Federico García Lorca, portrayed in 1919, aged 20. Photo12/Universal Images Group (Getty Images)
The genius of Federico García Lorca is so great that, more than a century later, it still resonates in popular culture with the force of rough seas. It doesn't run out. On the contrary, it does not stop growing. There is the genius of the poet, author of Poema del cante jondo, Romancero gitano or Poeta en Nueva York. And the genius of the playwright, author of Bodas de sangre, Yerma or La casa de Bernarda Alba. However, little is usually said about the genius of the musician and folklorist. Or, at least, he does not stand out so much before his unbeatable and influential lyrical and theatrical work.
It is worth remembering: before being a poet, Lorca was a musician. "First and foremost I'm a musician," he said in an interview. "I'm the crazy one of the songs," he said in another. His musical training came before any other, but, above all, his passion for music palpitated at an early age and marked his entire life, including his conception of poetry. The musicality of Lorca's lyrics was his hallmark, as was already seen in some of his first books such as First Songs and Songs. They include short compositions that respond in many cases to poetic structures of popular song. The elements of folk music run through his poetry until they find their maximum splendor in Romancero gitano and Poema del cante jondo.
Lorca was always grateful to one of his great teachers: Antonio Segura. This pianist from Granada was his piano teacher when the Lorca family moved from Fuente Vaqueros to Granada. According to the poet, Segura was the one who introduced him to "folk science". Lorca, who deeply admired Beethoven, had extraordinary qualities for music, namely a magnificent ear and a wonderful skill at the piano. Besides, thanks to Segura and his own instinct, he loved from a very young age all the folklore that came to him from the wet nurses who were part of his house and told stories and sang lullabies and romances. From all this, Lorca came a musical being. Wonderfully musical. To the point that in the Residencia de Estudiantes de Madrid he captivated everyone when he played the piano, even more than with his poems.
Federico García Lorca at the piano, image of the book 'Los objetos de Federico García Lorca', by Rosario Moreno-Torres.EDICIONES UPC
To say Lorca is, therefore, also to say music. It is something that these days can be seen in a great play, Federico García, directed and performed by Pep Tosar at the Pavón Theater in Madrid. In it, it is shown that the best way to explain Lorca is using narrative elements such as flamenco guitar, singing or dancing. He is the poet of rhythm and also the goblin who illuminates music. The thread of musical admirers, who have pulled Lorca for their creations, is very long and seems to have no end: Camarón, Paco de Lucía, Enrique Morente, Lole and Manuel, Carlos Cano, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Ben Sidran, Ana Belén, Lagartija Nick, Los Planetas... And, with everything, it is not about seeing that unbreakable relationship between Lorca and music, but about highlighting his musical universe, his contribution to Spanish popular music.
Lorca also had in Manuel de Falla another teacher and friend. Her encounter with him in 1920 marked him. He became fascinated with Falla and learned more about cante jondo and Andalusian folklore. With him he celebrated the Cante Jondo Contest in Granada, a crusade that had the virtue of elevating cante jondo and, in general, all Andalusian popular music, to an indisputable cultural category, far from clichés. This contest is historic and of still incalculable value for flamenco. In the case of Falla, the main promoter of the contest, the influence of cante jondo began from El amor brujo (1914-1915) and continued in his later works, such as the Concerto, the Bética Fantasy (1919) or El retablo de Maese Pedro (1923). For the Competition, Falla published a pamphlet with his theory of cante jondo in which he affirmed that primitivism and orientalism were cultural currents of lo jondo and recognized their influence on contemporary composers from other nations such as Russia (Rimsky-Korsakov, Aleksandr Borodin, Mili Balakirev and Mikhail Glinka) or France, with Claude Debussy as standard-bearer.
Lorca took good note of Falla's wisdom and took his theories further in three fantastic lectures: Arquitectura del cante jondo, Canciones de cuna españolas and Juego y teoría del duende. There is a booklet where these three lectures on music are collected called Donde se hiela el tiempo (Continta me tienes editorial), which shows us how the Granada artist was a great connoisseur of Andalusian music, which elevates it by developing a radically poetic prose to talk about duende and folklore. In fact, he defined the goblin better than anyone. And as the poet Jorge Guillén pointed out: "The memory of Lorca is the richest treasure of Andalusian popular song."
Lorca musical theorist and memory, but also musician with halo, who was in charge of many of the musical selections that were interpreted in his productions with the university theater group La Barraca. In fact, when he was in New York in 1929, he cajoled everyone when he played the piano at Harlem parties. His fascination with "the black" also came from the glorious era of jazz and for finding human links and artistic impulses among marginalized, that is, between gypsies and blacks. Even in the case of the poet this marginalization also resided in his homosexual condition. In New York, Lorca went to the Cotton Club and understood that jazz had a lot to do with flamenco. The goblin and the swing were linked. You either have it or you don't have it and you can't explain it.
Lorca with La Argentinita and Rafael Alberti.
Perhaps the most important work as a result of so much passion and musical knowledge was placed in the series of Spanish Popular Songs. In this recording, published in 1931 on the label La Voz de su Amo together with the bailaora and cantaora Encarnación López Júlvez, La Argentinita, he started from different examples harmonized by Granada himself, in some cases with the help of composers friends of his. These recordings, which include Anda jaleo, Nana de Sevilla or En el café de Chinitas, convey a glorious taste of the street, suburbs and night fire cafes.
If the fascists had not shot him in 1936, it would have been fabulous to know how far he could have gone with his musical talent and passion. Luckily for art, the name of Federico García Lorca does not stop shining in our days. He is a universal poet and playwright. And we must add: universal musician.