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Written in fRoots issue 226, 2002


ESTRELLA MORENTE
My Songs And A Poem
Real World CDRW 101 (2001)

Flamenco has recently experienced a big upsurge of popularity in Spain, with a new wave of young performers, but has always been a hotbed of fiery vocals and dazzling playing full of stops and turns, carrying one along in its thrilling, wind-blown flow - and behind even the most cranked-out tourist-fodder there has persisted a thread of real passion and inventiveness, and a whole world of the real thing. Now, like Portuguese fado, it seems to be being more noticeably embraced abroad, this time not just by the audience for colourful flamenco stage-spectaculars or determined seekers but by the “world music” organism.
      20 year old Estrella Morente, member of an extended family of well-known flamenco musicians, has archetypal raven-haired Gypsy cantaora looks, which won’t harm her marketability, but she’s absolutely that Real Thing, and even the pickiest flamenco aficionado would have a hard time denying that this is a fine, fresh album. She has a classic flamenco voice, moving between wild passion and silky seductiveness, and accompanying her are (apart from slight touches of bass on a couple of songs) just the heart-instruments of flamenco: guitars, wonderfully played by Alfredo Lagos, José Carbonell Montoyita, Manolo Sanlúcar, Juan and Pepe Habichuela and Ketama’s Josemi, Juan and Antonio Carmona, with handclaps, percussion, footstamps, voices and encouraging jaleos.
      Apart from her own For Pastora and the sultry Brazilian-ish song Moguer by Juan Ramón Jiménez and her famous guitarist father Enrique Morente, the lyrics and melodies are traditional but, with the help of Enrique who chose and adapted them and produced the album, as does any great artist she builds from them her own expression.
      Because this CD is on the widely-distributed Real World label, it’s likely to be more widely available than many other flamenco records, but if it thrills you as it might, I’d encourage some investigation of other great performers, not all of whom have released solo albums. Try to encounter, for example, the magnificent singer Esperanza Fernández. Oh, and go see one of Carlos Saura’s flamenco films - his Carmen, for example, or indeed Flamenco, which features among other greats the aforementioned Enrique Morente and Manolo Sanlúcar, and Estrella herself is to be heard on the soundtrack of his latest work, Buñuel Y La Mesa Del Rey Salomón.


© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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