Francisco Contreras is known artistically as Niño de Elche and above all he is for being one of the most groundbreaking artists and performers on the Spanish music scene. Qualified as a radical cantaor, the musician from Elche (37 years old) has just published the album Flamenco. Mauselo de celebración, amor y muerte (Sony), in whose thirteen songs he immerses himself in the forms and discourses of the most classic and, at the same time, most radical flamenco.
Produced by Raül Fernández Refree, it has collaborations with Angélica Liddell or the planetary Rosalía. The show-concert will arrive at the Barcelona Auditorium on January 14, with a group made up of Pere Martínez and Jorge Peralta (singing and clapping), Juan Berlanga and Edu Martínez (dance).
Raul Cantizano and Mariano Campallo (play), plus Niño himself on vocals.
The album cover, you with a key, is quite a declaration of principles.
It is a cover based on the iconic photo of Antonio Mairena, in which he appeared with the Golden Key of Cante. It's an image that refers not only to the construction of the cantaor posturally speaking, but also aesthetically, how he dresses, his gesture, everything. In addition, it is an image that is in all the flamenco clubs.
With this record he closes as a series of works with a thematic axis.
I couldn't tell you if it's a series or not, but what is clear is that it's a consequence of previous work. There are some splinters from the Anthology of heterodox flamenco singing. There are things along these lines, and that is why the album is dedicated to Pedro G. Romero, and also to Jota, from Los Planetas, because there is also something of my strength process on this album.
It has been produced by Refree, and has four collaborations by Rosalía, Angélica Liddell, Rocío Molina and Yeray Cortés. Have you followed any criteria?
Refree is the producer who could best understand this type of work. Without a doubt and beyond the friendship that unites us because we have been working together for a long time. More than explaining to him, he has tried to share. As for the collaborations, both Rosalía and Angélica Liddell and Rocío Molina are closely related to the theme and discourse of the album. And specifically there is Rosalía because this is about the death of flamenco and they have also not stopped criticizing her for killing flamenco. And her work as a musician is honorable and honorable.
You have said that the album includes the forms and discourses of the most radical flamenco. What do you understand by that concept?
Well, it's an elemental, essential flamenco. A flamenco that flees from the spectacular; in that his is the small, the humble in the sound, and not so much in the radicality of it. The radical thing would be the rougher guitars, and I don't like that. I prefer precious guitars that connect more with minimalist music, with that artistic confession that flamenco is for me and that always combines contrasts. For me that is radical flamenco.
But the great conceptual motif of the record stems from the idea of the death of flamenco.
Indeed, it is. It is directly related to those ashes that flamenco has scattered around and that under them there are things that have been abandoned, but it is because no one has submerged themselves in those ashes, because until now it has been understood that this is useless. And from there, we have erected a mausoleum with celebratory songs that speak of love and death. Before we talked about the image of the key on the cover of the album, and it is that it is the key that opens again the chest of the dead, where those ashes are. So I set myself up as that person who opens it. He also has this sense that every cantaor has a golden key inside.
What sound entity does this record have in relation to your works closer in time?
It's a record made by an ex-flamenco in which he works from the flamenco guitar. It will be the one that will give aesthetic shape and structure to the themes. And then it is a record that has a production, a production that is complex because he has tried to strip it of the technical, you know? And this is good, work much more in the preparation of the room as they say. And on the other hand there is not a very exacerbated post-production so as not to take away the warmth or closeness of that confection.
Is that nudity synonymous with authenticity?
Well, I don't know if it's more authentic. But yes, she is more naked, she is more stripped. I like to use that term, I think she is more stripped down. In this sense, the songs are recorded live because we understand that this spirit in relation to flamenco is very valuable, not only in relation to electronic music.
Listening to him sing in this Mausoleum... sometimes gives the impression that perhaps this record has forced him to overexert himself.
Throughout the album there is a demand of how to understand the voices. For me it is important that each job requires me to travel to other territories, and therefore suspend your convictions. Because the voice allows us to move and with it change my voice, change my record, go to other places, to other textures. And all of this is me and in a certain sense everything is at the service of the same saying, discourse.
You have always been highly criticized by purists. What exactly do they stand for?
Well, they don't even know it, because you post something and when you see how they defend it, you realize that they don't know what they're talking about. It is like when a communist defends communism without having read Marx and Engels. But, on the other hand, debating with them is inspiring to know how far the delirium goes.
