For the people of Seville and for fans in general, Antonio Smash He was above all a rocker, an icon of the Seville underground and psychedelia that carved its way through the shadows of the Franco regime to bring new sounds to Andalusian music. However, this multi-instrumentalist, who has just left us, also possessed an undeniable flamenco side that goes beyond... The Garrotín, the most famous piece by their quintessential group, Smash, of which he was the founder and drummer.
Despite being from The Tardon, a neighborhood of art and artists, it cannot be said that he felt close to the jondo when, at a young age, he began to dabble in music with groups of friends. flamenco It was the music of their parents, and teenage rebellion led them precisely to reject it and seek the antithesis of those roots sounds. Conversely, in the 60s, American military bases began to spread blues and rock rhythms and melodies that would captivate masses of young people across the country.
However, it was only a matter of time before that legacy manifested itself in some way in the work of those new generations. Smash, the group that Antonio formed in the emblematic year of '68 with Julio Matito, Gualberto García y Henrik Michel, was going to become impregnated with transm southern mixed with those other aromas, those of the incandescent grass they smoked in the Lotus Roundabout of the Maria Luisa Park, the same one that gave its title to one of his albums.
"This multi-instrumentalist, who has just left us, had an undeniable flamenco side that went beyond 'El Garrotín', the best-known piece by his quintessential group, Smash, of which he was the founder and drummer."
Topics like The Garrotín, Tangos by Ketama o Neither memory nor forgetting They emerged, to a large extent, thanks to Smash's close ties with the old Seville StablesLocated on Santo Domingo de la Calzada street in Seville. That establishment was run by Paco Lirawhich served equally as a flour storehouse, a wood store, and even a forge – right where Smash used to rehearse, as if it were a Nibelung metaphor – welcomed with equal hospitality those long-haired lads as the cream of the crop of flamenco, centered around the so-called group Sevilla 1At the same time that Smash was rehearsing, those die-hard fans who listened to a voice every afternoon, whether it was that of Pastora Pavón, Pepe Pinto, Perrate, Juan Talega o Antonio Mairena.
During those ups and downs, Antonio struck up a friendship with a young man Manuel Molina, who had just begun to speak with Clothes, the young and talented daughter of John Montoya y La NegraAmong the tables at La Cuadra, made from recycled Singer sewing machines, there was also a young man named Ricardo Pachon, who wanted to be an accompanying guitarist and ended up being the Midas of flamenco production, or the visual artist Stretched Totowho was also a guitar enthusiast, and whose palette was undoubtedly very inspiring for the aesthetics of Smash.
Antonio not only made fundamental contributions to what would become the phenomenon of Lole and Manuelbut would be an exceptional witness to the revolution that new names like Pata Negra, the brothers' band amador, in which he played drums, bass, and was an active composer for works such as Border Blues (1987) Pata Negra, direct (1989) and Inspiration and madness (1990). Other fruitful collaborations were those he carried out with Kiko VenomManuel Molina or Alba Molina.
Having started so young allowed him to bridge generations and encompass a vast segment of Seville's contemporary music scene. His background as a musician with a solid foundation in music theory, his perfectionism, and his insatiable curiosity fostered a long solo career that he maintained until the very end; he even performed at a tribute concert for his colleague on Friday, January 2nd. Pedro García MauricioLately, he had also been taking great care of himself, and every day he would get up at seven in the morning to take a long walk from his house to the center of Seville and back. On this cold morning on the eve of Three Kings Day, their footsteps and instruments have fallen silent, leaving behind an enormous silence, an enormous void.
