Spain has always had a deficit of R&D, but also of recognition for research work. It also happens in the world of culture, where the most innovative proposals do not find a path of commercial settlement or media development. Raúl Rodríguez knows well what this lack is about. Anthropologist and musician, Rodríguez is a true sound explorer since he studied music to understand human nature. What he himself qualifies as “anthropomusic”. He has been “in the van” for 30 years making his anthropomusic, a lifetime that has led him to be an outlaw in a very particular artistic trench.
Raúl Rodríguez plays this Saturday, January 22, in the Galileo room in Madrid. In another possible world, it should be a more demanded concert, with more public and critical attention, and not a minority performance where you almost have to cross your fingers so that the listeners respond well to the attendance of the appointment. Raúl will play accompanied by La Lupe, as he calls his Loop Station, where he records live percussion. “Without any conflict or resistance, I can use the most modern technology to travel to the past. Put sounds together again in the present. The idea is that a man can only perform a collective inspired sound. Create new songs. And not just revisiting a popular repertoire”, he comments. Or as he says: “Go back to the future”. And, for this, he also starts from the expressiveness of his own instrument, created by him:the flamenco tres, a 19th century pear-shaped guitar, and only three eighth notes, which helps him mix the Cuban tres and the flamenco guitar.
The last time I saw Raúl was, precisely, in the Galileo room at the concert by the Chilean Manuel García in Madrid last September. He went out to play with Manuel García and afterwards I was chatting in the street with him and his mother, the singer Martirio. Once again, I felt closely Raúl's artistic race, which runs in his family and responds to his innate desire to learn and create new sounds. "To the demands of my house," he now says in conversation for this article. With her, her mother, she began in 1998 on the fabulous album
Flor de piel
, also with the participation of Javier Colina and Paco de Amparo. Later, another great work arrived:
Much heart
. They were very seminal records of the ability to revisit tradition with new eyes. They even predate
Black tears
by Diego El Cigala and Bebo Valdés.
“We have devoted ourselves a lot to revising the classical repertoire without abusing past memory”, confesses this sound agitator who, at times, believes that the musicians of his generation, belonging like him to the new Andalusian school of the seventies, have “warmed up bench for a long time."
They have lacked visibility and greater recognition.
"Because between memory and commercial work, there is always an intermediate space for creativity," he says.
But he feels crazy pride for being in "the first division" of that school: "I have worked with the great swords of this country: Kiko Veneno, Santiago Auserón, Javier Rubial, my own mother...".
The list is much more extensive.
He has also worked, already out of school, with Jackson Browne, Jonathan Wilson, Ben Harper, Jon Russell...
Right now, Raúl is involved in the recording of
La Razón Eléctrica
, an album that closes the trilogy that began with
Razón de Son
and continued with
La Raíz Eléctrica.
. "Let's say that I did the thesis, then the antithesis and now the synthesis", he explains to talk about what will be a book album, like the previous ones, which compiles new ideas and closes his musical anthropology proposal. At Saturday's concert, he will advance songs from this finale of the trilogy. A brooch that has been nourished by "very strong trips" around half the planet in which he applied a work model: first, residences in the chosen places with the native musicians and, later, he played with them in concerts and recordings. “The result has been very beautiful on a human, artistic and thought level. It is something very powerful on a human and even physical level. Because you create a very real relationship with the musicians. Playing live is almost practically making love. It is to do it without meat,although you are capable of dying for the other and the other for you in the artistic relationship created”.
Raúl Rodríguez (left) and Malian musician Habib Koité during the recording of 'The Song Summit' project, in Haiti.
In this way, his exploration has taken him to Mali with Toumani Diabaté, Habib Koité and the students of the Bamako Conservatory.
In Equatorial Guinea with Alex Ikot.
In Veracruz, Mexico, with the people of Mono Blanco, Son de Madera, Sonex and Caña Dulce and Caña Brava and to meet the researcher Antonio García de León, creator of the “Caribbean Afro-Andalusian” concept.
In Madagascar with Rajery (the “King of the Valiha”, a local instrument).
And in Senegal with Sirifo Kouyaté.
Big words.
“It has overwhelmed me. Much more than I thought. It has been very chilling to explore Andalusian music open to the 21st century”, he confesses. “Until the 20th century, Andalusian music was seen as quite local, but now it is seen that there is a 500-year journey of comings and goings. We are all connoisseurs of the tradition becoming aware of that. A journey of Caribbean and African influences. They all belong to a common magma, to a stew that has been cooked and, then, the dishes have been distributed in restaurants in different countries”. A stew that, according to this great musical adventurer, should serve to feed "the idea of making a new folklore". Because, he says, we are “in need of new compositions”. Or of sounds not so anchored to the past and seek to establish new rhythms and new patterns with a humanistic purpose.“Music that concerns us all. May it help us to know that we can coexist among the different ones in an equal way”.