to Josemi Carmona (Madrid, 1971) most quarantine and lived Pandemic left him with an emotional block this became the idea he presided over new album with double bassist Javier Colina (Pamplona, 1961) and percussionist Bandolero (José Manuel Ruiz Motorcycles, Madrid, 1976). ‘Vida’, which Universal will release at the end of April, is nothing but a realization: “The thing I got from the pandemic is the album is called ‘Vida’”, Carmona answers the question of whether the album will be released. He was beaten during the coronavirus-imposed break in 2020. “I thought this time being locked out would allow me to concentrate on work, start writing, but what I am experiencing is a strong emotional blockage. And I think what we can take away from this is that we need to pay more attention to ourselves. It seems to me that the soul has an oversight, right? We give great importance to the body, but we must also pay attention to the mood, feelings, hugs, compassion… Anything that has value. Hence the title: ‘Life’”.
The album is also He has a body and a fandango voiceWritten by Carmona and recorded live with colleagues. The meeting of Carmona and Colina is the meeting of two universes, most flamenco and jazz that dialogues through improvisation. It’s simple music, out of deep knowledge and respect, that just tries to flow, no artificial or grand arrangements.
El Periódico de España speaks to the two musicians separately. Josemi Carmona stops a car trip with her family to answer the call, Colina speaks from home. The moments are different, but the two overlap. What draws one into the other’s universe, musical richness and the possibility to improvise and continue to build from there. “The way we feel music is very similar,” Carmona sums up. “I’m flamenco,” says the guitarist, “but it’s true that I love jazz, and I love it more than anything because it’s improvisation and improvisation is so much fun. And flamenco has a lot to do with improvisation.”. Colina adds, “The thing that interests us about a song is that it has a way of improvising. Each brings what they have… Flamenco is a completely different genre of music, a harmonic world, imagine what it brings to Western music, it’s a different world.”
senior friendship
The two musicians have known each other forever.. “I think I met him when I was 17 or 18, when I was making La Barbería del Sur’s debut album,” Carmona explains. The son of well-known flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela, Carmona was with his siblings and part of the Ketama band, which from the age of 14 paved the way for mixing flamenco with other popular music in the 80s and 90s. and very successful.. They sold millions of records and performed in front of thousands of people. This success allowed participate in other artistic adventuresLike the production of La Babería del Sur and the collaboration with the numerous artist lists. After the band’s breakup, in 2004 Carmona embarked on a career working with other artists such as Carles Benavent, his own father, Pepe Habichuela or Dave Holland, and also recorded his own album ‘Little Things’, nominated for the 2011 Latin Grammy for Best Flamenco Album. .
Javier Colina came to the double bass almost by chance, and yet he has worked with great musicians in this style: Tete Montoliu, Al Foster, Chucho Valdés or Jerry González, among others. Diego el Cigala and Bebo Valdés recorded by hand. successful bolero album ‘Lágrimas negra’, and most recently with Silvia Pérez Cruz, with whom she has covered great Cuban classics.
After the first meeting about a project that was just starting at the time, Colina and Carmona have worked together many times, but always for third party work (on a Ketama album, with Jorge Pardo, on a Pepe Habichuela work, with Perico Sambeat…). “We wanted to share, to understand each other, to see what the other had to say,” explains Colina. This meeting took place at ‘De Cerca’ (Universal Music Spain, 2016) and they repeated the De Cerca en Directo recording from ‘Café Berlin (El País, 2017). They took him to the stages of half the world with more than 70 concerts in 14 different countries.
disco instrumental
Lifesecond studio album, collects his vision of some Latin American songs and two songs composed by Carmona.. And all the songs except one are instrumental.
“Colina is a wise guy, so she’s usually the one who recommends versions to improve them together,” explains Carmona. “I composed two songs, the fandangos that gave the album its name, and ‘Mar de doubts’, which was inspired by another song I did but in a different way. You talk about the natural state of the musician, you feel super. safe while composing, and the next day you realize that it’s worthless,” he says with a laugh. Two collaborators participated throughout: Farruquito, who performed his dance on a special ‘Moon River’, and Rozalén, who sang ‘Juramento’, the only non-instrumental song on the album.”Rozalén is a star, I value her attention to music“What can I tell you about Farruquito, for me today the value of flamenco is what impresses me the most. It drives me crazy every time I see it. He’s a great artist and a great person, I’ve known him since I was little, I played his grandfather and father. They are two gifts for this album,” he said.
Making an instrumental album is described by the guitarist as a dream.. “Walking through something like this in these times is like a dream where teenagers listen to a half-minute song and give up for another minute. It’s a spiritual battle in which one is involved,” she laughs. “But in the end, the previous album didn’t go badly for us, so we look forward to seeing it getting harder and harder as instrumental music has no place, and it’s a shame because it’s something that’s totally magical”. Colina uses the same magic phrase to describe instrumental music. “Without words, you can imagine the amount of sensations it can convey to you. It doesn’t have a clear message, so it can tell you a lot.”
While the disc is already prepared, Colina and Carmona’s future lives in uncertainty. They will present ‘Vida’ in Madrid, Barcelona and some other places in May, but the pandemic has had a huge impact on culture, so they don’t know if the album will let them stay on stage, that’s what motivates them. most. “There are a lot of commitments where the pandemic froze and now it’s going on, so there’s a lot of supply, most of the previous commitments are closed. But hey, this isn’t music to fill stadiums, we’ll see what happens,” he says realistically. Despite everything, Carmona did not let go of her optimism.