Let's start with an anecdote. Every true flamenco guitar enthusiast knows... Ángel Luis Cañete Díaz, which accompanies some chapters of Rite and geography of cante a Diego el Perote, Manolillo el Herraor, Ángel de Álora y Antonio de Canillas, at the former headquarters of the Peña Juan BrevaBut above all, for having had one of the best guitar collections in Spain and, more importantly, for giving the most enthusiastic "oles" flamencos of the world. Uncle Angel's father was a big fan who liked to go to festivals and peñaYes, and also organize private parties with flamencoIt's to his liking. Once he bought a record at a flea market by Owl And upon hearing it, he tore it to pieces because of how bad he thought the singer was. His ears were used to Fernanda de Utrera, Chocolate, Antonio Calzones and Amina, among others, with whom they shared a good friendship.
In that outburst of Mr. Rafael Cañete This revealed a very common attitude among people: presentism. In its second meaning, the DRAE (Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy) defines this word as: "Projection of present values onto the past." It is very common when studying History to see—or judge—events that occurred long ago through the lens of the present. In the flamenco Nothing very different happens. Many fans were greatly disappointed to hear the voice of Cagancho de Triana in a wax cylinder. They were waiting—we were waiting—for a voice like that of Juan Talega At least. It wasn't so; his singing style and echoes weren't much different from those of other singers who recorded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Macaca, Diana, Mr. Revuelta, Pena, Garrido de Jerez, Niño de Triana…and the Little Owl.
But did all those who recorded on wax cylinders sound the same? It seems not: the recordings on that medium that we know of by Chacón are something else entirely. I don't think I'm far off the mark if I say that, as far as sound recordings are concerned, the cante Modern flamenco begins with the singing technique of Don Antonio Chacón. They learned from him. Manuel Torres y The Girl with the Combs, whose early recordings capture a style of singing much more in keeping with current tastes than that of the performers mentioned earlier (I mustn't forget the never well-regarded Goat Boy(which would leave it at an intermediate stage). Regarding the trio of Chacón, Torres and Pastora a large part of cante of the 20th century, with artists as diverse as Vallejo, Tomás Pavón, Marchena, Caracol, Mairena, Valderrama, Chocolate, Fosforito, Agujetas, Morente and Carmen Linares.
In these three articles we will try to avoid presentism and focus on the eight cantes of the Little Owl that has recently discovered Carlos Martin Ballester in the Kurt Schindler collection of popular music at the CSIC, which was in the library of the eminent philologist Tomás Navarro TomásThey were recorded on December 13, 1934, on 30 cm diameter aluminum discs, of the type known as "instant recording" discs. These discs indicate that the singer is 65 years old, which would suggest that his birth year must have been 1869, two years different from the date provided. BohorquezThe guitarist accompanying him is Florencio Campillo60 years old. It is very likely that these are the last ones cantes that the Sevillian recorded, who died in 1937.
Regarding the cleaning and digitization process of the Kurt Schindler collection carried out by Carlos Martín Ballester, I refer to this linkAt the end of it, in the "More information" section, we find more details in "A musicological and discographic approach to the Kurt Schindler collection," written by Zaida Hernandez-Urculo and Martín Ballester.
Before we delve into the analysis of the eight canteIt is appropriate to say something about the Little Owl, albeit very briefly. As Manuel Bohórquez tells us, Antonio de Padua Pozo Rodríguez He was born in Seville on July 24, 1871 and died in Torrent (Valencia) in 1937. At only seven years old he was already making a living with the cante And at nine he had already recorded his voice on primitive tin plates, a system that predated wax cylinders. At twelve, while an apprentice cutler, he began singing in the Silverio's CoffeeIn an interview published on May 23, 1936 in the Madrid weekly Stamp (rescued by David Perez Merinero on your blog Papers flamencos), recounts that while still a young lad he went on tour with Silverio Franconetti through Malaga, Cordoba and Ronda.
Therefore, until 1889, the year Silverio died, there was ample time and opportunity for young Antonio—let's not forget he was a very precocious child—to absorb a large part of the brilliant flamenco singer's repertoire. In that interview—conducted during his decline, while he was working as a waiter in a café—he was asked... José Simón Valdivieso When asked what he sings best, he replies:
The stage name by which he was known is due to Moreno de RondaThere were flamenco singers at Silverio's Café The Canary of Álora and the Little Canaryand he saw that a young boy who sang at night also worked there, so he called him "Little Owl" (The Toledo EchoJune 19, 1912).
Antonio Pozo had a very active artistic life and earned a lot of money performing at private parties and also thanks to the large number of recordings he made. cante He toured Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Cuba, France, and Germany, but his star began to fade in the second decade of the 20th century. He spent all his earnings and ended his days selling lottery tickets, working as a waiter, and singing in the streets, as seen in a report rescued by Bohórquez and published in April 1936 by the Republican newspaper Now, from Madrid.
Undoubtedly, what interests us most about El Mochuelo today is his extensive recorded work, which includes tinplate recordings—now lost—wax cylinders, slate plates, and, as we already know, aluminum discs. Regarding the cylinders and plates, the singer mentions in some interviews that he recorded thousands (it's well known that cylinders had to be recorded one by one, or at least a few in a single take). It's almost certain that we will never be able to gather all of the Sevillian's recorded work, but what has been located so far—which is a very extensive discography—is enough to show us that he was an encyclopedic singer, covering almost the entire spectrum of flamenco. cante flamenco of the period and many folk songs from other regions of Spain, all performed with an old-fashioned singing style, far removed from current tastes. Therefore, the main interest of El Mochuelo lies in the vast repertoire he possessed, which gives us a complete idea of what the cante in the 19th century. On more than one occasion I have said that Antonio Pozo is the Rosetta Stone of cante flamencoIn fact, almost every time we access a new recording of his, it holds some surprise for us, as it helps us to get to know him better. cante of the 19th century. And the eight canteThe ones we are going to see are no exception.
Highland
Mochuelo – Serrana.
The two-sided record indicates that he performs "Serrana and martinetes." Indeed, we hear a serrana sung like this:
I raised my flock
to a lamb (ter),
I raised my flock
I raised my flock
to a cord… oh
to a lamb (ter),
from caressing her so much (twice)
it became fie… oh
she turned into a wild beast.
And the women (bis)
the more they caress each other (bis)
They become wild beasts (bis).
She had already recorded the lyrics before, and they appear in the famous book by Demophilus Collection cantes flamencoPublished in 1881, it is the eighth serrana in Silverio's repertoire, with only a slight variation in the penultimate verse ("from so much caressing them"). Thanks to the repetition of verses, the seven lines that make up the seguidilla amount to twenty sung tercets. This way of magnifying canteThe fact that they must have been simpler in their origin was a common tendency for Silverio. It is worth noting the very particular way he breaks up the words "cordera" (lamb) and "fiera" (beast). El Mochuelo does the same in another recording (with the words "celos" (jealousy) and "ajeno" (not his own)) with the lyrics:
The lion in his cave
rage of jealousy
in seeing his lioness
in someone else's arms.
Oh, you poor thing,
also jealousy and anger
the little animal.
Demófilo lists it as number 3 of Silverio's serranas, but without the final three verses, which metrically correspond to the refrain or coda and, musically, to the serrana's male verse. It should be remembered that María's seguiriya Borrico The one who usually finishes off the mountain woman is not exactly the "male", as is often said.
Jabera and Rondeña of the Black Man
Mochuelo – Jabera and rondeña del Negro.
On the other side of the record, one might expect to find some pile drivers. Not so; there are two. canteThey are of a very different nature. The Little Owl sings:
What is there
the laments of a captive (bis)
They cannot reach Spain
because the sea is in between, oh
and they drown in the water,
Oh, the laments of a captive.
From the tree that supports it,
when a branch falls
of the tree that supports it
the wind plays with her
and finally the branch is lost,
Finally, the branch is lost.
The first verse corresponds to a jabera, cante which Antonio Pozo recorded on previous occasions with these other lyrics:
They can send me
to serve God and the king
but let go of your love
That's not what the law requires.
It is not the jabera that is usually sung nowadays, which is the one recorded by Victoriano Gamoneda Child of Malaga (also known for Cogetrenes) On Anthology of the Cante Flamenco of 1954. That variant was known in Malaga as «cante "of María Tacón," a woman about whom we know little, probably from the Trinidad neighborhood (Tacón's orchard was located there, as we already mentioned in an article dedicated to La Trini).
However, the jabera we hear from Mochuelo is different. Its temperament is very similar to that of the caña, a style he recorded. Rafael Romero in the aforementioned anthology, specifically with the lyrics "They can order me around." Likewise, the melody of this opening line is almost identical to that of the broken verse that begins the Canario's malagueña ("Punishment," "Spies").
It should also be noted that the verse sung by Mochuelo on the aluminum record is usually performed at the end of a polo, as a soleá apolá. Let us remember that Estebanez Calderon lie the jabera in his General Assembly of the Knights and Ladies of Triana and the taking of the habit in the order of a certain blonde dancer (a celebration that could have been held on the eve of Saint Anne's Day – that is, July 25, Saint James' Day – in 1841) and which appears in his Andalusian scenes (1847). Speaking of the young woman Dolores, a gypsy dancer and singer from Cádiz, says (I respect the original punctuation and accentuation):
"Among the things he sang, two of them were especially praised. There was once a malagueña in the style of the Jabera (...). How many had heard the Jabera They all unanimously gave her the victory in this and said and assured that what the gypsy girl sang was not the malagueña of that famous singer, but something new with a different intonation, a different fall and greater difficulty, and that by the name of the one who sang it with such grace, it could be called DoloraThe couplet began with a very fast and stylish Malaga-style start, then retreating and coming to give way to the endings of the Polo Tobalo, with great depth and strength of chest, concluding with another rise to the first tone: it was something that always captivated the audience when they heard it.
Silverio likely reworked that jabera that Estébanez heard and passed it on to Mochuelo, in whose configuration malagueñas, polos, and cañas are naturally intertwined. Demófilo doesn't include the lyrics, but they appear like this in the Popular songbook by Lafuente and Alcántara, which was published in 1865 (p. 452, volume II):
The sighs of a captive
They cannot reach Spain,
that there's a sea in between
and they must sink in the water.
El cante The Mochuelo has recorded what happens to the jabera in other previous recordings with that letter and also with these others:
It was a small amount and it ended.
the love I had for you
It was little and it ended.
It was a castle of feathers
and the wind carried it away.
And the trunk feels the pain,
when a branch dies
and the trunk feels the pain,
the roots weep blood,
The flower is dressed in mourning.
On Mochuelo's records, this style is titled "rondeña del Negro." And not only on the records. Rafael Marín, on page 72 of his Guitar MethodIn 1902, he wrote: “The ‘jabera’ has its male counterpart, that is, its complement, which the intelligent call ‘Rondeñas del Negro’.” This melody took root in Lucena and had to form a cante new. Thus, the first half of the cante The Mochuelo's interpretation coincides with what we know today as the Lucena fandango of Rute Street or of Rafael Rivas ("De la santa Cariá", "Que mi mare se muriera"). He discusses this in more detail. Rafael Chaves placeholder image in the entry "Singing rondeñas (II)" of his blog Adventurers of the flamenco.
In the recording we are discussing, El Mochuelo sings the jabera without rhythm, in the way that malagueñas are performed today, before entering with the abandolao touch for the second verse. canteThis represents a novelty compared to other recordings where the Sevillian singer impressed with combining these two styles. This very current approach – a free-flowing malagueña combined with abandolao – should be taken up by current generations of flamenco singers who could look to Antonio Pozo as a source from which to draw inspiration and expand their repertoire. ♦
→ To be continued…
