Javier Herrero.
Madrid, December 13 (EFE).- A few years before the world of flamenco was revolutionized by groups like Veneno or albums like “La Legend of Time” (1978), Lole and Manuel created an album entitled “Nuevo día” (1975), which already helped bring the genre to the forefront of music.
“It made an impression. I always say that Camarón sang traditional flamenco and then ‘The Legend’, but that we are the pioneers,” claims Lole Montoya, fifty percent of this historic duo, 50 years after the release of their debut.
The celebration of this anniversary takes the artist this Sunday to a performance at the Miradas Flamenkas festival in Madrid and to an interview with EFE in which she recalls how they made this leap possible, which, in the death throes of the dictatorship, combined flamenco with foreign rhythms such as “folk”, “blues” or psychedelia.
“We were very open people. We liked to listen to a Beatles song, as was the case at the parties where Janis Joplin also played, and we danced while holding on, as we did on the radio to Chacha María to Manuel de Falla,” he remembers.
Before becoming an artist, Lole was born Dolores Montoya (Seville, 1954). She remembers that she was only singing in the shower when she first met Manuel Molina, who later also became her romantic partner and father of her daughter, singer Alba Molina.
“First of all, we were neighbors. He was very close to my parents and always stood at the window. I went to work on San Bernardo street in Madrid, where Merche Esmeralda and Manolo Sanlúcar were, and that’s where I started dancing and singing. Manuel played the guitar where his father took him, and that happened until one day he asked me: ‘Look, I’ll teach you a song,'” he says of those beginnings.
There “Nuevo día” took shape: “Las bulerías de la luna”, “A story for my child”… Later, when they went out together and their parents “knew”, came the title song of the album, “Nuevo día”, entitled “White butterfly fell in love with a lily”. “He explained it to me and I said to him: ‘Well, I don’t know how to do it,’” comments the artist honestly.
Actually, I knew. “This is, like ‘Everything is colored’, all a slow bulería very por soleá, that was my way of measuring it and we agreed on that. I was dancing and before that the person who was dancing was very connected to the percussion. At my house we were very Andalusian, my mother’s family sang gypsy Arabic, roots music, and without leaving that we listened to ‘Come Together’,” he points out.
There was a friendly relationship with Ricardo Pachón, who became her producer and took her to Madrid to record an album that, for the first time, included instruments outside of flamenco, such as the Mellotron. Pachó himself opened a path, as he later also took over the management of Veneno’s debut of the same name from 1977 and the aforementioned “La Legend of Time”.
“Over time, a maturity, a revelation and a deeper awareness emerged than what we had done before,” admits Montoya, proud of the first album, which was followed by “Pasaje del agua” (1976), “Lole y Manuel” (1977), “Al Alba con Joy” (1980) and “Casta” (1984).
At this point, their personal separation and a temporary artistic distance occurred, although they worked together again on “Lole y Manuel cantan a Manuel de Falla” (1992), “Alba Molina” (1994) and the live album “Una Voz y Una Guitar” (1995). Manuel Molina would die just 20 years later.
Faced with a large panorama of young flamenco artists who, even today, are trying to modernize flamenco, the Sevillian singer gives advice that is useful for all new generations and, paradoxically, requires looking back: “We have to go back to Spain because everything is lived very quickly on the phone and we have to change the attitude of the heart towards deeper relationships.” EFE
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