«What art! Javier Limón’s house is magical, very nice things have happened there,” Yerai Cortés told me a year ago about the place where he met C. Tangana. ABC Cultural had been in that same house shortly before, right in the basement where our today’s protagonists met for the first time. Located in a small and charming neighborhood of Madrid next to the Manzanares River, we went to interview the famous flamenco producer. When we arrived that morning, we found the remains of a party held the night before. “There was a ruckus yesterday,” I commented jokingly.
Lemon smiled. There were a number of empty whiskey bottles and several full ashtrays on the table, just a couple of meters away from an antique piano with a Thelonious Monk score open, a Spanish guitar lying on the couch, and his ten Grammy Awards on display. a shelf When asked who the guests had been, he responded briefly: “Some friends.” It was the still life after the storm, which was mixed with a lot of memories of the great figures of flamenco and world jazz who had passed through that same basement, on many occasions, until the early hours of the morning.
«That was where Yerai and I met. It was our first party at Javier’s house and we were deceived. Neither of them knew that he had organized a party. I was going to have dinner alone with him, he hadn’t even told me that he had invited more people. When I arrived, however, I saw the entire festival set up. That night I heard Yerai play the guitar, but he didn’t tell me anything about the pain he was carrying. He fascinated me, he had a special sensitivity and curiosity. He was not the typical orthodox artist, although his forms were traditional flamenco,” says C. Tangana about the night in which the first seed of ‘The flamenco guitar of Yerai Cortés’ was planted, the documentary that he signs as Antón Álvarez, his name real, to give rest to his musical alias and fulfill his dream: to be a film director.
—In the previous interview with Javier Limón, the producer told us with a laugh that, after the party the night before, he had to send Kiki Morente home when he found him at dawn making some spaghetti in the kitchen. How did yours end?
—Antón Álvarez: everyone left and you [a Yerai] and I think we were the last to leave. When the first ray of sunlight hit me, I thought… oh my!
—Yerai Cortés: Three days later Pucho came to see me play at Cardamomo, the tablao next to Sol where I performed with Farruquito. That night we had another bit of trouble and it was daylight.
The secret
Álvarez remembers that it was this second night of partying – “or third,” he points out – when Cortés revealed to him that he had a project in hand to tell a very sad episode in his life: “Well, actually it was in the morning, when We were arriving at my house. He told me about a secret that existed in his family and that he had never told. He even told me that it was still difficult for him to talk about it with his parents, that it was an issue that he had not resolved and that this was the heart of the album he was preparing. It was right at that moment when I felt for the first time that there was a movie there.
We cannot reveal to you here the sorrow that the young guitar player carries, since the first film directed by the urban music star revolves around it and does not become clear until the final section. What we can tell you is that ‘The flamenco guitar of Yerai Cortés’ is a documentary that revolves around the family history of the Alicante artist of gypsy race, in which absences, drug dealing, love, search, reconciliation, forgiveness, some laughter, music and the hardest moments through the drama that hovers over the entire film.
«With this documentary I have felt an extra emotional responsibility, because I normally tell everything that happens to me, I like to play with it and manipulate my life. I usually put myself at risk, but this time it wasn’t my life I was playing with, so I felt that responsibility. I wanted to put all the weight into emotion that the story awakens, but I couldn’t play with fire like I do with my own life. In fact, there were some pretty tough things during filming. I think the hardest thing was a moment when we thought that we were removing too much and that this could harm Yeray’s family… and we stopped filming,” Álvarez acknowledges.
«It’s true, we had to take a break –continues Cortés–. I remember that I arrived with a letter for Pucho that was so big [se levanta para hacer un gesto con la manos señalando al techo] which began: ‘My friend, I hope my words don’t hurt you…’ [risas]. And we were discussing how I saw my family in the documentary and what that could do to them. It’s normal, man! Because Pucho came from outside and started telling things from a point of view that I, seeing it from the inside, thought could hurt. “I was afraid that the documentary would hurt behind closed doors.”
The truth is that, although Yerai Cortés is less known than the author of ‘El madrileño’ (Sony, 2021), he is not unknown on the flamenco scene. In the aforementioned ABC Cultural interview, whose image appeared on the cover, he was already presented as one of the young figures called to lead the new guitar revolution. He arrived from Alicante as a teenager in the company of his girlfriend, Tania, another of the protagonists of the documentary, and began to make a living playing in the tablaos of Madrid, like so many other greats before him.
Four years ago he caught the attention of fans when he was included in the line-up of dancer Rocío Molina for her show ‘Al Fondo Riela’, the second part of her trilogy dedicated to the guitar. At that time he was only 25 years old, but he already surprised by his mastery of the beat and, above all, by his freshness, spontaneity and self-confidence. In those revelries in which they coincided, C. Tangana was so impressed that she called him her “favorite musician” and included him as her main guitarist on the tour of ‘El madrileño’, the album that surpassed five million plays in the first 24 hours and it became the best debut of a Spanish artist in all of history.
Now he can be seen with his own show, ‘Coral Guitar’, accompanied by six palm trees and singers, in an unprecedented formation for a flamenco artist. He premiered it at the last Cádiz Guitar Festival and recorded one of the romances for ABC, exclusively, which also appears on the documentary album that is published, like the film, this Friday. The merit of this work is that he will also present it at festivals as far removed from flamenco as the Monkey Week in Seville and the Sónar in Barcelona, the latter of electronic music.
A duality between gypsy tradition and modernity that Cortés explains in the film: «I feel like I have two lives and I have always dealt with that problem of identity. In music, in my house, in family, in love. It happens to me many times that, when I work with the most modern, I get a message from the other side that tells me: ‘Cousin, why are you doing that so strange with how well you play? I don’t like’. When I return to Alicante, I feel like I am entering a different country and I speak and play differently, because I know what a gypsy likes. I have that. What am I looking for then? What I don’t have. But when I return home I look for people to recognize me for who I am. And if one day I come dressed as a samurai, let them know that I am still the same. And if another day I come with a gold chain and dressed like my family, I am also the same.
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