The cordoned off area, in police jargon, means that yellow tape that closes the passage, that excludes the citizen from contact or the vision of something, that prohibits him from setting foot on a territory. On the other hand, 'La zona cordonada' by Raúl Cantizano, with the invaluable collaboration of Los Volubles (brothers Pedro and Benito Jiménez), is an invitation to discover unknown regions through flamenco guitar. Or the “prepared flamenco guitar”, as the subtitle of his show clarifies.
Cantizano debuted on Sunday night in New York, in a venue like Joe's Pub, which was the last concert of the 23rd edition of the Big Apple flamenco festival, and he shattered the mold of any fan who was unaware of his work. .
His alternative proposal was manifested from the first second, when in his tribute to Paco de Lucia, on the tenth anniversary of his death, he broke with everything that has been heard and seen in these two weeks. His tribute consisted of three guitars hung in a staggered manner from which sounds came out through small fans.
From that abstract point it evolved into a more concrete exercise, but not at all conventional in a fusion of guitar, electronic sound, mixing board (“electro flamenco dialogues”) and a constant presence of video montage with images and historical statements (the maestro Sabicas : “the important thing is to play the guitar, not how you play it…”), customary expressions or demonstrations critical of the restrictions of the pandemic or against the war in Gaza and in favor of the ceasefire. And ironic messages about “pure and authentic” flamenco
After describing Joe's Pub as a “holy place, a church,” he clarified that inspired by John Cage and his prepared piano, he raised that eternal debate about how far the flamenco guitar can go. And for him the answer is part of art, which is open-mindedness and freedom.
“It has no limits,” he insisted in his response at the end of the show. “Flamenco usually has a lot of prejudice, because it is very codified. From the outside it seems like a much more improvised thing, but, although it is true that improvisation and the elf and the spark exist, it is also an art that is very codified, depending on who does it, and very limited. “You are always thinking, is this within flamenco or outside?”, he stated.
Trained in blues and rock
“I don't care if what I do is inside or outside. “I have influences and flamenco is a fertile field, so I move forward thinking about why not, suddenly, there is a flamenco guitar ready, like John Cage's piano,” she noted. To play the instrument, in addition to strumming with his hands, he uses sticks, grinders, and springs.
“For example, we had Paco de Lucía, a flamenco guitar combined with jazz or Brazilian bossa nova, with all those influences, and there were classics that came out on top,” he insisted. Among the videos there is one of the genius from Algeciras defending its opening and the crossing of borders.
“I don't want to compare myself with Paco de Lucía, I am aware of what my limitations are. But I also make use and take advantage of the fact that these limitations are a power rather than something that limits me, that prevents me. That's also why a little bit of iconoclasm, of killing the father a little bit. Paco de Lucía sometimes does not allow us to develop as the musicians that we are, with our language and our history. I am looking for that path, because I need it and it is also what comes out to me,” he stressed.
“If you really get up from the reed chair, if you see the guitar as a prosthesis that allows you a form of expression, to make a type of music, and if your influences and musical ranges are broader, then it is a question of whether that prosthesis "It becomes another prosthesis with, for example, ventilators," he added.
“Although the guitar is still flamenco and my way of plucking the strings, improvising or understanding the scales is flamenco, suddenly I am making music that is more New York than Andalusian. Well, not Andalusian, wait, because we are talking about Sabicas who was from Pamplona,” she added.
A student of Fine Arts, he dedicated himself to making sound installations, “noise” as he calls it. He had another great influence when he met the Valencian artist Llorenç Barber, “campaign and bell tower musician,” according to his description.
“I often say that I like to define myself more as a collector of sounds than as a musician, because it seems that as a musician you have to know how to read scores, you have to understand things with overly constructed mathematics, and neither mathematics nor mathematical music bothers me. I'm so interested, I'm a little wilder," he said.
And once he got fully into flamenco, he met Los Volubles more than a decade ago. There have been collaborations with another ground-breaker such as El Niño de Elche, with whom he has participated in the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
In that codified world, based on your definition, of debate about limits, what do your colleagues say to you? “The most traditionalists, if they have a minimum of hearing, then they are interested. If they don't listen to anything other than their navel, then they pass, they simply go to something else, they don't care about me," he said. “There are colleagues who have not come to see me,” he lamented.
His father was not surprised by his music because he already knew of his references, his passion for Hendrix and others. His grandmother is something else. “Come on kid, stop with the gut scratcher, the ‘ranga ranga’ and play something nice,” she said she told him. “I studied to accompany singing and dancing, in fact I still work in a tablao in Seville, in the Casa de la Memoria.”
His show with Los Volubles, that truly uncorded area, is something else, as he made very clear in his show. “I turn on the solenoids and I free myself by improvising,” joked at the conclusion of his debut in Manhattan, this musician who loved rock and blues before becoming flamenco.
