Enrique Morente is dead

[sturgess66]

http://qorreo.com/2010/12/spanish-music ... rente/1849

Spanish Music Mourns Passing of Pacheco and Morente

Nick Lyne


Enrique Morente in action. He added a dazzling
array of influences to traditional flamenco.

As 2010 comes to a close, the Spanish cultural firmament has been dimmed by the loss of two of its brightest stars: in November record producer Mario Pacheco died, and then in December flamenco singer Enrique Morente passed away.

Pacheco, who died of cancer aged 60, founded Nuevos Medios, the groundbreaking record label behind the “new flamenco” scene in the 1980s. The label, which has a catalogue of more than 900 records, launched the careers of many of Spain’s most original musicians, making flamenco fashionable, and shedding the genre’s image as tawdry spectacle or the preserve of experts.

Best remembered for reviving the fortunes of flamenco through its stellar roster of artists such as Pepe Habichuela, Ray Heredia, Aurora, La Barbería del Sur, Moraíto Chico, Diego Carrasco, Pata Negra, and of course, Ketama, Pacheco was among the first in Spain to hook up with independent European labels such as ECM, Hannibal, Cherry Red, Rough Trade, and Factory Records, whose boss, Tony Wilson, Pacheco had met in Manchester. In 1985, he organized The Smiths’ first Spanish tour.

Pacheco’s eclectic approach led him to become involved in the Songhai project in 1988, a fusion of traditional Spanish and African music that prefigured the world-music phenomenon, and produced Ketama’s international hit Vente pa’ Madrid.

Morente, who would have celebrated his 68th birthday on December 25, began his career in the 1960s, and like Pacheco, was determined to breathe new life into the flamenco world, bringing in new concepts and new melodies, taking new directions, and chipping away at the rigid formulas that were confining flamenco’s growth.

Here was a man with courage and vision, steeped in the traditional cante jondo, and yet brave enough to adapt flamenco to other forms, working in choral music, ballet, theatre, opera, orchestral music, poetry, and even rock, yet always remaining true to his origins.

Inevitably, it was Nuevos Medios that brought Morente to a wider audience, releasing his groundbreaking album Negra, si tu supieras in 1993, featuring a roll call of flamenco’s greats, among them Pepe Habichuela, Tino Di Geraldo, José Miguel Carmona, Paquete, Bola, and Montoyita.

The following year, Morente was the first flamenco singer to receive the Culture Ministry’s National Music Prize. In 1995, he was awarded the Gold Medal by the “Cátedra de Flamencología de Jerez de la Frontera” and the Compás del Cante award in Sevilla.

On his pioneering album Omega, Morente collaborated with Lagartija Nick, a rock outfit from his native Granada, and again attracted stellar guitarists such as Vicente Amigo, Tomatito and Cañizares in a project that included Federico García Lorca’s poems and songs by the singer’s friend Leonard Cohen.

Shortly before his death he was working on El barbero de Picasso, which is scheduled for release in March 2011.

[jarkko]

Alberto Manzano translated his article for us:

ENRIQUE MORENTE - A MAN OF HIS WORD

By Alberto Manzano

“It is my deep friendship with Alberto which brings me here, to inform you that before us we have a book of intense poetry, which I am sure will provide new incentives to continue with the struggle. Alberto, this is a war,” concluded the prologue which Morente had written for my book of poems, Puente del Alma y la Luna (2009).

As always, his words were an inspiration for new projects. During the dinner we shared after his last concert in the Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), offered by his friend Pasqual Maragall, I proposed to him the idea of putting into flamenco a repertoire of “Songs of War” (Robert Wyatt, Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen), a project which today, tragically, has been thwarted by the unfathomable absence of the great learned flamenco singer.

Enrique was a man true to his word: “When you break your word, a piece of your soul breaks,” he had told me on another solemn occasion after his concert in the Mileni Festival 2006 (Barcelona), and, with a very full timetable of concerts, confronting his manager, he committed himself to sing a song of Leonard Cohen in Lorca (Murcia) during the homage tour to the Canadian poet-musician which I was about to produce with the title According to Leonard Cohen (Discmedi, 2007), in the framework of a lineup which included a string of national and international artists, but, above all, a group of flamenco artists: Son de la Frontera, Mayte Martin, Duquende, Pasion Vega and Toti Soler.

This is how Enrique showed up, driving straight from Madrid, to be with his friends. He got on stage and, accompanied on the guitar by the brilliant Raul Rodriguez (son of Martirio), interpreted the most beautiful version I have ever heard of the song “Priests”, by Cohen, linked to a poem by Lorca: “The Language of Flowers” (Bodas de Sangre).

“Priests” was one of the four jewels by Cohen that Enrique had strung together on his album Omega (1996), without doubt, one of the works of art of Spanish music. Morente, who loved Cohen’s music, because Cohen loved Lorca’s poetry and Flamenco, did not hesitate a second to embark on Omega, something which he himself considered “a crazy idea, something totally lunatic. Because it was on hearing Cohen’s “Take This Waltz” when I understood Lorca’s surreal poetry in Poet in New York, a book in which he breaks away from his earlier style of writing creating a new style, closer to painting than to poetry. This is why I was unable to undertake Poet in New York with a guitar and voice, and decided on an electric and acid music, provided by Lagartija Nick, but following the line of Cohen’s rock.”

In the Palace Hotel (Madrid) in 1993, I had the honor of establishing a bridge between Morente and Cohen in an encounter - which would repeat itself in the Benicassim Festival in 2008, when Morente undertook to prologue my book of poems -. In a warm embrace between the two artists, Morente gave Cohen his word to take his music to flamenco, to which Cohen replied: “I would love to see myself mixed up in flamenco, because I love that music, it is the style of music I most respect in the world, so much that, if I were to be reborn again, I would like to be a flamenco singer.”
Enrique is a man true to his word. And the word became flesh.

[sturgess66]

Amazon Germany seems to have 3 copies of Omega, 15.98 eur (cheaper than UK Amazon):
http://www.amazon.de/Omega-Enrique-More ... 544&sr=8-1

"Omega" is one of my all-time favorite LC tributes. It was so sad to hear about Enrique's death.

Enrique Morente's album "Omega" is available in the USA at Amazon for $15.06.



From the album -

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay!!

"Take This Waltz"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TYnzUvR6Js

http://www.amazon.com/Omega-Enrique-Mor ... 872&sr=8-1