A lot of water has passed under the Spanish cultural bridge since I first saw the flamenco guitarist Paco Peña in the late 1960’s playing his guitar in a charity fund-raising event for London’s Spanish immigrant community.
Half a century ago, Peña was slowly building up a following after moving as a teenager to the UK from Spain, and playing for diners at the since defunct Antonio’s Restaurant in Covent Garden. His fan base initially grew among the new British mass tourism to Spain, and other previously uninitiated in traditional Spanish music.
In those early days, the diminutive Peña cut a solitary, sombre and somewhat soulless figure that nonetheless managed to engage with his audience thanks to his apparent humility, an occasional flash of a simpatico smile and the evident artistry of his playing.
What he lacked in soul –or duende , Peña made up for eventually by surrounding himself with a company of dancers, guitarists, and singers who helped him expand the scope and depth of what he had to offer. With the passing of the years , he hasdoggedly stuck to his understated personal style, while struggling to keep his popularity amidst a broader revival of flamenco that has taken many charismatic forms from the back-to-roots followers of the tragic genius Camaron de la Isla to the hugely versatile and innovative guitarist Paco de Lucia, passing through the flamenco-electronic group Chambao which has fired up a new generation of young fans.
Peña’s latest London show treads new sociological as well as musical territory . By his own admission , he is moving closer to the politically inspired flamenco dance dramas of Antonio Gades and Carlos Saura, and the guitar and song fusions sought by Ry Cooder . First premiered in the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts in 2010, his latest dance work involves two different strands of music and movement – African and flamenco -as a way of portraying the encounter of the migrants from sub-Saharan Africa with southern Spain, still one of the major entry points for those seeking (whether legally or illegally) an escape from hunger and persecution, in the hope of a better life.
From the moment Peña ‘s guitar playing introduces his company and they in turn open up a darkly lit and otherwise empty stage to their African counterparts from Senegal and Guinea one is drawn into a emotionally high-risk enterprise. This is a collaborative work between Peña and the no less gifted artistic director, Jude Kelly, that can at any point as easily undermine the cohesion of the art form that Peña carries in his blood, as dilute the identity of the invited guest performers, and yet succeeds in producing an event of sense and purpose, as well as magic.
For this is an encounter that is presented not as that between two musical traditions which have evolved through cross-fertilisation- but the counter-point of two musical expressions seemingly drawn from distinctive cultures, but ultimately sharing an essential vitality.
“The North African connection with flamenco is already there due to its proximity,” Peña tells us in the programme notes, “ The sub-Saharan and West Africa music is simply so beautiful and represents a fundamental craving to be , and depth of feeling. It is simply more vital. And it is strongly connected to the earth.”
As the title of the work suggests, Quimeras (figments of the imagination) is a bold attempt to break through the alienation and prejudice involved in human trafficking between continents to a world where humanity and creativity can prove redemptive, even if such a transformation may seem illusory . At first the structured, slick choreography of Peña’s flamenco artists sharply contrasts with the wild, elemental, if occasional crude body movements of the Africans . Then , with the Spaniards still seemingly in fiesta mode, two Africans simulate a fight between a migrant and a policeman and voice recordings tell of fellow Sub-Saharians drowning as they cross the Straits of Gibraltar or facing repression and destitution if they survive and reach land.
In another scene a flamenco party has the Spanish males strutting their stuff while their empty seats are dusted by African waiters, the collective indulgence of the first contrasting with the silent subservience of the second.
Only gradually do dancers and singers of seemingly separate worlds take note of each other as their music and dance take on new more intricate forms that at the time seem to converge at key points. We witness common points of engagement and mutual respect in song, rhythm and movement involving equal actors where before there was only an awkward stand-off between self-considered superior beings and a subspecies: the flamenco male dancer takes off his high heeled shoes and, as a gesture of reconciliation as much as humility , goes barefooted; the African woman dancer joins her Spanish counterpart in a rumba; a saeta to the crucified Christ is matched by some haunting African blues. The climactic scene of the show has Spaniards and Africans coming together in a celebration of multi-cultural music, where flamenco prevails as a form ,neither static nor reactionary but as part of a transformative experience, both dynamic and open.
In the words of one of the songs of the show sung in Spanish… “In spite of it all, I will continue to dream, and sail through my seas of hopes Until I may fuse them with yours.”
Quimeras, directed by Jude Kelly is showing at Sadler’s Wells from the 23 November- 1 December 2012
