Antonio de la Malena´s double disc of flamenco cante

The star of Domino is, by original profession, a flamenco cantaor/singer.  He has been singing professionally since he was nine years old, in public and private events in Jerez de la Frontera and making his television debut in Niños Cantaores (part of Rito y Geografía del Cante).  Yes, he was only 9 years old.

And although he has several CDs to his name (flamenco semi-fusion), plus is on lots of flamenco CDs which include several singers, he has never had a true flamenco CD of his own.

Well, we decided to change that.  We decided to change that because he is a very, very fine singer.  In addition, many people only know of his talents as a singer who provides the cante for dancers, and aren´t aware of the fact that he´s a great soloist as well.

The CD cover:  Antonio de la Malena with his father, el Morao.

When we started recording several months ago, the idea was to produce a CD with 10 cantes (flamenco songs).  The word on the street is that anything less than 10 tracks is not taken seriously.  But when Antonio sings, he keeps on singing.  The result is that some tracks were more than 10 minutes long, and the bottom line is that there was no way to put 10 tracks onto one CD.  You simply couldn´t fit them all in.

As a result, we recorded some more and are coming out with a double CD--two CDs in one package.  There are a total of 16 cantes in this package, 8 on each CD.  The title of the album is Para ti mi cante, que es mi libertad.  (I give my song to you, my song which is my freedom.)

The album is currently being manufactured, and when that process plus some legal details have been taken care of, we´ll have the album in our hands.  We´re talking about one week or so.  We´re hoping to release it at an event in southern France on June 30.  We don´t know if we can make this deadline or not, but we´re trying.

One way or another, if you live in Europe, once it is actually available, you will be able to purchase it on-line at the web site http://AntoniodelaMalenaCD.com.

Antonio de la Malena--photo:  Martin Guerrero y Casa Patas

  We´ll release it in the U.S. later, when we have solved a couple of other legal problems plus acquired enough money to pay for production in the U.S..

For flamenco buffs, the album starts with a trilla plus estribillo, the estribillo being something that Antonio wrote (both the music and the lyrics).  Other tracks include 3 seguiriyas, a soleá, a soleá por bulerías, a bulerías a golpe, a regular bulerías, a fin de fiesta, an alegrías, etc., etc..  Very compete.

Guitarists are Manuel Parilla, Domingo Rubichi, Malena Hijo and Santiago Moreno.

Antonio´s brother Manuel de Malena joins Antonio in the tarantos, with each of them singing a section.  And in the fin de fiesta plus the estribillos, other singers join in, such as David Carpio, el Nono del Periquin, etc.

I promise you, if you like flamenco, you´ll love this.  If you don´t know anything about flamenco, you still might well like it.  Antonio has a great voice, great pitch, and puts lots of emotion into his singing.

The official producer of the album is Palomino Productions.  Co-producers are Jerez Puro and el Rincón Andaluz.  We also have a partially completed, very simple web site for the album at http://AntoniodelaMalenaCDs,blogspot.com.

OUR NEXT POST will be about adding Domino´s last scenes, and the background music--end of a long road.

Shooting the final scenes

I had intended this to be a post about the background music, but the young composer just became a father and his mind is elsewhere.  Before the baby was born, he had nearly completed the music, so I'll give him a couple of weeks, then ask him to give it to me.

In the meantime, to bring Domino up to the length required by major U.S. television channels (PBS and such), I wrote two more scenes, one of which we have shot and I'm in the middle of editing.  Film-making being what it is, we shot that scene twice.  The first time, one of the technicians made an error serious enough that we had to throw the whole thing out.  But the second time, it turned out alright.

Luis (Antonio de la Malena) with Marta (played by Marta).

This is a scene in which we see Luis the father in his home with two of his kids:  the youngest and the oldest.  We learn that everyone in the family is thinking about the upcoming wedding.  We learn that the eldest son is trying to get work but he can't, either.  And we learn that Luis has nice kids--kids he would certainly want to protect.

As we know, however, he may not be able to protect them.  And that is the crux of our story.

Marta, her dad, and two crew members.

The final scene, which we had hoped to film this weekend but could not because our star had to go off to Milan (Italy) to sing, is one in which we will see how some people are perfectly willing to take advantage of those in trouble.  We will also see something that I find shocking:  in Spain, when you lose your home because you can't pay your mortgage (something that is happening more and more these days), not only do you become homeless but in addition, you still are legally required to repay that loan.

This means that the banks make out like bandits.  They get your home and, if you ever find work again, they get your money.  Your wages are garnished.

Ah, our wonderful director, yours truly (Eve A. Ma).

And there you have it for today.

THE NEXT POST will be about the completed and soon-to-be-released double CD of flamenco cante (singing) of Antonio de la Malena.

The banker as speculator and villain

In addition to using Domino to put a human face onto the economic crisis, I´m using it to express my own personal ideas about some of the causes of the crisis and some of the economic problems I observe in Spain.  This has led me to create various scenes with bankers.

In brief, I think a lot of the cause of the crisis is economic speculation, especially by banks and others involved in financing real estate.  I also think the leaders of this speculation, and those who bear a lot of the responsibility for the crisis, are banks and other financial institutions in the United States.

Of course I know that this is not a terribly original idea, but ...

Ok, so how have I used Domino to illustrate some of this?

Well, there´s the scene we recently shot that I call "the banker Miguel in the bar."

Here we all are together.  The two "bankers" are wearing suits.

In this scene, we find banker Miguel (the banker that our hero goes to when he asks for a loan) in a café/bar, drinking a cup of coffee.  In comes an acquaintance, the banker Rodolfo.  (I have fun choosing names for all these people.)  Rodolfo works for a rival bank.  He points out to Miguel that Miguel´s bank is in all the newspapers today because their major project, a huge complex they were financing in the "southern sector," has collapsed.

And it seems that Rodolfo and his buddies had expected it to fail all along.  It was (says Rodolfo) massively over-capitalized, it was relying on a shady construction company, etc., etc..

I´m not going to tell you any more.  You´ll just have to watch Domino when it comes out.

Here is Nicolás Montoya (our "banker Miguel") playing a Roman sergeant.

But I will say that this scene ALSO helps explain why banker Miguel loses his temper in the bank in the subsequent scene when our hero, Luis, comes in to ask how his loan process is coming along.

Poor Luis.

And a note:  banker Miguel is played by Nicolás Montoya (who also has a role in the current popular television series, Bandoleras) while banker Rodolfo is played by Manuel Oteo Barranio.  The scene takes place in Peña Recreativa "el Toke" and thank you to José Carlos Ruiz Suarez for lending it to us as well as playing the part of the bartender.

Since we mention him here, I´ll also remind everyone that Luis is played by Antonio de la Malena.

OUR NEXT POST will be about shooting the final scenes.