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"Er cante es er momento y ahí es donde está er misterio der cante. También lo tiene el torero y er pintó y tos los artistas. Er cante requiere su reposo, su charla, requiere su copa, su mijita de gracia y muchas cosas más y entonces er cante viene solo. ¡Ese es er momento!Y ese es er cante flamenco. El auténtico."
El Chato: un gran cantaor de la Isla, quien pasó 20 años en el tablao de Las Brujas en Madrid. Ese es la verdad de flamenco.
Posts: 3462
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Er cante es er momento. Chato de... (in reply to Morante)
"El Chato de La Isla, Entre El Cante y la Vida" is a book I enjoyed reading. The author transcribes a number of autobiographical conversations he had with El Chato, in an approximation of El Chato's strong Andaluz accent.
It covers El Chato's childhood and youth in the town of La Isla on the peninsula which has Cadiz at its end. El Chato describes the beginning of his professional career in the bars and tablaos of Cadiz. He narrates his early days in Madrid, and his subsequent successful career. There are a couple of amusing anecdotes featuring a big star of el cante.
I took away a stronger awareness of the flamenco subculture of the mid-20th century.
The book appears to be out of print, but I saw a copy on ebay for 10 euros.
RE: Er cante es er momento. Chato de... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
Another book, well worth reading, but even more difficult to find is "El cante y los toros: como yo los siento primos hermanos". Quiko Peña, Asociación Amigos de Ejica, 2019.
Quiko is a fine cantaor and a good bandillero (I have seen him torear!)
RE: Er cante es er momento. Chato de... (in reply to Morante)
Chato’s book is a treasure. It might be good to read it alongside Pericón’s Mil y una historias and Howson’s The Flamencos of Cádiz Bay. All three of these provide a picture of the abject poverty that was experienced in Spain’s post-war period (Pericón’s canina), which persisted into Howson’s 1950s Cádiz. Pericón and Chato also describe the terror during the onset of the Spanish Civil war. Pericón hiding because he had sung two left-leaning fandangos verses and Chato’s family hiding out in the swampland around San Fernando to avoid capture. Neither were political – just poor and vulnerable.
Chato discusses his family’s extreme poverty and Howson’s beautifully written and heartbreaking chapter ‘ El Maestro Felipe’ describes the third-world conditions that an old guitarist with palsy (Felipe) lived in along with lame dancer Juna Farina and his daughter. I imagine this is similar to the conditions Chato’s experienced. You can see Juan Farina reciting a chufla and dancing, with guitarist El Niño de los Rizos, here:
Chato had an infection that resulted in the loss of most of his nose, hence the nickname ‘Chato’ (‘pug-nose’). He was lucky to survive – his mother had 24 children – only 4 survived infancy and only 3 made it to adulthood.
Both Pericón and Chato discuss the transition from barely surviving from the waning private fiesta work to the tablaos in Madrid in the 1950s-60s, which afforded both a better standard of living. Both eventually bought homes – I visited Pericón’s apartment in Madrid’s Puerta Cerrada – then still occupied by his son Antonio - around 2006.
Also interesting from both Pericón and Chato is how singers who had always sang pa’lante in fiestas adapted to singing for dance (pa’trás). Both discuss the importance of singing in compás. The transition from fiestas to tablaos represented a huge shift in the way flamenco has developed and is transmitted. While tablaos have a reputation for touristy, commercial flamenco, they offered steady employment for artists - many major singers from the mid- to late-20th century had extended periods and counted tablaos as part of their training.
A few other random things I learned from Chato’s book:
- The expression 'más perdido que el barco de arroz' ‘more lost than the rice boat’ is used to refer to being very lost or, metaphorically, being out of it. It came from the post-war starvation years, when people were told that a boat full of rice was on its way – never arrived and was claimed to be lost.
- The term mariposas in the famous bulerías de Cádiz:
Dicen que van a poner Una Fuente aluminosa Plaza de las Canastas Se alumbra con mariposas.
They say their putting up An illuminated fountain The Plaza de las Canastas Is lit with mariposas
Chato talks of living in a shantytown without electricity where house were lit with mariposas. Normally means ‘butterflies’, but in this use, it refers to make-shift oil lamps – a saucer of oil and a wick.
The bulerías probably has its origin in a Carnaval tanguillo. Catalina León Benitez in her El flamenco de Cádiz, attributes it to the 1886 Carnaval group ‘Los Viejos Cooperativos’. The original verse was slightly different:
Van a poner en Puerto Chico Una Fuente aluminosa Plaza de las Canastas Se alumbra con mariposas.
There’s putting up in Puerto Chico An illuminated fountain The Plaza de las Canastas Is lit with mariposas
This version – sung by older Cádiz singers – has a different melody and doesn’t go through the passing seventh chord to the subdominant, as the current version does. It fits with the Carnaval tradition of satirizing local politics and public works – Puerto Chico gets a new, illuminated fountain, while Plaza de las Canastas (in the Gitano Barrio de Santa María), has to make do with oil lamps.
- Finally, Chato’s book revels the origin of the nickname ‘Farina’. We saw Juan Farina above; there is also the famous fandanguero Rafael Farina. Both are Gitanos with dark complexations. It turns out that this was a nickname given to boys with dark complexations during that period. The reason is that in the 1930s and 40s, dubbed versions of Little Rascals movies were popular in Spain. The African-American character ‘Buckwheat’ was translated as ‘Farina’.
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