I cross the Barrio Obrero (Workers' Quarter) of Huelva, that British legacy that precedes the center of the capital and divides the working-class neighborhoods of El Matadero, Tartessos, El Polvorín, and Huerta Mena. To my left, I see the land where the Quitasueños stage will be set up again in a few months, a space flamenco and the seed of the Festival Flamenco from Huelva. A few meters away is Roque Barcia Street, where I have arranged to reopen this window to the cante with two artists I admire and love: Antonio Belmonte y Manuel Gómez BlancoAntonio is primarily a painter and sculptor, born in Huelva in 1952, with a long, prolific, profound, and renowned professional career. Manuel is a designer and dressmaker. A versatile artist, he was born in 1961 in Valencia del Mombuey (Badajoz).
Antonio greets me with Silvia Pérez Cruz's voice playing on his Alexa. What a wonderful prelude to a conversation that promises to be filled with sensitivity and culture, like the Catalan artist's powerful voice and the work and thought of Blanco and Belmonte.
How is art born in Belmonte?
AB: I've always felt free. I've always been who I am. I had wonderful parents who never labeled me. I was and am curious. Because of my profession, my outlook on life, and my constant search, I've had to fly to other places. I've liked helping people and easing their sadness. I've had that energy. I had internalized a world, my own, that had to be art. My desire was to capture the rainbow. I've looked at life through different eyes. Life has given it to me. It came with me. In everything—choices, art—I see a proposal.
Wow. That can't be more flamencoI have not had that gift.
AB: Perhaps, Jesus, life gave it to you through the flamenco as an emotional experience. It's sad to see people whose lives don't allow them the opportunity to escape from routine. That routine is broken through art, through your qualities, or through your hobby. These sensibilities prevent you from having a completely alienated life.
"It's sad to see people whose lives don't allow them the opportunity to escape from their routine. That routine is broken through art, through your qualities, or through your passion. These sensibilities prevent you from having a completely alienated life."
What is your vision of the flamenco?
AB: My first approaches to flamenco I experienced them in my childhood, in the 50s and early 60s. A repertoire of songs was heard on the radio in great abundance. cantes flamencoand coplas. I remember Antonio Mairena, Manolo Caracol, Paquera de Jerez…, not because I liked them, but because my father sang very well palos Like the siguiriya, intense and emotional, the tientos, slow and melancholic, or the martinete, ancient and profound. This kaleidoscope of emotions overwhelmed me with sadness. When my father stopped singing due to illness and death, I refused to listen to him anymore. flamencoI remember that as a child it was also a revelation for me. the bell ringers From Niña de la Puebla. I was captivated by her sensitivity, her voice, her simplicity, and that song Christmas Eve is coming, Christmas Eve is going, from Ishmael Peña –I know that's not it flamenco– are a melting pot of emotions and existential reflections that overwhelm a child facing the reality of life: that the awareness of our existence is fleeting and we vanish with the ringing of a bell. I had the same feeling when I first read Among the dead, by James Joyce. This whole emotional universe has deeply permeated my pictorial iconography: time and the fickleness of life. Everything changes. Also, keep in mind that when I was 17, I moved to Madrid and cut myself off from my roots. flamenco It made me nostalgic for my homeland. Years later, when social change took place, I was out of Andalusia and immersed in the move, with all that it meant. Besides, I am a being of loneliness and the flamenco He needs shared moments. I am a very atypical Andalusian.
Antonio, I have the feeling that flamenco, intellectuals and artists have not granted it the halo of culturality and modernity that has been given to music such as jazz or blues. Am I right?
AB: Well, look, I have to tell you [smiles] that I don't like jazz or blues, I really enjoy classical music. I think it's a matter of taste, but it's true that we Spaniards have underestimated our culture. Before listening to Toronjo, we were interested in Brecht. We were more interested in the Paris school than in our costumbrista painting. It took time for a view of authenticity and respect for our art to germinate. However, from the outside, our culture has been viewed favorably. They've had to come and shake us up from abroad and tell us that we have potential. flamenco It's a culture in itself. Just look at how flamenco music is all the rage in art-house films these days. That's why I was talking to you earlier about Joyce's verses, or the compositions of Hesse or Kafka. Their lyrics have the same power as short, popular flamenco lyrics.
«The source of the jondo It's in the heart, in the soul. The source is where you drink from. Art comes from within. To develop, you have to have. Art has to be clothed in humility, although the deepest art comes from something, and not everyone has that.
Where is modernity? Who do you prefer?
AB: A lot of brainless people enter that magma of modernity. That's the problem. I consider myself a fundamentally existentialist and romantic painter, but I'm not open to using, for example, artificial intelligence. The creator doesn't create something new; that comes from within, and that's why the artisanal side evolves. If not, there's no evolution, no creation. I don't dissect between classic and modern. Either it reaches me or it doesn't. I listen to Rocío Márquez or Arcángel and I find them interesting, but they also reach me. Camarón, Toronjo, or I'm enthusiastic about La Marelu or La Pelúa, that wonderful arrabalera! Everything has a key that can unlock your emotions from your feelings. In dance, I like the classic, although also the nods to the avant-garde, but always from a classical perspective. That chair scene by Ana Morales or the documentary twist of That Silverio by Rafael Estévez. But I'm dying with a Carmen Amaya or what we know of La Macarrona. Do you remember, Jesús, that regression of Rafaela Carrasco transforming into La Macarrona, from the contemporary to the cafés cantantes? It infuriates me that they seek more scandal and want to cloak themselves in intellectuality. And even if the critic comes to tell me this or that, I don't believe itFurthermore, cultural channels and media outlets, television in particular, follow sensationalist and frivolous patterns. Dynamic and special formats should be promoted that disseminate our culture, history, and roots in a more etymological way.
MGB: Profiles have blurred. Society wants grandiloquence. The 70s and 80s were years of rupture, but some very good things were achieved; today, grandiloquence is desired from the smallest detail. Furthermore, the classic is banished from the circuits, simply for being classic, and everything has to coexist: the classic and the transgressive.
Can there be some pessimism in the vision we have of art today, after spending thirty or forty years listening to or enjoying it? cante, dance, playing or art in general?
MGB: Even the good things don't always please you. You get used to the shock. It's like your eyesight: you think you see well, and when you put on your glasses, you realize you couldn't see anything, or that your vision was distorted.
In particular, Antonio, what attracts you to the flamenco.
AB: Although I'm not a faithful follower, I do recognize the value of its singers. Their voices, their strength, feelings, expressiveness, and something I demand of every artist: honesty in their work. I'm captivated by the voice of women, who, with a prophetic sibyl-like cry, denounce the repression and injustices to which they've been subjected. Legions of fighting women have been marginalized and underestimated by commercial circles. They have exercised their power in a more anonymous way and, in most cases, have gone unrecognized. Great performers are the voices of La Marelu, La Susi, La Pelúa, Esperanza Fernández, Alicia Gil, Perlita de Huelva, and Antoñita Peñuela, among others.
"It's true that we Spaniards have underestimated our culture. Before listening to Toronjo, we were interested in Brecht. We were more interested in the Paris School than in our genre painting. It took time for a sense of authenticity and respect for our art to develop. From outside, our culture has been viewed favorably. They had to come and shake us up from abroad and tell us we have potential."
However, you have been close to it flamenco.
AB: Yes. We created the design and costume company BlancoyBelmonteWe had the pleasure of working on the Ballet's costume designs Flamenco of Andalusia, when it was directed by Rafaela Carrasco and, later, by Rafael Estévez. He also directed the art and photography of the singer Alicia Gil. In addition, Manuel is a lover of flamenco and makes me know the depth of the cante in voices like Marina Heredia, Mayte Martín, Rocío Márquez, Arcángel, La Macanita, Poveda and, especially, the strength and feeling of Camarón and Paco de Lucía. Another approach to this world was the painting of J. Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla and Zuloaga, through works such as The Jaleo, The Dance flamenco by Ruiz Guerrero y The dance.
Antonio, the nebula in your painting reminds me of Inés Bacán singing siguiriya. And vice versa.
AB: It's what I was telling you before about the sibyls. She acts like a priestess. What you're telling me is probably due to a state of catharsis. When she vomits her voice, it's another cord she's using: that of authenticity. I notice when I'm not in that presence. The cord is internal, and that authenticity works with an unknown mechanism. The other is an artisanal mechanism; it's technique. You can sing very well, paint very well, but it's just that: technique. The angel is something else. Most people want to work with it from a craft perspective and then impress, and that doesn't happen because it doesn't come from within.
Add something, Manolo, you're very quiet.
MGB: [Smiles. Manolo is flamenco [to the core] There are artists who, when they get going, start with technique, but because they know that sooner or later that angel will appear. They are touched by the gift. The music public is diverse, that of flamenco es flamenco, as a rule, and does not accept ojanas. I remember when I first became interested in flamencoIt was one night in a cave in Granada, I accompanied Frasco, a Nasrid gallery owner. The ugliest woman in the world (we paused for a moment to laugh), but how she sang and danced! I never knew who she was, but she changed my life because I was poisoned by this art. Nights with Alicia Gil and Lito, or with Rafaela Carrasco, after their performances. They split, they break. It's something else. Or Manuela Carrasco, dance wherever she dances, nothing is needed. They are moments where your interior becomes art.
Manuel, where is the source of it? jondo?
MGB: In the heart, in the soul. The source is where you drink from. Art comes from within. To develop, you have to have. Art has to be clothed in humility, although the deepest art comes from something, and not everyone has that.
AB: You're born with it. Just like you're born handsome, ugly, with brown, blue, or green eyes.
We remain silent for a moment. I stand up and contemplate the paintings and sculptures surrounding me. Manuel and Antonio present me with new designs and works they are working on. I look out the window we opened today; the night has darkened the Belmonte-colored skies that tomorrow will once again grant us. I walk back through the Reina Victoria neighborhood—the one known as the working-class neighborhood—and in my mind, the sound of cante Through the siguiriya of that flamenco sibyl, Inés Bacán. There's something that the night hasn't obscured: the sentiment of an aficionado and his real or imaginary vision that makes him feel, that makes him admire and feel alive, in part or in large part, thanks to those who express their artistic truth and honesty. Whether they're called Bacán, Blanco, and/or Belmonte. ♦
→ See here previous installments of the series A window to the cante, by Jesus Naranjo.
