Twenty years ago, twenty. A monument. Thousands of people, I don't know how many, many. Artists like Enrique Morente, Paco del Gastor, Pepa de Utrera, Fosforito, Gracia Montes, Estrella Morente, Marifé de Triana, Pepa de Benito, María Jiménez, Juana and Martín Revuelo, Miguel Funi, the Duchess of Alba... Two sisters, Fernanda and Bernarda, united forever in bronze in the Ximénez Sandoval Square From Utrera. Who wasn't choked with emotion that afternoon when the air thickened with the sound of the unmistakable, plaintive voice of Fernanda Jiménez from Utrera, filling the square!
There had been tributes and other charitable events to fund the monument to the two living monuments, a project organized by the veteran teacher Utrera's Curro. So much pain expressed through a human voice, and so human, a lament almost unbearable. Bernarda was present that day, deeply and visibly moved, but Fernanda, one of the most revered and exalted singers in the history of cante, was in no condition to attend the monument's inauguration. He would die fourteen months later in August 2006, leaving the fans without a soleá.
What was it that Fernanda had, that radiated such depth with the unmistakable timbre of her voice? People speak of the mystery of the insufficiency of her delivery—the struggle and barely being able to achieve that sound—an original flamenco personality, brutally authentic always.
For a few years I used to visit Incarnation la Sallago in Sanlúcar, another great singer. She adored Fernanda and sang her songs, but she always emphasized that what she sang in soleá were not cantes of Joaniqui or Serneta nor from anyone, but soleá from Fernanda de Utrera.
"I remember them walking the streets of Utrera, talking to people about everyday things. The Utrera sisters had unique and absolutely individual voices; they didn't even resemble each other. Housewives without glamour. Favorite Daughters of Utrera and the province of Seville."
Bernarda was a different color. “Party girl,” people say, but there was little merriment in her life. cante: The joy in me has stopped, I have no joy anymore, my heart is dead (No joy in my life, no happiness at all) It was a common verse in Bernarda that she used to sing in bulerías, doing more damage than many in siguiriya.
“The girls of Utrera,” a frivolous label for two ladies who carry the light that illuminates what others only see as darkness. They avoided the histrionic because serenity, barely controlled pain, served them better. If Fernanda possessed the soleá, her sister gave us her bulerías, both short and song-like, her tangos or the cantes of grandfather Pinini. A catalogue of the cantenobles managed by These two messengers of art jondo who found beauty in pain.
I remember them in the streets of Utrera, chatting with people about everyday things. The sisters of Utrera had unique and utterly personal voices—not even alike between themselves. Housewives with no glamour. Favorite Daughters of Utrera and of the province of Seville, Silver Medal of Andalusia in 1994, and Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts, among countless other honors.
Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera not only sang flamenco, they embodied it. Deep voices in communication that left an eternal echo in the memory of cante jondo. Traditional singing as family inheritance, a chronicle of life in the flamenco countryside of the lower Guadalquivir.
