Camarón de la Isla

Soleá, seguiriya, fandangos, tangos, bambera, zambras, sevillanas, tientos are just a few of flamenco's palos (that is, its subgenres). Each defined by its own rhythmic patterns, moods, tones and inclinations, these palos make traditional Andalusian music one of the richest and most multifaceted musical traditions in the world. A fundamental heritage for a huge portion of modern Iberian music and art more broadly.

In an interview from the era of “La leyenda del espacio” (the 2007 album whose title and cover art draw on Camarón de la Isla's “La leyenda del tiempo”), the leader of Los Planetas, Jota (born Juan Ramón Rodríguez Cervilla), declared that Spanish rock as a whole is a flamenco palo. Certainly a hyperbole, but one that captures well the cultural impact this gypsy music has had on the local scene.

In truth, “La leyenda del tiempo” wasn't actually the first marriage of flamenco and pop-rock, as is often claimed. There had, for instance, already existed for years a musical movement known as Andalusian rock, which produced popular bands such as Triana and Medina Azahara: however, these were rock musicians approaching flamenco from the outside, looking to draw inspiration from it.

Within the flamenco world itself, meanwhile, numerous crossovers were already well known: the flamenco pop of singers like Rosa Morena and Lola Flores, complete with an electric rhythm section, or nuevo flamenco, which attempted the most varied hybridizations, from jazz, with saxophonist Pedro Iturralde, to rock, with guitarist Sabicas.

What made “La leyenda del tiempo” so controversial was its radicalism: some tracks pushed toward a frenzied, tightly-wound rock sound, while elsewhere the album ventured into a sprawling, psychedelic form of folk, in both cases making extensive use of studio effects. What's more, it mattered that the record wasn't released by just anyone, but by a figure regarded as a hero by flamenco's most orthodox followers.

The Camarón who entered the studio in 1979 for the “La leyenda del tiempo” sessions was no longer the boy — seventh of eight children in a Roma family from Cádiz — who some fifteen years earlier had elbowed his way through the crowded flamenco scene to become one of its most beloved and celebrated performers. His solo records, as well as the four he co-signed with the iconic guitarist Paco de Lucía, together with a tumultuous life that wasn't short on problems (heroin and cocaine were part of the daily routine), had turned him into a living legend — one who, in embarking on such a risky venture, had everything to lose.

Camarón knew perfectly well that a record so brazenly opening up a heritage like flamenco — regarded by the most conservative gitanos as an intimate, sacred inheritance — to the most experimental rock and jazz would ruffle plenty of feathers. But stubborn, almost cocky and irreverent, he didn't let it bother him.

"When I record an album I don't think about what people will say. I know that at first they won't understand, it takes a bit of time," he later stated. An impressive stubbornness and self-assurance, without which we would never have gotten to hear one of the most influential Spanish records of all time.

Even many industry insiders were skeptical, so much so that several of Camarón's long-time collaborators (including de Lucía himself) chose not to take part in the recordings, or did so while opting to stay out of the credits. It's almost redundant to point out that, instead, most of those who did play on the record and appeared in those "disgraceful" credits went down in the genre's history and reaped enormous benefits for their own careers.

That's the case with guitarists Tomatito and Raimundo Amador, percussionist Tito Duarte, members of the Andalusian rock group Alameda, bassist Manolo Rosa, and the Marinelli brothers, Manolo and Rafael, both keyboardists — but above all Kiko Veneno and producer Ricardo Pachón, who wrote most of the album's songs.

Pachón was at that moment the most innovative producer in flamenco: he had recently helmed “Nuevo día” (1975), the debut album by the duo Lole y Manuel, and the self-titled record by Veneno (1977), an Andalusian rock band with a particularly fierce sound. It was precisely through that latter experience that he came into contact with their frontman, singer-songwriter Kiko Veneno, whom he later brought on board for “La leyenda del tiempo”.

The album wastes no time, and although it holds on to moments of more classic flamenco — as early as the second, anguished track (“Romance del amargo”, where traditional handclapping and gitano guitar underpin Camarón's tormented vocal) — it opens under the sign of rupture: respectful but clear, in some ways downright fierce.

Built, like much of the album, around the precious verses of Federico García Lorca, the title track opens the proceedings, powerfully encapsulating and overturning the record's core idea. Flamenco handclaps chase after jazz rhythms, Rosa's clean, snapping bass winds through the gaps left by Tomatito's whirling guitar. Already a constant presence behind the verses, the Moog lets loose in a wonderfully fluid solo on the outro, diving headfirst into progressive rock. Especially when it opens up into the famous refrain, Camarón's flamenco vocal clings to these new textures with total confidence, perfectly at ease, as if born into them.

“La Tarara” casts a similarly successful spell. Nostalgic and visceral, Camarón scatters fragments of Andalusian memory across flamenco guitars and shimmering Moog flourishes. After a piano interlude, the song swerves forcefully toward rock, first with a Latin-rock electric guitar solo and then with the inevitable synthesizer flight.

“Volando voy” is a rumba, dense with percussion and airy choruses, which over time has become one of flamenco's most covered standards: among the artists who have taken it on are stars of the caliber of Manu Chao, the Gipsy Kings (who built their entire career on the template it provided), the refined Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler, and its own author, Kiko Veneno, who had happily gifted it to Camarón but later made sure everyone knew who its father was (even if his own interpretation couldn't compete with the torrential power of the original).

Veneno also composed the music for “Viejo mundo”, set to verses by Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet who lived around 1100 during the rule of the Seljuk Turks and who was known throughout the Muslim world (including southern Spain, still under Arab rule at the time).

García Lorca, a pivotal figure behind the album's inspiration, is instead the dedicatee of “Homenaje a Federico”, a joyful, romantic bulerías that echoes other words by the poet murdered by Franco's forces, as if formally cementing his centrality to twentieth-century Spanish popular culture. Together with “Romance del amargo” and “Tangos de la sultana” (a tango rich with sultry guitars, perfect for evoking the sensual atmosphere typical of that particular palo), these are the album's most significant moments of classic flamenco.

Finally, the album makes a transcontinental journey all the way to Asia with “Nana del caballo grande”, a nana (a flamenco form with a gentle rhythm, also known as a lullaby, not far removed from a nursery rhyme) in which Camarón's anguished lament stands out against an organ drone and the Indian-tinged sounds of the sitar, played by Gualberto García of the Andalusian rock band Smash.

It's the fitting conclusion to an album that managed to shock its target audience, ending up selling just a few thousand copies. The passing of time, though, as sometimes happens, has done the artist justice: today at least the title track, “Volando voy” and “Nana del caballo grande” are classics familiar to most of the Spanish public, thanks to a deep, widespread penetration into local culture.

The visionary quality of those recordings is evident, just think of the interplay between bass and drums on the title track, which with its rhythmic fractures seems to anticipate electronic drum'n'bass, or on "La Tarara", which could serve as the backbone for an instrumental hip-hop track (by, say, Dj Shadow) two or three decades later.

Understandable, all things considered, that such inventions weren't easy to digest back in 1979.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

19/07/2020