“Music is infinite and I know very little”

Javier Herrero I Madrid, (EFE) same responsibility as in any other scenario and an attitude that tends to minimize his ego.

“I am modest because music is infinite and I know very little,” this virtuoso who won first prize at the Las Minas National Cante Festival in 1988 and who considers himself an eternal apprentice, a first student of Manolo Sanlúcar or the Tomato and collaborator after stars like José Mercé, Al Di Meola, John Mclaughlin or Paco de Lucía himself.

At the age of 8, they gave him his first guitar, but his “hook” with this instrument began earlier, at “3 or 4”, when he discovered the man from Algeciras on television. “I was totally captivated and I said to myself: ‘That’s what I want’”, recalls the man who began to cultivate himself in this art with a record by the man from Cádiz that he was given as a child and which ended up “very scratchy”.

When citing the comparisons with De Lucía, Amigo (Guadalcanal, Seville, 1967) makes a fuss: “Wow, wow! I appreciate being quoted well, but if Paco raised his head he would be offended. He doesn’t seem right to me.”

Offer the best you have

Although sometimes he has flashes “of anger and certainty” with the music that make him “go to death with an idea”, he still suffers from the impostor syndrome, be it in an “emblematic place” like the Real or the Liceu in Barcelona or in a smaller one. “I always feel the nerves when I get on stage. I am very responsible, ”he insists.

“What it is about here is that, when you go out there, the audience is moved just like anywhere else” he says before acknowledging that “flamenco, like all types of music, can be played on automatic pilot, although it shows ”.

To avoid this, he has developed a technique: “I like to forget everything around me and look within to build my world, because the most important audience for a musician is oneself. You have to listen to yourself over and over again, sanding, polishing and giving shape to your ideas”.

In this sense, it points out another important aspect to grow. “Each one must look for the best that it has to offer. It is true that any instrument needs technique and the more you have, the easier it is to express what you want to say. If the guitar is not in the hands, which is ideal, it should be in the head”, he points out for whom the six strings have become “an extension” of his body.

Since the publication of his first album, “De mi corazón al aire” (1991), his range has been enriched with a perspective that values ​​all genres equally.

Illusion with the new album

“We believe that flamenco is the greatest, but what about jazz, blues or classical music? If you have to cross yourself”, he affirms after boasting of a son “who you can’t ask to sing flamenco, but who has known how to internalize the wave” of black music.

In May he will publish his first album since “Memoria de los sentidos” (2017) under the title “Andenes del tiempo”, which he is “very excited about” and which will contain “a little bit of everything” from that wide perspective. “For example, here there is a very flamenco soleá but at the same time it sounds like classical music”, he advances.

His departure has been delayed both by his participation in Potito’s latest album (“And when I get involved in something, I do it as if it were mine,” he points out) and by the pandemic.

“My guitars were pretty much recorded from before it was declared, but when it came out I thought there was no point in releasing it at that point. Then he began to take another form, because I ventured to do the string arrangements for him for the first time, a subject that I had pending ”, reports who has always said that he understands his career as a constant learning process.

Some of these new songs will sound in the concert that he will offer at the Teatro Real, in which he will perform together with Paquito González on percussion, Rafael de Utrera on cante, Antonio Fernández “Añil” on guitar and Ewen Vernal, from the Mark Knopler band, on bass. EFE