The cante festival in Puertollano - winter snows

December 1, 2008
Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving at a huge feast hosted by Sir Brook Zern (knighted for his contribution to Spanish culture for his work on behalf of flamenco) and his wife Kirsten. Most of the crowd were english-speakers, so it was a most pleasant event.

The next day we drove up to Puertollano, a mining town North of Cordoba and not a place I would have thought about as a center of flamenco enthusiasm. But I was wrong about that. The folks from the Peña Fosforito put on an absolutely first-class flamenco festival and we were treated like royalty. We drove up there through a light rain that by Saturday had turned to snow although it didn't stick to the ground. It was seriously cold and long-johns were necessary the whole time. The coast is much warmer.

We checked into our hotel and went to the theater to see the finalists in the singing contests make their last offering to the judges. The judges did a good job and selected terrific talent. After that, we had a show by celebrity singer Carmen Linares. It's funny, she was at the same hotel as us and was in the lobby with us at check-in, but I didn't recognise her. As she went up the elevator, it suddenly dawned on me who she was. Andrea said, "You didn't know?" Duhhhh!

The next day, the peña organized a lunch with gastronomic delights from the La Mancha region. And Spanish television was all over us. We were videoed and interviewed until we were thoroughly tired of television people. It came out the next day on the biggest TV channel here TVE that is nationwide. They got most of the facts wrong and cut out most of the good stuff we recorded, but we got about three minutes of our obligatory 15 minutes of fame. The real high point of the lunch was that all the professional artists were there as well as the winners of the concurso. While we were waiting for food (but not waiting for drink), we started to do some flamenco. I ended up accompanying the winner of the concurso, el Rubio de Pruna and then played for Antonio Carrion. Antonio is arguably the best guitarist for accompaniment around, having played as the regular guitarist for Chocolate when he was alive as well as all the other famous singers. But I didn't know that Antonio is also a good singer. So when I was playing for him I was realizing that the best accompanist in Spain was counting on me to provide the right chord changes in the right places. I think that I did and Antonio gave us a copy of his new album of cante. Also there were Antonio Moya the guitarist from Utrera and Jose de la Tomasa, who was one of the judges (just to drop a few more names). I sat next to a famous flamencologo, Felix Grande, never realizing who he was until afterwards. That probably kept me from being inhibited.

I was very nervous and uncomfortable at the sound check. The guitar wouldn't stay in tune and I just felt off. But the show went much better. After surviving that, we got to relax and enjoy the rest of the show. For me, the highlight was fellow American dancer Lakshmi "La Chimi" who in my opinion is one of the best dancers working today, no matter what her nationality. I predict that within three years, she will be one of the top dancers here. You can't take your eyes off her and she is really moving. At one point my mind was saying "that is a crass commercial attempt to play on our emotions" while the rest of me was sobbing! That doesn't happen everyday. After the show, the peña put on yet another banquet with catered tapas, champagne, etc. A delightful event, beautifully done. Here is the video of my little contribution (cut off at 10 minutes):