Interview with Raúl Rodríguez of 'Son de la Frontera'

INTERVIEW
WITH

RAUL RODRÍGUEZ
of

«Son de
la Frontera»

More than forty years have passed since Diego del Gastor
(b. Arriate,1908-d. Morón de la Frontera, 1973)
was discovered by the foreign flamenco community turning
the bohemian guitarist from the Seville town of Morón
de la Frontera into a cult figure for an entire generation
of Americans, Japanese, English and other serious flamenco-lovers
abroad who had access to the Morón sound thanks
to hundreds of home-made tapes of fiestas and other
performances.

On his own turf however recognition was far more discreet,
generally limited to the immediate vecinity which has
now yielded five young musicians who have arrived to
put things in order. The group “Son de la Frontera”,
composed of Paco de Amparo, Pepe Torres, Manuel Flores
and Moi de Morón, under the direction of Raúl
Rodríguez, also an active member of the group,
son of the singer Martirio, bases their repertoire and
projection directly and unabashedly on the music of
Diego del Gastor who died over three decades ago and
whose name appears on the CD as author of the music.

“Son
de la Frontera”, the first recording by the group
of the same name who have been playing back-up for Martirio’s
performances for several years, is a surprising work,
multifaceted and fresh, which includes a heavy does
of the Cuban ‘tres’, a small stringed instrument
which Raúl Rodríguez, who is also a trained
anthropologist ¡n addition to being a musician,
applies to straight-forward flamenco with gusto and
genuine enthusiasm.

“An up-to-date way
of transmitting a message, much more direct as far as
the energy, the verses, the music, the general attitude…””

Raúl, how did the
Morón connection begin?
Well, there were several routes…for one thing, Kiko
Veneno and Raimundo and Rafael. They were doing a tour
years ago and one of the stops was Morón. That’s
when they came into contact with that style of playing.
The first flamenco fiesta Kiko ever saw was with Agustín
Ríos, one of Diego del Gastor’s nephews,
when Kiko was a hippy bumming around the United States
with his guitar. Agustín gave him some people
to look up and that changed his whole outlook around
1975, just shortly after Diego’s death. At that
time all these people were in and out of my house on
a daily basis. Then there was Dieguito de Morón
who gave me a copy of Rito y Geografía del Cante
where Diego del Gastor plays for Joselero and Perrate.
In actual fact, I started to discover Diego’s
playing when I no longer lived in the south, I was in
Madrid. I was 16 or 17, not a musician. I started played
drums, electric bass and guitar when I was 9, but never
tried flamenco until I found Diego. Coming from a background
of rock music I was at home with the guitar.

Not many flamenco artists
started out as rock musicians…in fact, it’s
usually the other way around, they go from flamenco
to rock…
I guess that’s a generational thing. It was very
helpful for me in the sense that I try to keep an additional
dimension…you might misinterpret what I’m going
to say, but it’s a more modern concept, an up-to-date
way of transmitting a message, much more direct, this
is something I see as very positive…as far as the
energy, the verses, the music, the general attitude…

“We develop a Cuban
idiom within bulerías”

Do you think Diego del Gastor’s
music has been unjustly forgotten?
Yes, but I think it’s only normal, an industry
problem, there haven’t been any records of Diego
del Gastor until now, with the release of Rito y Geografía
del Cante which includes 5 or 6 numbers, those are the
first commercially released recordings, so it’s
not a question of being forgotten, there just weren’t
any recordings as such. Nevertheless, having been recorded
by amateurs at so many fiestas made him famous all the
way to Australia. In Spain the problem is his artistic
personality was not compatible with the record industry,
nor was he particularly marketable, and since the music
was never recorded commercially, it never flourished,
which turned out to be a wonderful thing because it
keeps the purity of that idiom within its original context,
and perhaps this is why there’s such a distinct
Morón sound. The record is rich with references,
we’ve been doing this music around Morón,
in small venues and private gatherings and it always
makes a good impression.

So
you came upon this music when you were already playing
the guitar, is that right?
Yes…then I moved to Seville to pursue my anthropology
studies, and that’s where I met my great friend
Paco Pavía and we started hanging out in Morón.
I’d already studied that whole guitar school,
alone in my room, for about 6 or 7 years, not knowing
anything about Diego really, not even realizing that
Diego del Gastor and Diego de Morón were not
the same person. Then I began in a more organized fashion,
around 1994 or 95, I met Diego de Morón and we’re
great friends, and of course the younger generation
as well.

“Musical mixtures
come about in a very natural way, that’s the virtue
of music”

Was it already a sure thing
you were going to be a musician?
Yes, in 1992 I started playing music professionally.
As far as the ‘tres’, in 1997 my mother
was on her way to Havana and I asked her to bring one
back for me since I’d already begun to see the
potential of that instrument. I heard it on the first
recording that came to Spain in the…I guess you’d
call it the rediscovery of Cuban music in Spain and
the rest of Europe. The starting point was really “El
Encuentro: El Son Cubano y el Flamenco”, the series
organized by the regional government and which began
in 1993 when Compay came to Europe to sing, and Faustino
Oramas ‘El Guayabero’, Elíades Ochoa…
Until then there was scant interest in Cuban music compared
to now…the old authentic sound. Compay Segundo made
some records here, and they started recording all the
old Cuban musicians. The first tres-player I saw was
El Guayabero, I saw him in Lebrija with Pedro Bacán
in 1994. This is the person who triggered the whole
thing from a theoretical and musicological angle…along
with Faustino Núñez, Danilo Orozco, Luis
Lázaro, Bladimir Zamora, Santiago Auserón
and Jesús Cosano of the regional government,
these are the individuals who made it all possible.
I started listening to traditional flamenco on old recordings
and it really caught my interest. So in 1997 my mother
went to Cuba and brought back a tres, and I started
fooling around with it with Paco and Pepe from the group,
playing Morón-style but in a novel way.

See CD

Do you play flamenco guitar?
I’ve played guitar all my life…with Kiko Veneno,
Martirio, Javier Ruibal…but I never thought of playing
flamenco, either as soloist or to accompany.

“All you have to do
with flamenco is turn the flower inside out to see the
petals”

Has your mother been supportive?
Always. And furthermore, she let me find my own path.
Since 1998 we’ve gone with her as an accompaniment
to her shows, she’s given us light and confidence,
and each one of us has had our chance in the spotlight
in each theater, and she always believed in us. We’re
still developing, but 6 or 7 years ago it was just the
kind of boost we needed, and my mother is a great artist,
never mind the fact that I adore her.

How does anthropology fit
in with all this?
I started studying anthropology as a way of understanding
a little more about flamenco and the gypsy community.
In the beginning I had no intention of becoming a musician.
From the start I was examining everything with a magnifying
glass to see what it was all about, to try see the flip
side that all things have, and as a musician, understand
that music functions in a specific context. Anthropology
helps you understand many things.

Besides Morón and Cuban
music, what other music have you been inspired by? You
can hear a number of influences on the record…
My taste is very eclectic, my only tradition is fusion
itself…my mother Martirio, and Kiko Veneno who is
almost like a relative, a close friend of my father’s,
and I’ve known Raimundo and Rafael since I was
a little boy, so I grew up in a house full of fusion.
I think musical mixtures come about in a very natural
way, that’s the virtue of music, everything fits
in the mouth of the guitar, all that surrounds you,
even though there’s no calculated effort to mix
things. The music of Andalusia is a music with many
different traditions swimming around and almost throughout
the whole twentieth century the only instrument that
was used in Morón to make music, was the guitar,
the flamenco guitar, most specifically Diego del Gastor’s.

“I think the concept
of ‘purity’ may be harmful for music”

Flamenco is already a music very rich in outside influences…from
Moroccan music, Hindu, Mediterranean, Cuban…so all
you have to do with flamenco is turn the flower inside
out to see the petals. If we start relating different
things, we see they are already related, as Lorca said,
we have to dig deep until we reach the common subsoil.
That’s what folklore is about, you arrive at a
truly common ground. In this case, you have the magical
and historical confluence in a very localized spot which
in actual fact has always been “de la frontera”.
So where something very local is happening, you have
something of the world, it’s universal…just
as the reverse may happen, something intended to be
universal may come out too localized. That’s what
the name of the group means: where are the frontiers
of flamenco? how far can we go before we have to say
‘this is flamenco’ and ‘this is not’
? Some things are more evident, but there’s a
quicksand area there which is where all the controversy
arises about purism and non-purism, and I don’t
think that’s been studied on a musical or historic
level. It’s been studied in a literary way…with
words, but these categories don’t apply.

Do
you have a well-defined idea of what you consider flamenco?
Flamenco is the music of Andalusia, it’s our folklore,
even if it’s done somewhere else in the world
– I saw a fabulous flamenco group in Cuba, but
it’s still Andalusian folklore, that’s it’s
identity, the verses reflect the temperament of the
people. Its not a question of flamenco or not flamenco,
there’s much common ground. I think the concept
of “purity” may be harmful for music in
the sense that we mustn’t overstep certain boundaries,
but no one knows what those boundaries are because there’s
no sheet music, no written laws, we respect the cultural
elements, the compás, the melody, the harmony
and the content of the lyrics as well.

Paco de Amparo

“The problem is in
copying, whether it’s something old or something
completely modern, without adding your own personality”

Is this a flamenco record?
In actual fact, I never even thought about it, it’s
not important…I mean, I think it’s flamenco
for today’s world, for this time and place, just
as fifty years ago they were doing flamenco for that
setting. In many ways I feel the people in this group
are doing something closer to pure than many others
who just do cante, and maybe they’re singing a
verse about someone who lived seventy years ago, I mean,
if you haven’t had those same experiences as Loco
Mateo…that was his capacity to transmit his feelings,
and frankly, I think it’s a little weird, because
it has nothing to do with the actual person who’s
singing, if you’re not looking into your heart,
you can’t transmit. I think the problem is in
copying, whether it’s something old or something
completely modern, without adding your own personality,
without giving the sense of who you are and reflecting
your own life. For me, Moron is very real and immediate,
I feel it deeply, but I wasn’t born there and
I’ve got no family ties, but I feel it just as
many others have who adopted its form of expression.
What’s necessary is to have lived it in all its
dimension, not by just copying a few falsetas.

What music do you listen to
at home?
Everything. [He points to a large rack of CDs]…here
I’ve got Cuba, this part is Columbia, then Venezuela,
over here is flamenco, on the other side is rock and
roll, then jazz, then ethnic music, from India, Morocco,
Brazil…I’ve got lots of music and very varied,
everything I can get my hands on.

Was Camarón important
for you?
Of course…he was the Pope.

How were you received in Cuba?
Very very well, really surprising. They couldn’t
imagine you could play that music like that, we really
worked hard on it, and with lots of respect.

What’s on the professional
horizon?
We’ve got a show in Barcelona, and then there’s
a very important tour of Holland in October.

Do you play any other instruments
besides the guitar and the tres?
Yes, with this thing of using the tres in flamenco,
I’ve got a pretty complete arsenal, all string
instruments and percussion, and I try them out, little
by little, here at home, experimenting, but I like to
preserve the flamenco essence. One thing we didn’t
do on the record was take updated versions of Diego’s
falsetas from the nephews, but rather we took the material
as is, from the source and kept the structural elements,
I think it’s a very flamenco record, we’re
playing flamenco forms and we develop a Cuban idiom
within bulerías. I believe that if Diego del
Gastor were alive, he’d be listening to it night
and day.

Text:
Estela Zatania

Photos: Rafael Manjavacas

More information:

Interview
with Don Pohren