Karime Amaya does not beat around the bush. Paying tribute to her great-aunt Carmen Amaya is difficult and it would never occur to her to want to look like the Captain. “I think she is a genius and geniuses are unrepeatable, they are born once and they stay there,” she says, sitting in a room in the Barcelona office of the SGAE.
This Mexican by birth who has been residing in Barcelona for 13 years – without losing her accent – participates in the tribute that the Society of Authors has organized for its 125th anniversary. A tribute to flamenco passion that will be celebrated on Gypsy People's Day, April 9, in the Sala Paral·lel 62, coinciding with the 60 years of the choreographic legacy of the legendary Somorrostro artist.
For the occasion, the Ciutat Flamenco Company has been created, which will open the festivities with the show Rambla Below. They will screen Los Tarantos (1963) by Rovira-Beleta, with Carmen Amaya as the protagonist, and Karime will appear accompanied by her guitarist brother, Tati, and the singers Miguel de la Tolea and Joaquín Gómez El Duende, in addition to the dancer José Manuel Álvarez, director of the La Capitana de l'Hospitalet school.
“Look, many artists have paid tributes to my aunt, all of course from the heart, and there are people who consider doing her dances, that is, imitating her from her way of understanding dance, but wanting to look like her is the most complicated – Karime continues –. If I wanted to dance The Embrujo del Fandango like her, I would look ridiculous. Carmen was perfect, majestic... so I have to take her to my field. You can pay tribute to her from your own perspective, because mine are other influences and her current dance is very different from Carmen's time. I want to believe that there are natural things about my dancing that come from genetics, but I let it be something natural.”
Just a few days ago, Carmen Amaya's great-niece returned from another great tribute, the one given to Paco de Lucía in New York. “A pass, one of people, one of artists…”. She did not get to know the great guitarist, but she says that “when she went to Mexico, she went to my house. My grandfather [Carmen's sister's husband] was a singer and Paco really liked listening to him sing. And my grandmother was always there to put a plate of food for all these artists who came from Spain. And the same thing when I went to Peru, I also have an aunt in Peru who is another of Carmen's sisters.”
The Americas that Carmen Amaya made – “did you know that the nickname La Capitana was given to her by the United States Army, because she did a show for their benefit?” – also cover Latin America, as much as it shocks gypsy flamenco purists to hear Karime's soft talking. “They are also shocked to hear that Barcelona and Catalonia are very flamenco and, if we start from Carmen, I can tell you a number of singers born here. "I don't know, we don't really want to see it or I don't know what's going on."
Listening to it is reliable proof of the universality of this art. Even more so when she explains that in New York she loved trying something new like dancing a salsa composed by Niño Joséle but sung by Rubén Blades. “That for me was..., apart from the fact that we have been listening to Rubén in my house since I was a child. Because we really liked salsa, not reggaeton, eh?, salsa and Latin music,” she points out, proud that her 17-year-old son didn't come out with reggaeton. “He likes rock from the 60s and 70s, mind you.”
Karime herself has been immersed in black music throughout her life. “Don't think that I only listen to flamenco. I don't speak English but I love D' Angelo, I adore Lauryn Hill, as a child she was obsessed with her Miseducation and she still stirs me up. And Cuban music and bossa nova are also part of my playlist,” she says. The artist is preparing the show Contrapunto for the Alburquerque festival in the United States and she states that “I would love to bring it here.”
The gala on the 9th will continue with Diego Guerrero, who arrives in Barcelona after being nominated for the Latin Grammys but with a more rogue proposal that brings together gypsies from the south of France (or North Catalonia). The Arrels de Gràcia group will close with rumba while at the SGAE headquarters in Catalonia there will be round tables in which Juan Carmona, Josep Mas Kitflus, Pepe (Los Amaya) and the dancer Antonia Santiago la Chana will participate.
