INVITAD@ – SUSANNE ZELLINGER – Locked down in her native Austria where in normal times she would be traveling the world from festival tot festival, flamenco journalist Susanne Zellinger calls our attention to a poetical and comforting co-production from Berlin with artists from the whole flamenco globe. To be enjoyed at home.
In times like these: Con fin A MIENTO
In times like these it is not always easy. It is cold and it is dark. It is inexplicable and yet here. It is not friendly and it holds us down. It wants to divide us, but it will not succeed.
Is that the message of this wonderful project? Yes, of course. I remember a model shoot many years ago, when the photographer said to me: “Look proud!” – and that is actually the second message. So there is one.
Perhaps it is simply a loud call for freedom, respect and friendship under the flowing mantle of art. If one city is flamenco, then it is definitely Berlin. No other capital city in Europe has so many active people, so many schools and Spanish bars, so many musicians and singers, unforgettable is the festival at Pfefferberg and the traces of the ANDA, who loved to get lost in Berlin.
In the beginning there was of course the idea. The inspiration. The human being. The person who brings it all together in this case is Antonio Piñera Pumuki from Murcia, percussionist, sound engineer, producer and indispensable part of the Berlin scene, who, when it became clear that the sky above the artists would turn dark, recorded a groove in his studio, electronically and por Bulería.
Then he asked bassist Richard Müller to lay a track over it and then he sent it to all the Flamenc@s in the city he knew and asked them to record a minute of their music to the rhythm. Each one for himself. In the studio or in the living room, your choice.
“Perhaps it is simply a loud call for freedom, respect and friendship under the flowing mantle of art.”
The last to arrive were the dancers, a Pataíta was required and the space was expanded, a park, a square, a street and an underground station, none of them knew where it would end up, the Pataíta, because that was again in the hands and musical intuition of Antonio Piñera.
Because now he set to work and put the puzzle together, next to and on top of each other. A guitar and a violin, a piano and a flute, a cante from Jerez and one from La Puebla de Cazalla, a dance in front of a wall with graffiti, one in front of a moving train and in the middle the white angel of peace with Bata de Cola.
The result is a 12 minute bulería with everyone who wanted to be there, a piece full of joie de vivre, feeling and tenderness. A piece of urban art and a sign that flamenco is part of their habitat, a hymn to life and to the flamenco from Berlin.
Text: Susanne Zellinger
Susanne Zellinger is flamenco journalist and editor-in-chief of Flamenco Divino.
Flamencoagenda invites flamenco makers en flamenco lovers to share their flamenco stories. Do you have a story to share? Send your idea to info@flamencoagenda.nl and maybe you’ll become an Invitad@ as well.