Bodas de Sangre

Paolo Angeli surprises again with the sounds of his guitar-orchestra, using them inspired by a classic of Spanish literature: Bodas de Sangre (Federico García Lorca). The musical idea is to begin from Lorca’s opera and translate his drama, a three-act tragedy composed in 1933, in connection to today’s urban suburbs, replacing the circular and poetic image of a nomadic people (represented by the horse and the caravans), with the vertical image of terraced buildings and satellite dishes. Angeli started from La nana del Caballo Grande – published by Camaron de la Isla on the La Leyenda del Tiempo (1979), one of the most important albums in the history of flamenco – playing the song in streaming on the day of the memory of the Gypsy people. The theme – initially inspired by the interpretation of the legendary cantaor who, together with Paco de Lucia, determined the coordinates of contemporary flamenco – it was developed musically in relation to Lorca’s drama, landing on an intense soundtrack. The suite start with Angeli bowing in Arabic-Andalusian atmospheres, with melodic references to the Balkan tradition too; than it follow with the interpretation of La Nana del Caballo Grande; The lullaby contains a negative omen and it ends with the crying of the horse (from that moment the real protagonist of the soundtrack). The climax of the EP is reached in the crescendo of the third part in which Angeli propose a post-rock reinterpretation of the Siguiriya. The acid and psychedelic bowing is alternate with analog delays, on top of the beat of an imaginary dance (the ‘compas’ of the most dramatic ‘palo’ of the flamenco repertoire), to arrive at a crescendo noise that evokes a post-industrial landscapes.
“This work would be a respectful homage to a musical culture that I deeply love and that, after ten years of attendance, I would love to express in total freedom, following the post-punk path traced by Enrique Morente in Omega album, in which he expressed, with extreme creativity and freedom, a mestizo language that marked the history of the flamenco music”.