Tags
Related Posts
Share This
Interview with Chano Domínguez
Interview with Chano Dominguez
by Catalina Maria Johnson
As part of Flamenco Festival 2011, renowned flamenco jazz pianist Chano Domínguez from Cadiz, Spain, played a recited that left us in breathless awe at the exquisite soundscapes that were being created right before our eyes and ears.
In a tour-de-force performance, Domínguez transported us to a place of pure beauty that we’ve never visited before, where the borders between flamenco, jazz, classical ceased to exist. Even a song like the Chilean folk ballad by Violeta Parra, “Gracias a la Vida”, that we know and love so well, without losing its integrity was transformed anew by the richness of hues that emerged in Domínguez’ artful improvisation.
Arte y Vida had the opportunity to converse with Chano Domínguez the day of his concert, and he shared insights into the art he creates so masterfully.
Arte y Vida Chicago: We’ve read that you began your musical career by forming a pioneer Andalusian rock group – how did you come to make the transition to jazz piano?
Chano Domínguez: Actually, my first instrument was the flamenco guitar. Up until the time I was an adolescent, I had really only heard flamenco, my father’s music, as he was a great aficionado and played his vinyls all day long. And my mother loved to sing – she was always singing coplas [fiery, passionate traditional Spanish songs of great popularity in the 40’s and 50’s]. These were my musical references as a child.
My entry to the language of jazz was through the fusion of rock and jazz. I had started spending time with other friends who had musical leanings, and we had discovered American music. I was particularly drawn to symphonic rock, and that’s was what I started playing in the seventies, when I began playing the keyboard.
These rock orchestras like Weather Report, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, they had great jazz musicians that began to use electronic instruments to take jazz to a different state. I then start to explore the past history of jazz and became interested in musicians like Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, even back all the way to Jelly Roll Morton, who I believe was the first musician who improvised on the piano, jazz-style.
My interest from that moment on was live music, which has the possibility of changing from one moment to another, because it depends on how you find yourself at that particular moment in time, your mood. I really like that. I think it is a very honest way of approaching the stage and a performance.
So, I actually found jazz through rock. This happened because this orchestral rock that we were already playing had a very special characteristic, which was that we played the rhythms of our land and we already were doing a lot of improvisation.
AVC: So from your very first fusions, you were exploring the rhythms of Andalusia?
CD: Always! Ever since I began to create and play music, the rhythms of my land have always been with me. I’m someone who loves to play right on top of the rhythms of buleria, or tangos, or tanguillos or solea, these are musical atmospheres that appeal to me a lot… I create a music that is always halfway between the culture of my land and the culture that came to us from outside.
AVC: When you create your music, do you have a plan? Or is it completely intuitive?
CD: There’s people who have said to me, “Chano, we don’t know when the jazz ends and the flamenco begins, and vice versa!” I think that this occurs because as a musician, I have had flamenco by my side since I was born. It’s music I haven’t had to study, music I learned without even wanting to, ever since I was a young child.
Jazz is the music that I have wanted to learn, that I have struggled to be fluent in as a language. As a matter of fact, I still feel like an apprentice at jazz. Music with that kind of freedom, that´s what keeps me playing music. To be able, always, to do exactly what you want to do. To be able to take a song to exactly where you want it to go, depending on how you’re feeling.
AVC: So each concert is a completely unique experience.
CD: Absolutely! I usually tape my concerts. And if you listen to two concerts side by side, I may have even played the same piece, but one day it sounds one way, and the next it has a different hue. And that’s related to the way that one feels at that precise moment, right? That’s why I think live music, and improvised music, is so unique. Because it’s something that offers you sensations that take even the musician who’s playing by surprise, right as he’s playing!
AVC: What does each genre offer each other – flamenco to jazz, and vice-versa?
CD: Flamenco offers jazz something that is very unique – the strength and power of its exuberant rhythms, a different rhythmic structure that makes it fresh again, and makes it interesting. And what jazz offers flamenco, which has been a bit closed and hermetic, is a new world of colors in terms of harmony and melody. This is something flamenco guitarists have already been doing for a while. They introduced ways of playing that were originally not familiar in flamenco, but that now when we listen to it, seem quite natural.
AVC: One final question, why do you think is music so vital to us as human beings?
CD: Music offers us an infinite amount of sensations and emotions, and human beings need those emotions. Music offers this all to you right there, in the moment. Something that´s intangible. You can’t grab it, or take it, you can only feel it. That’s where the greatness of music lies, and it´s so beautiful to share that it can transmit a variety of feelings – love, hate, passion, sadness, melancholy, laughter…everything!
I love seeing at my concerts seventy-year-olds side-by-side with seventeen-year-old kids with pierced body parts – all of them vibrating to the same music! I think that’s marvelous. Music creates a harmony between beings that will never be accomplished by politics.
Images © Amor Montes de Oca, Chicago, IL 2011
