Art has the beautiful capacity to encompass everything, to expand, to capture, to welcome, to overwhelm, to possess, to be. It inhabits every corner, heart and auditorium, movie theater and photo album. It always generates something, it always says, sounds and moves. Its existence is valuable and the bond it generates with those who receive, contemplate and enjoy it is always different; but it is also always a gift, to be preserved, cared for and shared. For Alejandra Fierro Eleta, art was at the same time a refuge, an escape route and a passion from a very young age.
His need to spread the songs he was discovering found their place in amateur radio, from which he began to show the topics that were fascinating him. They came from Latin music from which their roots draw (his Panamanian mother and his uncle, Carlos Eleta, the author of the bolero The story of a love). Her predilection for these sounds made her one of the great people responsible for her entry into Spain, thanks to her dedicated work as a collector and on the radio. But to do this he had to invent a new identity. When she told her father that she wanted to create a Latin music station, his response was: “Not with my name,” and thus the Gladys Palmera radio station was born in 1999.
Since then, Alejandra has been nurturing her valuable archive, which currently includes around 54,000 vinyl records and 25,000 CDs that inhabit the headquarters of her foundation, located in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid). Her house, which little by little became possessed by the enormous amount of sound archive, is a living museum in which music coexists with numerous movie posters, photographs and even a Celia Cruz dress, which decorates one of the stairs of the imposing mansion. Even the light seems to come in differently through its windows.
There is no wall without shelves filled with works, tables on which the latest acquisitions are not being classified, or display cases without objects ranging from a costume worn by the dancer and singer Joséphine Baker to matchboxes from the 1930s.
There are censored CDs, volumes that include everything from poetry to speeches by Fidel Castro, and an endless list of figures such as Juan Andrés Milanés. A contemporary Cuban artist who has recorded albums with testimonies of sexual and labor abuse on objects that are related to the cases, such as an office chair. The house is absolutely taken over and to make the most of the space they have even adapted, for CDs, cabinets designed for pharmacies, which in the house instead of medicines are used to preserve melodies.
Interest of the Ministry of Culture
Tommy Meini is the main curator and person in charge of the collection of the Gladys Palmera Collection, who in addition to acting as a guide through this particular paradise – Alejandra Fierro could not be present for the visit – explains that they neither sell nor want the huge archive to be auctioned. in the future. From there they are in talks with the Smithsonian Institution of the United States and the Ministry of Culture of Spain. Both public institutions want to acquire it. “Alejandra wants it to be a donation and we prefer that she stay here,” explains the person in charge. “One of the demands we have is that the collection continues to grow and live. May the Gladys Palmera project not die and may all this not remain in a basement. We want it to continue like it is here, in a more central location, so that people can come,” he says.
Sources from the Ministry consulted by this means confirm the interest of the Administration led by Ernest Urtasun in the archive, and also hope to close the proposal “soon”, between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. Among the negotiations is deciding its possible location. One of the options being considered is the transfer of the collection to one of the buildings that make up the complex of the old Military Pharmacy, located on Embajadores Street, which will be converted into the new headquarters of the INAEM. “The project with the Ministry of Culture is the ideal,” acknowledges the curator. The attempted agreement coincides with the 25th anniversary of Gladys Palmera, which was celebrated on October 11 at the Reina Sofía Museum, with a day of dances and rhythms of African influences such as danzón, chachachá, mambo, rumba, cumbia, salsa and vallenato.
The station must continue to be a platform for young talent, which they also continue to promote through their YouTube channel, which has more than 1,800 artists who have recorded in their facilities or on the radio since it began: “Alejandra supports the independent music. A Shakira or Jennifer López already have their radio stations that drive them, she has always wanted to support independent artists. She was a pioneer in not supporting major record companies. “He didn’t let himself be dictated to what he had to do.”
Those who do make concessions are individuals who have contacted them because they have albums in which family members participated. “There are people who have written to us, for example, because their father was an engineer on a specific album and they would like to have it. There we do the favor, we record it and pass it on to them,” he comments on a situation that “happens often.” What they do carry out are exchanges with repeated albums. It happened to actor Matt Dillion, who came to the Foundation in search of photographs for his documentary The great Felloveand they ended up exchanging other works.
The collection catalog can be consulted publicly, since as soon as acquisitions are made, they are incorporated into its database, after passing through the space they call the ‘kitchen’ of the Foundation. A room located in one of the buildings that make up the space. There they place the vinyls in acid-free plastic sleeves and photograph them to archive them.
One of the tasks they outsource is the treatment of movie posters, which indicates that they are the most complicated works to obtain. Since they are located in theaters, there are usually not many copies, and those that do exist often have folds or are damaged by the material that was used to paste them. To restore them, they are glued to neutral, acid-free fabrics and the damaged areas are painted. A work that the curator defines as “very delicate.”
As for their price, feature film posters range between 100 and 300 euros, although they have been purchased for 5,000; while in the case of vinyl they can be worth between 3,000 and 5,000 euros. “Sometimes restoration costs more, but it can also happen that you find a record for ten euros,” he shares about some copies that they find in all kinds of locations, including unsanitary basements. When it comes to classifying them, beyond being classified in alphabetical order of their creators, they have their own nomenclature with stickers of different colors depending on whether they have appeared on the radio, if they are photographed and if Alejandra has listened to them, which leaves record of their selections on post-its that they keep next to each vinyl.
On the trips that the curator makes to acquire new pieces, recently to Mexico and Panama, he does not have a fixed budget: “Alejandra gives me 100% confidence and lets me buy everything I consider useful.” The last major addition has been the archive of designer Izzy Sanabria, which includes photographs, magazines, posters and negatives. “He gave them to us without a filter,” explains Tommy Meini, since among them they even found intimate photographs, which included snapshots of their author, naked.
Women in Latin music, at the Casa de América
The oldest record of the Foundation dates back to 1899 and some of the most curious were designed to learn to dance to Latin rhythms. In addition to the vinyl, they contain templates to indicate where your feet should be placed on the floor, as well as instructions.
Another room of the house is occupied by the exhibition that the Casa de América will host next year, dedicated to Latin women within the music industry. There are photographs, records and objects. The conservative advances that there will be a hallway dedicated to a controversial topic: sexist records.
“In them you can see how women were degraded. Since male consumers were the ones who primarily bought the records, their image was used a lot,” he describes, pointing out some copies, with sexualized female bodies. One of the most striking is from Los Pacheco, which features a young woman with an open shirt, and on her breasts it reads: “Throw it here” and “sauce and flavor.” They span from the fifties to the eighties. The exhibition will also show the artists of the new song who managed to carve out their own niche, such as Mercedes Sosa.
If today there are artists who criticize the fact that there are magazines or media that retouch their bodies to make them slimmer or remove wrinkles, at this time these types of practices were already carried out, only painting directly on the negative. Something that will also be seen in the exhibition at the cultural center located in Madrid next year.
The activity of the Gladys Palmera Foundation coexists with another project that Alejandra launched in 2009, the Escuelita del rhythm, located in Portobelo (Panama). A free center that uses music as a tool for social transformation, in which it also teaches computer science and English, and has a community area so families can go to do activities such as dancing and watching movies.
Photographs of the academy hang on the walls of the house. These snapshots are part of the ecosystem of the valuable mansion in which music feels like a sonorous, living, immortal home. A treasure of Latin sounds that continues to grow, composing its own history and perpetuating soundtracks that would take more than fifty years to hear in their entirety.
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