La Niña de los Peines: Advent Calendar of Song: Day Six
Advent Calendar of Song; Day Six
Here, for Day Six, is the first (and not the last) of my consciously controversial numbers. Some of my friends hate all folk music; more of them hate flamenco singing in particular.
This is La Niña de los Peines, the professional name of Pastora Pavón Cruz (1890-1969), widely regarded as the most important woman flamenco singer of the twentieth century. My friend Sally Rettig introduced me to her recordings, maybe thirty years ago when a marvellous flamenco company was playing Sadler’s Wells for two weeks; we both went back for more. But starting to listen to recordings of the greatest flamenco singers and guitarists was a new world.
The song is “Quisiera you renegar” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-i9JxLfq-4 : I'm not sure when she recorded it, I can’t find a translation, and I have little Spanish. (See words below, as supplied on line, but her opening word is quite different.) I think the gist is “I’d like to renounce this world for ever and return to live in a new one.” It’s just three minutes long, and she doesn’t begin to sing till 0.46. I love the bittersweet vocal sound, the fabulous sense of rhythm, the cascading use of coloratura as a natural form of expression, the wonderful contrasts of loud and soft, outward and inward: emotional vehemence that sometimes becomes the sound of a tigress licking her wounds.
Quisiera yo renegar
aahay
yo quisiera renegar
d’este mundo por entero
volver de nuevo a habitar
mare de mi corazón, ay
volver de nuevo a habitar
por vé si en un mundo nuevo
por vé si en un mundo nuevo
ay, encontraba más verdad.
But I find it fascinating to listen to flamenco when I have no clue what the words mean. One of the most valuable aspects of experiencing any of the arts is learning to love -and be moved by - things you don't understand and can't label. I remember this thrill with the world premiere of Harold Pinter's "Ashes to Ashes" in 1996; I remember it in 2018-2019 with another world premiere, Pam Tanowitz's staging of "Four Quartets". After I'd seen the latter four times, I had to interview Tanowitz onstage at the Barbican, here in London; I began by saying how difficult T.S.Eliot's "Four Quartets" are to understand, and Tanowitz at once replied that she really didn't understand them herself. That was wonderful, even though she then showed she understood plenty about them. People often look to critics for understanding the works we're writing about - and we try - but really the important thing is to be aware that we start in mystery and ignorance: which can be a profound pleasure.
