The four carry Camarón sleepless on their cheeks. It is 30 years since the death of the myth and the Madrid Flamenco Festival, from the Fernán Gómez Theater, has closed in the form of a ritual: the communion of the fans with a legacy that they know too well. ‘Like the water’, ‘Our dreams’, ‘Striped handkerchief’, that fandango a blond gypsy, the moon of Omar Khayyam from the ‘Old world’…
Remedios Amaya has hands the size of a painted heart, and with them she lifts time, inspired or not. Even more savage is La Caita, who from Badajoz dies in every letter he drops por tangos. She is always festive, she is broken, like that late Shrimp to which they pay tribute. Montes Cortés is a romance that is dying, that of Bitter.
La Fabi, the most balanced of all, decides to water herself in tears inside, not out, where only the facades shine.
Four women have resurrected the legend. One met him in person, but all of them, “the story is confused, the pain is clear,” invoke him bare-chested. The only thing missing, perhaps, is that most solemn aspect of the islander, who of course recorded a more extensive deck of suits (even the petenera!) Than the one he reiterated last night. Others, even, he created them, like the basket.
Remedios Amaya, tells ABC from the dressing rooms, she was a girl when she saw him appear. She did not raise two feet from the ground, but she had, like everyone in that Sevillian neighborhood of low houses, a clear idol on her forehead: Camarón. It was the 1970s. The one from San Fernando had released his first album, ‘When seeing you the flowers cry’, a few years ago. And in a taxi she went to listen to some gypsies who, according to what they told her, were wasting grace. When he got out of the car, he was received in honor of crowds by Raimundo Amador, Bobote, Carmelilla Montoya and Remedios, among others, “who have all been figures afterwards,” she adds. They sang and danced some tangos for her from that album in which she presented her credentials: «Al ritintin tin tin…», now outlines who represented us in Eurovision, who laughs with lit eyes. «When he liked someone he did that: smile. That day he did not shut his mouth. He changed all of our lives. What a joy that they began to call me La Camarona, although I later made my own music with that air ».
Camarón, at that time, was already what he continues to be today: a chimerical type. With a real face and an iconic one, built like the language of the Rolling that these days walks through the city. Even his shadow soon became a reference, like his hairstyle, the one that Rancapino Chico and Israel Fernández wear today. Also the cuffs of the shirt, the jacket, almost anachronistic, the fragility when finishing off the songs off the microphone, the crescent with its star, the outstretched arms and, above all, the voice, broken from chewing crystals around the world .
Life is a setback, as the bulería says, and he died in July 1992, before he could raise his echo at the Universal Exhibition, with a vast body of work and only 41 years of age. As he did in the Polígono de San Pablo when he got out of the taxi in front of those children, his cantes and songs shake souls wherever they are shown. The public identifies everything, that’s why he lives in each one of those who remember from the stalls. «How happy I am with you», Montse Cortés sings in a hurry. Pride and love fight in the throat of Remedios Amaya, for tarantas and cartageneras. Rivers that seek the sea, flint rocks, cries of ‘I will live’…
That refined young man who refreshed the old with Paco de Lucía and shook popular culture already in the 80s with Tomatito, more complaining than beautiful, was a colt of rage and honey that today rides wildly, jumping from mouth to mouth, through the ears and the veins, forever resurrected from a stage in Madrid. He transcends time with the naturalness that his music transcended: as the leaves fall from the trees and the tide rises on the beach. Even the scream, it seems, goes a little further. As if he wanted to tell us something. A cigar in profile, his cap, his complaint in shadow… Everything is recognizable.
