XV BIENAL DE FLAMENCO. ‘DE DÓNDE VENIMOS, A DÓNDE VAMOS’ ARCÁNGEL

XV BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA

‘DE DÓNDE VENIMOS, A DÓNDE VAMOS’
Arcángel
Program (PDF)
October 4th, 2008. 8:30pm. Teatro Lope de Vega

SPECIAL BIENAL DE FLAMENCO DE SEVILLA 2008

Text: Estela Zatania
Photos: © Archivo Bienal de Flamenco, Luis Castilla

Cante: Arcángel. Guitar: Miguel Ángel Cortés, Daniel Méndez. Palmas: José Jiménez ’Bobote’, Rafael García ‘Eléctrico’, José Suárez ‘Torombo’, Antonio y Manuel Montes Saavedra ‘los Mellis’. Percussion: Agustín Diassera.

Sitting in the Lope de Vega theater, waiting for the beginning of Arcángel’s show, one phrase in the handbill caught my attention: “the new approach to flamenco”.  It’s no secret that flamenco is undergoing dramatic changes, but dance, guitar and cante do not have parallel paths, nor are they evolving at the same rate.  Of the three elements, it’s the vocals, the ‘cante’, that’s having the most difficult birth.  In part because Camarón de la Isla brought radical changes that were so sweeping, that nearly forty years after the initial impact, we’re still digesting the effects. But also because cante is at the epicenter of flamenco, and any fine-tuning, if it’s to be efficient and long-lasting, must be done with patience and knowledge.

The “new approach to flamenco”, as far as cante, has several champions in this first decade of the new millennium, and Huelva singer Arcángel is one of the most representative.  On the one hand, it’s the return to a lyrical, adorned style which highlights musicality, and on the other, the goods are presented in a sophisticated and carefully elaborated production.

At his press conference the day before, the singer explained his intention to depict the history of flamenco, chronologically and geographically, right up to the present time, and open doors to future evolution (the title of the work means “Where we’re coming from, and where we’re going”) – an ambitious agenda for a show of less than one hour and forty minutes.  If that sweeping intent didn’t quite come together, at least you could sense a half-way point in the show, after which we were led into a world of samplers, audiovisuals and other effects, making you feel you were at a World’s Fair pavilion.  Until that point, we were served a recital of standard cante, the kind young people say belongs in a “museum”.

In actual fact, Arcángel is quite a good singer.  His clean, sweet, swift voice, perfectly suited to a style of cante that is more or less pre-Mairena, is now in fashion, although the admirable guitar accompaniment of Miguel Ángel Cortés and Daniel Méndez is light-years more advanced than in that earlier time.  There are moments when the overly-adorned cante is on the verge of hyperglucemia, but the singer’s sensitivity and good flamenco sense come to the rescue time and again.  Arcángel was smart enough to surround himself with substantial back-up from the Tres Mil flamenco neighborhood: Torombo, Bobote and Eléctrico, dressed in suit and tie, serve as anchor to make sure everything is resolved in proper flamenco fashion.

An elegant tribute to the recently deceased Mario Maya took the form of tangos de Granada with the image of the much-admired dancer projected onto the backdrop.  A typical fiesta circle, without music or amplification, although it revealed insecure compás now and again, demonstrated Arcángel’s desire to please the most traditional flamenco fans.

The brilliant alegrías cantiñas was one of the high points of the show.  What Arcángel lacks in spontaneity, he makes up for with meticulously rehearsed and executed arrangements.  It’s a kind of pact with the devil – the artistic freedom he so vigorously demands, is enjoyed in the rehearsal studio; on stage he is the prisoner of his own arrangements.

And speaking of demands, he uses some fandangos to protest the concept of “purity” in flamenco – “¿How dare they tell me the old ways are good…?” – and similar lines.  It comes off as an inappropriate adolescent tantrum….as if Manuel Agujetas were to sing verses protesting the “new approach to flamenco”.

The show seems to come to an end after trillas with an overbearing background drone, and it’s then you realize the singer hasn’t yet offered a proper round of fandangos.  But when the audience demands an encore, Arcángel feigns surprise and moves to the front edge of the stage to sing the cantes he knows so well.