MANOLO
GAS, piano
FERNANDO LÓPEZ, guitar
BRUNO VIDAL, bass
MARIANO RICO, drums y percusion
PEDRO ITURRALDE, tenor sax
JOSÉ LUIS MEDRANO OLEA, trumpet
E. SÁNCHEZ, L. JOUVE, A. ORTIZ, M. MELGUIZO, string quarter
BELTRÁN MONER, syntesizers
CUCO PÉREZ, accordion
JORGE URIBE, director of singing
The conductor and arranger of this recording was Beltran Moner.
Recorded at Musigrama (Madrid) with Pepe Loeches, in 1984.
Cover artwork by Alberto Corazón.
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The voice of Amancio
Prada, which emerges from a burning lyricism, forces you to close your eyes, and very soon
a distant memory, of a Renaissance complexion, fills your interior light with poplars and
the flight of falcons, with embroidering maidens and the sound of illuminated monks. A
lark sings in the cypress of the abbey. Hunters in doublets track woodcocks. There are
deer wounded in the green brooks, the bubbling streams are still virginal, the herds are
full of the long lowing sounds of silence, and everything smells of hay and wholewheat
bread. What is about this young, blue man? You could say what everyone does, that Amancio
Prada is a troubadour: you can imagine him at the foot of the window lattice, in the
ancient stone squares or camped outside the city walls in the wagon of the travelling
comedians, plunged in a solitude which reflects the fleeces of the animals and the anvils
of the blacksmith, even if he is now on the stage of a theatre packed with a modern
audience singing sweet anarchic things by García Calvo. But it doesn´t matter. A simple
line by Lope de Vega takes him back to his origins. A Gallician sung canticle, a Christmas
carol, a lullaby or a sonatina by Juan Ramón Jiménez take charge of him once again for
the imagination of olden times. The voice of Amancio Prada, lightly burnt by mysticism at
its peak, recites the music, makes the melody spring forth in a syllabic and crystalline
way. There is something of the codex in it, of the book of hours or of the chant of the
palace. This young man from El Bierzo, with his clear face, the son of agricultural
workers, who sang as a small child in the church choir and was a singer with village
orchestras, aired his aesthetic modernity for the first time in Paris amidst the mythology
of that May; he came back from there to the land of cattle herding, a man of a gentle
rebelliousness possessed by spirituality. Since then, he has been working hard at
extracting the very soul, in its very purest tonality, from the sound of the cultural and
popular memory. Ancient and modern poets have tied their cadences to a spotless voice
which forces you to close your eyes. Amancio Prada sings, and birds from medieval times
fly out, and, after each song, the audiences who pack the recital have the taste of
pomegranate juice on their lips.
Manuel Vicent
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