It's Concha Piquer!
I'm her in the play In a Strange Land.
What land?
New York: she arrived at the age of 14 at the hands of maestro Penella, who was in love with her: he was her tailor... but she sang so well that she made her Broadway debut at the age of 15.
La Piquer talks in the play with Rafael de León.
Because he wrote lyrics for her, author of legendary couplets: Green eyes, Tattoo, And yet I love you...
What is special about the couplet?
It has roots and is the soundtrack of our grandparents, whom I revere for their hard lives: I fight for the copla to survive.
And you sing it wonderfully.
Now I gather couplets on the album De la Piquer a la Navarro, some in their style, others in mine, modernized.
What is the couplet of couplets?
Green eyes !
"Eyes green like basil, like green wheat...",
...“and the green, the lemon green. Green eyes, green with the shine of a blade that have been nailed into my heart”... The prostitute falls in love with the client with green eyes: he, on horseback; she, "support her in the doorway of the mancebía"...
Immortal.
Rafael de León wrote that letter in 1931, on a napkin from the Oriente hotel...
In Barcelona?
He was chatting with the singer Miguel de Molina and the poet Federico García Lorca, who commented: "You are copying my 'green, I want you green'!" To which Rafael replied: "The color green was not invented by you."
Did Federico write for Piquer?
No, but the playwright Juan Carlos Rubio raises an eventual meeting between De León, la Piquer... and García Lorca.
And what is the conclusion?
That you are much more than your political ideas: it is grotesque that ideologies push people away. That the beautiful thing is to cultivate coexistence and friendship, on principle.
That works for 1936 and for today.
That's why I sing songs with passion that belong to all Spaniards.
Since when do you sing?
My father, a fisherman from Malaga, sang, my uncles sang, and my mother... I wanted to be a singer from a very young age, fascinated by Alaska and by Martirio.
What has been the best received compliment?
“I have seen my grandmother! I almost went up to hug her," Concha Piquer's granddaughter told me.
You can be satisfied!
I have been very insecure and I have mistreated myself by telling myself that I am not up to it.
Have you gotten over that nonsense yet?
I'm already counterphobic: I confront fears, I attack them like a Taurus that I am. "If he had been a bull, he would have given good bullfights!" De la Piquer is said in the play.
What do you strengthen yourself with?
The Enneagram and HemiSync help me, a technique with binaural pulses that harmonize my brain waves, with my therapist Daniel Chumillas.
And is he no longer underestimated?
Not anymore, neither because of my physique nor because of having been cheated on by a partner of mine, which greatly undermined my self-esteem.
What was your first win?
I won the Málaga Singing Contest, I was the second woman in its history to win it: the first was a cousin of my father, María Navarro, 25 years earlier. Then Alone came...
Alone, her most popular song!
It was in the year 2005, and even memes circulate with the song: "Alone with my sorrow"... I connected well with many people.
What sets you apart as a singer?
My particular way of singing saetero, half from Granada: extremely difficult to sing! You take a breath and sing while apnea: a triple somersault, you know? With my gargantuas, I bring creativity to everything I sing.
Does your voice educate a lot?
I have now started to do it: age does not forgive and I want to avoid damaging my voice. And it works for me: I sing ten songs in each function of these already two hundred that I have with En tierra extraña...
What was Concha Piquer like? You've gotten inside of it...
Born poor in Valencia, she was very resilient, with character. She was the lover of the teacher Penella, later the father of Magdalena, who would be the wife of Ramón Ruiz Alonso...
Oops, the miserable captor, in the Granada of 1936, by Federico García Lorca!
...And father of actresses Terele Pávez, Emma Penella and Elisa Montés.
Choose: Concha Piquer or Rocío Jurado?
I am a piquerista and I am a jurist! Ah, look, here I have what Lorca said about La Piquer...
Let's see? She did not know this testimony ...
It is a hand program of a performance in 1946, and it reads like this: “Conchita Piquer, a feverish poem of the cold body of air”.
