Vicente Amigo: 'I play the way I am.'

You've really made it as a flamenco guitarist, if your first name suffices as a name indication. Guitar gods like De Lucía and Sanlúcar are known as "Paco" and "Manolo" and also Gerardo won't need his last name, Nuñez, much longer. "Vicente" has found recognition relatively early at  31 years of age: four years ago it was still Vicente Amigo in full, who turned Vredenburg upside down, but for the audience that came to the only performance in "De Doelen"in Rotterdam in 1998, one word is enough: Vicente.

Few people will remember Vicente's Dutch debut. As a 15 year old wonder child prodigy he came to the Netherlands as a protégé of Paco Peña and displayed his art in the TV show of Sonja. Guitarist Gerard Postma told us that at the time he had had a performance with several Dutch flamenco artists in the music school of Voorschoten. The principal pointed at a little boy who was playing behind a glass door. Would it be alright to put him in the first part of the program? Gerard didn't have a problem with that, but when he opened the door and heard the notes the young Vicente (because that's who it was) managed to get from his guitar, he seriously wondered if first part and main part of the program shouldn't be switched.

An older and wiser Vicente claims that you need a certain maturity for flamenco: "I believe that flamenco has always been something for adults, and not for children. To understand flamenco, you need maturity. You can learn to play the guitar as a child, you can understand the technique. Also of the singing you can more of less understand the technique. But the essence of flamenco is something that requires maturity. This doesn't mean that there are no precocious children. But personally I've started loving the singing more. These days I love it a lot more than I used to. And I love the guitar just as much."
And although he throws all kinds of jazzy elements into his compositions, he thinks he plays more flamenco than he used to because of that wisdom:"The singing is the foundation. The flamenco was born with singing, I'm sure of that. In a way you can say that singing is the 'mother'. Not that this makes it the most important thing. Important is everything you attach importance to: the guitar, the dancing .... it depends on how it's done.: Vicente himself has worked with singers like El Pele and Luis de Cordoba, and with dancers like Javier la Torre and Israel Galván. He thinks the last one is the best dancer of today. Ultimately he prefers the solo-guitar: "I have decided that my career should go in that direction. But you also have to know the dancing and be able to accompany that, for the rhythm. And these days I love the singing a lot more than I used to. I understand it better. I love singing ..." and with a brief hesitations he clarifies: "eh ... at home, because I'm a lousy singer."

On an autumnal Sunday afternoon, we're in his hotel room, where the heating is up to "old people's home" temperature. Immediately after entering the room Vicente pulled his guitar onto his lap, and continuous holding it during the whole interview. A piece of foam underneath the strings muffles the sounds, while his fingers dance over the strings, almost mechanical.
Maturity or no maturity, he still has the same boyish charm and a somewhat gangling locomotion. Have his ideas remained the same? Four years ago Vicente claimed in Aficionao that he didn't want to deviate from the 'straight path of the flamenco': simple things, without too much flourish and other instruments. What does he think about that now, considering he turned up with a trumpet on his CD 'Vivencias Imaginadas' and a whole orchestra on 'Poeta'?
"For me it's about the 'argument' in the music. The number of instruments is not important, as long as it has the flamenco-intention. Whether you play the guitar, the flute or whatever. The project with the orchestra was an experiment, a new adventure, and I will always undertake new adventures. Artists are always looking to create something new. It often succeeds, but sometimes it's not new." Have we reached the top, I ask, and point out that the newest CD of Paco de Lucía seems less experimental than the previous CD's. "No," Vicente answers resolute, and a vicious roll on his guitar accentuates his statement, "I believe that music will always continue to develop, in many directions. We haven't reached the end yet, I believe ... no, I'm sure. And I think that that CD of Paco de Lucía is really good, very interesting. It is a very conscientiously made CD."

Does Vicente think it a problem that with the current recording techniques some of the liveliness and the interaction, which is so typical for performances, gets lost on the album?
"No, if that would be a problem, the solution is a live-recording. But according to me it's an advantage to have the technical means we have at our disposal today. It's all much more practical. And it has always been a problem to transfer the feverishness of the flamenco to an album. Both previously as now. To record everything once with all musicians, is also a problem, because you're always aware of the fact that you're recording. If I remember it's being recorded, I still become slightly blocked. Now we have the possibility to do it over again. Much better. There's always much more life in a performance. And I love that liveliness of a performance, but it's also a challenge to sit in a studio and produce the liveliness, shape it."
Everybody agrees that Amigo has a completely personal way of playing. Words like poetic and fluent are often used to describe this typical sound. Has he created this style consciously or did it just grow naturally like that?

The type cast "fluent" is punished by a tight roll. Maybe because the Spanish word I use, 'suave', means 'soft' as well. Indignant, Vicente's fingers jump the strings. His mouth is milder: "Maybe I have a very poetic style, but not necessarily soft. There are soft and hard moments, and even very hard moments. And I think that's my style, the way I am. I feel like an artist. I've always wanted to be an artist, more than an instrumentalist. At the same time, I don't deny all the problems this guitar technique brings. I love this instrument a lot, but I love to realize myself with it. The guitar doesn't realize itself because of me."
He doesn't find his inspiration in flamenco only. "No, also in other kinds of music. I don't know if I should call it jazz. Because I don't really listen a lot to real pure jazz, but I listen to people who mix it a bit, who are themselves. People who have the luck to find what they are looking for and who can transfer that to the audience. I think someone like Pantasini is marvelous. According to me that's no normal jazz guitarist. That is a musician, who has found his way and carries it out. I want to learn from such people, I want to immerse myself in their music and be influenced by their sound. I wish I'd feel comfortable in this area. but as long as I'm not, I won't play jazz. So what I'll do, is flamenco. And some pieces may be very flamenco, and others less flamenco, that doesn't matter to me."

A real flamenco-CD is the album that's due in October of Vicente and singer José Mercé. "It is one of the most important albums that I've made" Vicente claims and his fingers accentuate that statement with a little roll on the strings, "because the melodies as well as the lyrics are mine, and I've incorporated many parts of my life in this CD. I chose José Mercé, because he's a solid singer, somebody with preponderance. For a long time we've been wanting to do something together.
Years ago we met in Utrecht and we discussed it. The album is 'Del Amanecer' ('of the dawn')." And in the meantime the plans for a new CD, with which Vicente wants to start by the end of the year when he's completed his series of concerts, are ripening.
I have no more questions and Vicente's fingers strike a final chord. While I get my things together, we start talking about the Bienal of Sevilla, which is coming to an end, just like the day. His manager, who's kept himself unobtrusively in the background, is pleased to mention: "In the local paper it said that the festival management really missed two artists in the program: Christina Hoyos and Vicente Amigo." Vicente shrugs his shoulders and says modestly: "Ah, I turned it down, because I didn't have anything new." And an artist always wants to bring something new.

Marlies Jansen (11/12 -98)

(English translation Carmen Morilla, 01 February, 1999)