“Rosalía kept the teachers on their toes”

My for­mer part­ner Fer­nando Hernández, and I had a book dis­trib­u­tor, which we ran dur­ing the years of the Tran­si­tion until 1979. Then, through Fer­nando’s wife, we got to know Américo Bel­loto, who was the lead trum­pet in the Dan­ish Radio Big Band, which was spend­ing a sea­son in Barcelona. He sug­gested we set up a music school.

There was a big gap in music ed­u­ca­tion be­cause, un­like in Eu­rope and the US, music schools did not teach meth­ods based on mod­ern music, whether jazz, fla­menco or Cuban music. We grew and ended up spread­ing like an oil slick around Barcelona’s Raval neigh­bour­hood, adding dif­fer­ent premises on three roads – Príncep de Viana, Re­casens and Cen­dra. They were tough times. And even though we’re now asked to give talks, the truth is we never saw it as a com­mu­nity pro­ject or any­thing. What is true, though, is that we did help with the re­gen­er­a­tion of Raval, which had a lot of se­ri­ous prob­lems.

In 2009, we began work on Can Fabra, in Sant An­dreu, so as to have stu­dios for higher qual­i­fi­ca­tions from 2011. But we’ve stayed in Raval, too. Firstly, be­cause the law does not let you mix dif­fer­ent ed­u­ca­tional lev­els of music in the same cen­tre, and be­cause we have in­vested a lot of money in those three streets. Sound-proof­ing premises, for ex­am­ple, is a very com­pli­cated mat­ter.

There were a lot of mu­si­cians pass­ing through and the Taller re­flected that, as among its founders were Cata­lans, Cana­di­ans, Yu­gosla­vians, Japan­ese, Ger­mans, Ar­gen­tines, Chileans, An­dalu­sians, Gali­cians,... Barcelona was boil­ing. Ona Lai­etana was still going on in Ze­leste on car­rer Ar­gen­te­ria, where a music school opened, and there was the Aula de Val­lvidr­era. There was a growth of schools. Yet, we were the most eclec­tic, as we had peo­ple from every­where.

I had the in­tu­ition that it could be­come a meet­ing point and could give re­sults around the world. And though it might seem im­mod­est to say so, I wasn’t wrong. We also thought we could have our own pro­gramme in­stead of being a fran­chise of an Amer­i­can or Eu­ro­pean brand of school. We be­lieved a lot in our peo­ple, in those first teach­ers.

On the combo, play­ing in a group. All human be­ings, through im­i­ta­tion, first learn to speak. Later, with the help of our par­ents and teach­ers, we learn to read and write. As music is also a lan­guage, we be­lieved that this could be a good way to learn it.

Yes, there still is, al­though less so now. It’s be­cause of the dic­ta­tor­ship. The Franco regime, like all au­thor­i­tar­ian na­tion­alisms, tried to ho­mogenise all iden­ti­ties, and they used fla­menco for that. It’s some­thing we still suf­fer from in Cat­alo­nia, but we be­lieved that fla­menco be­longs to every­one; it has no na­tion. It’s art, and so it’s uni­ver­sal.

Yes, he did. He said that if he were Cata­lan, he’d sing in Cata­lan and Span­ish. If there’s not more fla­menco in Cata­lan it’s be­cause the artists have still not cho­sen to take that path, but they will. Pere Martínez has a few things, and Miguel Poveda showed on ’Des­glaç’ that a fla­menco voice could be put at the ser­vice of Cata­lan poets.

Poveda is the son of lin­guis­tic im­mer­sion. He speaks and writes in Cata­lan, even though with his fam­ily, in Badalona, he uses Span­ish. I asked him to come to La Cen­tral in Raval and buy a lot of po­etry, and we left with a ruck­sack full. I thought we’d gone too far, but he looked through it, read it and chose from it. Co­madira, For­cano, Mar­garit, Maria Mercè Marçal... Putting a fla­menco voice to the work of those poets had never been done be­fore, and Cata­lan in­tel­lec­tu­als who had never had any in­ter­est in fla­menco recog­nised that this was also Cata­lan cul­ture.

He only at­tended a few classes of music lan­guage, but he showed him­self to be a very hard worker. He has a throat and an ear for music that is out of the or­di­nary. He can spend three hours per­form­ing on stage! That might be more nor­mal for rock­ers, but tell me which can­taor [fla­menco singer], with all the pres­sure it puts on the vocal cords, is ca­pa­ble of last­ing that long?

The eight­ies. A whole gen­er­a­tion of mu­si­cians came out of those Raval schools, which if you look now make up the jazz and fla­menco teach­ing staff at the Esmuc [Cat­alo­nia Col­lege of Music]. Zé Ed­uardo, Lluís Vidal, the three Rossy sib­lings (Jordi, Mercè and Mario), the three Va­len­cians, as we call them (Perico Sam­beat, Ela­dio Reinón and Ramón Cardo), Al­bert Bover, Carme Canela, Gorka Benítez, Joan San­martí, Rai Fer­rer, David Xirgu, Xavier Mau­reta, Marc Mi­ralta, Jordi Bonell... I’m leav­ing plenty out, be­cause there are so many, and they all came out of here. The growth was phe­nom­e­nal.

Yes, Rosalía turned up at the Taller in Feb­ru­ary 2010. She was 16 and that made her one of the first un­der­age pupils we had. Yet, she came with a ma­tu­rity that was above the av­er­age for her age. She spoke Eng­lish well, and in the first com­bos she was in she sang in that lan­guage. She was a rest­less girl, who never stopped ask­ing ques­tions.

She was at Raval for three years, and at Can Fabra, be­fore going to Esmuc, she stud­ied the first two years of the su­pe­rior level. In the Taller she stud­ied lan­guage, har­mony, jazz combo, fla­menco combo, com­pos­ing, elec­tric gui­tar, piano, vocal tech­nique and, ob­vi­ously, fla­menco cante, with Chiqui [De la Línea]. Her fam­ily in­vested a lot of money, be­cause they signed her up for every­thing.

Rosalía has great mu­si­cal tal­ent, but above all she is very hard-work­ing. That’s some­thing worth stress­ing be­cause fla­menco often comes across as just being about duende [the mys­ti­cal state of emo­tion and ex­pres­sion re­lated to fla­menco per­form­ers]. Rosalía is about ef­fort, hard work, rigour, and cu­rios­ity. She signed up for all the ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties at the Taller! She took part in Fla­menkids, which we did with the Palau de la Música; in a trib­ute to Maruja Gar­rido that we did in the Ciu­tat Fla­menco fes­ti­val; in the clos­ing event for the Year Es­priu; in a show in­spired by Car­men Amaya... In Cata­lan, be­fore Mil­ionària, she did Herois ob­scurs by Va­lentí Gómez i Oliver, in a Taller pro­ject from Temps Record. At the same time, she per­formed at JazzSí many times, and she came to hear artists that she felt she should know. She analysed every­thing. I re­mem­ber En­rique Morente telling me: “Luisiqui, if there are no dis­ci­ples, there won’t be any teach­ers!” And in that sense Rosalía kept the teach­ers on their toes. She handed in her pro­jects on time, she would get to re­hearsals half an hour early... Rosalía was sure that she wanted to sing for a lot of peo­ple and all the suc­cess she is get­ting is more than de­served.