing a piece from beginning to end, telling a story and looking for a development.  That’s what I like, and I think if I keep to that I don’t have to lose anything of my own, they are perfectly compatible concepts.

Another thing I noticed is how softly you play, when compared to the force which reigns in today’s flamenco guitar.
I have both aspects.  I consider myself a strong guitarist because I’ve always played for dance, but it’s also true that when I play solo or compose, I like to use a dynamic, I have a grand time.  I love to embrace the guitar and come down with it after a crescendo, and I use the whisper formula a lot.

”This is actually a sort of chamber music”

And yet, your music is also full of light.
Well, I’ve added that over the years.  In the acknowledgements I tell an uncle of mine that our journey has gone from darkness to light.  And I say it in the sense, for example, that there are moments in life when you prefer winter to summer.  And yet, I’ve been travelling towards the summer. I’ve changed my music, and I myself have changed.  That’s the evolution I’m hoping for, and I hope it’s good.

Each piece has something to say, but I’m especially attracted by some, for example band 9, “El Punteao”…
That’s very old.  It’s the fiesta we recorded in Barcelona.  It’s my aunt Adela who’s playing the guitar, and I just play along from the background.  That woman recreates what another called La Tijera used to do, she’s still alive, ninety-some years old.  They were sisters and both played, because there used to be a lot of gypsy women who played the guitar.  My aunt recreated what she heard, and that was the first thing I learned at home with the guitar.  So it’s really great because my whole family is singing: my father, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my great-uncle… It’s a primitive and fundamental part of flamenco, and style of playing you don’t hear any more.  Very Extremaduran, with a fantastic primitive sound.

The Caponata Argamacho Trío is also on the record…
They’re on two numbers, and they’re fantastic musicians who knew how to take my music and expand on it, that has no price.  They provided the most contemporary arrangements.  But I’ve also got my artistic family, the Cachapines. My cousins Pablo, Juan and Dani, great people with the gift of telling things without too much technical flourish…you can see and hear everything they do.  There’s a kind of symbiosis and we all vibrate in the same frequency, all four of us, and it shows, especially in the tangos where Juan’s mother sings in Portuguese.  It’s something Portuguese gypsies used to sing and she put it to tangos.  That voice, that thing of mother and son…do you realize all the love that went into that?  Priceless.  And then there’s Lole, a gypsy princess who never sang in a traditional way, and yet she’s the most flamenco thing you could imagine.

“I’ve been travelling towards the summer…more and more light in my music all the time”

And we also find a Japanese musician, Hideo Sekino…
He’s a traditional Japanese flautist who plays the shakuhachi, and as long as we’re here in the Filmoteca, I can tell you when he was very young he did some music for Kurosawa.  He’s an incredible man.  He plays all the Japanese flutes.  I met him in San Francisco and his music really did something to me.  I felt a ray of light.  I promised myself that I had to do something with him, and I found a composition of mine, the oldest one on the record, that related to how I felt when I heard that music.,

Who is the Mari you dedicated such a beautiful tender composition to?
Mari is a cousin of  mine and Pablo’s who died of bone cancer at 28, and that piece is a recreation of something we played in the church the day she got married.  We used the chorus of that music.  Everyone who’s singing are blood relatives…the whole family in her memory.

You dedicate a song to gypsies, and the cover of the recording shows a painting of Antonio Maya’s.  Both that music and that painting show a very personal way of understanding gypsies..
I like to value things I consider important, and the gyspsies have many  beautiful things.  We’re used to knowing about ugly things, and it seems one black chick pea spoils the stew, but my heart knows those people have many things to say, with a great deal of feeling.  It’s nice to dedicate a piece to people who historically have gone through so much…people who have suffered have a different point of view, not better or worse, just different.

Certainly Antonio Maya has extraordinary sensitivity which is out of the ordinary.  I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not, but your music goes perfectly with that painting.
The record came together little by little, I never thought Antonio or Lole or Félix Grande would be involved.  A few days ago I was with Antonio Maya to give him the CD, and it turns out the Institute of Gypsy Culture gave him a prize, and I was able to see him prepare his acceptance speech, a beautiful story…it was moving to see such a humble person speak so eloquently.  And all that comes out in his painting.  It was a great honor for me to have this type of collaboration offered so lovingly.

Then there’s the literary contribution of Félix Grande.
His text is incredible.  He says wonderful things.  He says things that are very true about the current state of things, and when he speaks about me, well, he says some very nice things.  It’s a great honor to have his text there.

What is the ultimate definitive messsage of this recording?
The record is intended to demonstrate you can be free within the limits of flamenco.  I’ve always rebelled against the norms, since I was a child.  I can stand to have barriers.  There are more than enough barriers in life, where we aren’t free at all even though this is a democracy, we have very little real freedom.  But music is different.  With music we can dream, and the only thing I did on this record is dream and believe.  So you can be free without losing anything, without losing flamenco, because it’s the person who is flamenco, and you can’t make that happen.