NONO GARCÍA AND HIS PINE NUTS

            Nono García (Barbate, Cádiz, 1959), like many other maestros of the Andalucian guitar, learnt to play in a barber’shop in his luminous native town. He started as a professional in Granada with Carlos Cano. Later Nono left his university studies to do some travelling with the guitar. In his vivacious and artistic journey, he arrived in Madrid and went on to Brussels where he composed the majority of the themes make up “Tuna and chocolate” (Atún y chocolate) and from there he toured with the group “Vaya con Dios”.

            Nono also has collaborated with flamenco artists such as the singer Martirio and pianist Chano Domínguez who participated in his first record “Las quimeras del momento” where Nono combines original songs with Nono´s speciality versions of popular Spanish songs such “La luna y el toro” and flamenco standards.

            Without abandoning the marked flamenco roots, Nono García has collaborated with musicians of many origins, communicating with them in many different languages. His music is impregnated with the ups and downs of his everyday life, expressed with the special accent own coastal region.

            In ancient times, according to old and distinguished books, this area of the coast of Cádiz in which Nono was born produced the best rogues of the nation in the environment of the tuna trade. In the words of don Miguel de Cervantes: “you cannot call yourselves rogues if you have not studied at least two curses in the tuna fishing academy. There hunger is sharp, gluttony abundant, vice has no disguise, gambling is constant, the dances like those of a wedding, the seguidilla songs taken from an engraving, the romances have stirrups and the poetry does not waver from its path... There liberty rides free.”

            This is why Nono updates the libertarian concept with the collaboration of artistes who he calls pine nuts, brother with the same feeling and generous in the learning of other musical codes from overseas. Nono says, “ The pine trees that decorated our coast, without losing their roots, feed on the salted air of the Atlantic; they have a special sap. Sharing the same origins as flamenco singing, they look further ahead, maintaining the free spirit of the authentic music of the South. Their fruit; pine nuts”.

            The pine nuts produce exactly what is required, the pine nut  music singed by Nono García, embellished in the intense, steamy jam. Multiracial sounds with a special Andalucian style of flamenco. We find jazz, blues, bossa, boleros, baiao, African evos… There are also copla folksongs. One of them, “Barbate, tuna and chocolate”, which his daughter Ester sing, delightfully ratifies the stamp of identity. Others, on the other hand, send a different message. Going back to Cervantes, who tells us about a danger that awaited the people of these regions in those days. “All the sweetness that I have describes has a bitter grief that threatens it, which is not being able to sleep in peace without the fear of being transferred in an instant from Zahara to North Africa”. It was quite common that the inhabitants went to bed in Spain and where forced to awake in Tetuan. The tables have turned and now the cover of night  brings relatives with different intentions. Not everyone shares the aims of the powers at large. Eva Durán sings about in the Cartagenera style with lyrics by Chacón; “At a sovereign’s feet/ a Tarifa local cries; / by God and all that you love most! / do not let them take away my brother the African/ on board a small boat”.

            We have before us a disk of truth, a recording written and performed by Nono García with soul, heart and life, that like a Eastern wind puts you into the fell of it. Let the wind bring us his music and like a satellite let it glow on our skin.

JOSÉ MANUEL GAMBOA.