“The public knows how to say 'olé' on time. It's amazing”: New York integrates flamenco into its musical landscape

The public that today consumes flamenco in New York and, by extension, in other large cities in the United States, has been progressively abandoning in the last 20 years “the perception of flamenco as an exotic dance with young women in polka dot dresses dancing with men.” tall and handsome who tend to kick their feet and look fiercely

macho

.”

It is held with a broad smile by music entrepreneur Robert Browning, founder of the World Music Institute, who is now 83 years old and whose retirement in 2011 was featured prominently in the cultural pages of

The New York Times.

“At 70 he retires, after having had a crucial influence on the musical life of New York,” the newspaper read.

The artistic ascendancy of this pope of American culture has also been key in Miguel Marín, from Córdoba from the small municipality of Carcabuey, and both co-founders of the Flamenco Festival Nueva York, an event that celebrates its 23rd anniversary in this edition with the long shadow of Paco de He looked like an honoree on the tenth anniversary of his death and the feeling, in the absence of official data, that after all these years of work "the public is now much more sophisticated, more diverse and more knowledgeable about the art of flamenco, its evolution." , and accepts the most risky proposals,” adds Browning.

“I met Miguel in the mid-90s, when I was a student in New York.

He wanted to show contemporary Spanish dance here.

My response was: 'Why do we need to bring modern dance to New York, if we already have the best modern dance companies in the world here: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown...?

You are from Andalusia, the ancestral homeland of flamenco.

“Why not bring avant-garde flamenco to New York?”, this legendary producer recalls during a talk with EL PAÍS.

This is how the Flamenco Festival was born, whose pedagogical work is today one of its hallmarks, which it designs with loving craftsman Miguel Marín in each of its editions.

A moment from the performance in New York by the National Ballet of Spain.

Among this year's proposals are those that this week face the final stretch of the most important flamenco event in the United States, and that has invited EL PAÍS to New York: the recital of the heterodox Sevillian guitarist Raúl Cantizano, next Sunday at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, and the Gran Gala Flamenca directed by the no less avant-garde Granada dancer Manuel Liñán (Saturday and Sunday at the New York City Center).

The singer María José Llergo and the singer Israel Fernández will be other of the last appearances of this edition of the Festival that Tomatito inaugurated last March 1 at the emblematic Town Hall, the same stage where maestro Sabicas presented the first guitar recital in 1959 flamenco history in the United States.

“It made so much sense to do it there that a miracle occurred: in the middle of the show the audience interrupted the concert and stood up to applaud loudly.

It was something we had never seen before,” Marín recalls.

Indeed, the training of New York spectators is already of such precision in this art in which everything counts that, as the Sevillian singer Gabriel de la Tomasa assured last Wednesday, “the audience knows how to say 'olé' on time.

"It has been amazing, because for that you have to know," he was surprised at the end of a delicious recital held in the room of the Hispanic Society of America that houses the 14 enormous canvases that the founder of the institution, Sir Archer Milton Huttington, commissioned from him. to his friend Joaquín Sorolla in the first decade of the 20th century.

De la Tomasa, wrapped in a sepulchral silence, majestically performed an arrow in front of the

Seville painting.

Los nazarenos

(1914), in a performance that was very much a

performance,

and that confirms “the collaborative challenge”, as Miguel Marín assures, of this festival that this year has been spread across more than a dozen spaces between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Specifically, at number 131 55th Street, in the heart of Midtown, the New York City Center has become the great temple for flamenco dance since “Miguel arrived with his proposals more than 20 years ago,” explains Stanford Makishi. , theater director.

Makishi assures that this edition of the Flamenco Festival is being “the largest so far,” with more than a million dollars raised in ticket sales, as confirmed by the programmer, “so we can say with certainty that there is a growing audience.” in the U.S".

The City Center provides the opportunity for the viewer to experience “this centuries-old art form, but we also propose innovative artists such as Jesús Carmona, Rocío Molina, Manuel Liñán and Olga Pericet.

This year I have been moved by the tremendously enthusiastic response to the National Ballet of Spain, which has performed to a full house in our 2,250-seat theater, and in each of its four performances,” adds the American programmer.

In total, 9,000 spectators have been able to see

Invocation

, a show in which the company's director, the Sevillian Rubén Olmo, recovers, thirty years later, a choreography by the late Mario Maya, a reference in the world of Spanish dance and a pioneer in flamenco dance, “one of the most daring and innovative researchers,” as Olmo describes it.

Rehearsal for the Flamenco Gala at the New York Flamenco Festival.

Anna Olivella©2024

Among the Invocation

audience

last Saturday was the saxophonist Tim Ries, who has collaborated with the Rolling Stones and is a composer, producer and arranger for many other Anglo-Saxon bands.

“It was like understanding that God exists,” he said enthusiastically to Miguel Marín at the dressing room door at the end of the performance.

This typically Andalusian exaggeration as a way of expressing his joy comes to Ries from his “unconditional love” for this music, he commented with EL PAÍS.

But also, of his generosity with the new generations, as demonstrated the next day with the female flamenco group Las Migas - Latin Grammy for Best Flamenco Album in 2022 -, which performed at Joe's Pub in the Village in New York before an audience that applauded. thunderously with clapping in time, “how is it done in Seville!” Ries was surprised.

The saxophonist performed as a guest artist at the

Libre

concert , where Las Migas were able to mix the orthodox tangos of Repompa with their fascinating blend of flamenco and Mediterranean styles that incorporates influences from all over the world, from country to urban music.

“We as a festival have been accompanying the evolution that has really occurred in flamenco.

We have incorporated the reality and drive of current creation in each program and, if we had avant-garde proposals, we have always gone to look for a theater in which the avant-garde had a place to accommodate that proposal.

20 years ago there were theaters for which flamenco was not relevant, however, today it is,” acknowledges Marín, who adds: “Our mission as a festival is to be able to offer that broad vision, not to stop at what the public initially requested. , the most ethnic and racial bets.

That would have been the easiest way, but it was skewing a reality that is different.”

Marín has also realized “that more than ever this year we already have a loyal audience, with full theaters for artists who do not yet have an important career outside of Spain, such as Inma la Carbonera, accompanied by a female guitarist, who is Antonia Jiménez, and without dancing, which was always the most in demand.”

This is the same case for singer Israel Fernández, who makes his debut as a soloist at the Flamenco Festival, but who knows the drive of New York after having accompanied dancer Sara Baras on previous occasions as a member of her company.

“There is a different musical culture here,” he from Toledo acknowledges.

In this first major concert, Fernández wants to live up to that excellence – “a blessing for flamenco,” he emphasizes – and this Thursday (today for the reader) he will premiere at the Kaufman Music Center the adaptation of some rondeñas recorded by Paco de Lucía,

Bells toll

, to which she has put lyrics.

“What excitement but what responsibility!” He acknowledges.

With the programming already closed for the 2025 and 2026 editions, when the Flamenco Festival celebrates a quarter of a century in New York, this event has been extended to cities such as Boston, Los Angeles and Miami, “a city that was the natural continuation” , up to a total of 112 geographical locations in these 23 years of history and 161 performing spaces around the world.

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