by Daniel Muñoz
(October 2000)

Chano Dominguez

A native of Cádiz, this musician is one of the most popular artists to work in collaboration with other styles of music. Latin, jazz, and flamenco surges forth from his hands with absolute ease. His appearance in the film "Calle 54" by Fernando Trueba has caused many music enthusiasts to become interested in his music, open and seductive, and difficult to classify.

Having been born in Cádiz is one of the most outstanding characteristics of your music.

There's no doubt about that, with all the influences I've had around me. My father was a great flamenco aficionado, and I used to hear flamenco at home. When you're surrounded by flamenco artists, it stays in your head. I've never studied flamenco in an analytical way; the music that I've learned is jazz and modern music.

Have you studied in a conservatory?

No, I've always learned things on my own.

Did you play guitar?

Flamenco guitar was my first instrument.

Contests are always highly criticized. You were the winner of a few contests. What's your opinion of them?

That always makes you feel good, and it gives you energy to go on, but, those prizes that I won in the 1980's, they gave me strength to go on; they were awards from the Ministry of Culture, but they didn't follow up on it or anything.

How'd you switch over to the piano?

We used to play in a church on Sunday, and there was a harmonium. I started to transpose the chords, and that's how I started. I bought my first piano when I was 24-I used to just play with synthesizers-, but I realized that I really wanted to play piano. Keyboards are something secondary. You can play keyboards well and not be a good pianist, but it works the other way around.

What's it like for you to work with synthesizers?

I still play with them. I've got a studio set up at my house, and I do a lot of things there.

In my opinion, your fusion of different kinds of music sounds really natural. I can't really explain why.

I think that fusion has more to do with the people involved than the music itself: people that have had some experiences in their lives; that are marked by things that they've done. That makes them behave one way or another.

I guess that this kind of fusion depends on where you live; on what kind of people are around you.

And it depends on the people that you've worked with, in flamenco, pop, jazz, and other styles.

Chano Domínguez

A flamenco pianist can't have the same references as a guitarist...

My references have been guitarists and, of course, singers.

Do you look for melodies in the voice?

That's where I look most, because the piano references I used in the past weren't very useful. There's a great pianist called D. José Romero who teaches in the Seville conservatory. He took a classical approach to flamenco that was very interesting. He was the only one that I thought was useful, and, apart from that, I haven't found much of anything else.

So, you've always been looking for your own solutions to incorporate the piano to flamenco.

When you get into something that you really like, and you want to learn, it's not complicated. I mean, it is complicated, but you're so much into it that the only thing you do is work, playing and trying new things.

Sometimes piano is criticized in flamenco just for being a piano, not because of what the pianist is doing with the music.

Piano wasn't a flamenco instrument, but there were perfectly natural reasons why, sixty years ago, nobody gathered around a candle with a guitar and a piano. There was clapping, guitar, and voice, and that's it. But nowadays, there are a lot of people doing things with piano in flamenco. Even the most conservative traditionalists can have a piano nearby.

You did a tour with Cuban musicians and flamenco musicians. Is the communication really that easy between flamenco and Cuban music?

I think there's a similar root, especially between singing son and flamenco singing. In Cuban son, you're always trying to sing outside of the natural notes, and, in flamenco, the same thing happens with el cante: You're always trying to look for that upbeat, and you let the natural notes sound for themselves.

On your latest recording, Morente's collaboration is interesting.

To tell you the truth, it's something that I wanted to do a long time ago. It was practically a proposition of Enrique's. We'd talked a long ways back about doing an adaptation of the malagueña del Mellizo. We finally got into a studio, we found some verse, and we did the recording.

How do you compose?

I use the computer like a notepad. I compose in a simple way, through a melody, or a jazz structure adapted to a flamenco rhythm. My compositions are structures for improvisation. They're designed to be developed live.

You've been playing a lot with Javier Colina (upright bass) and Guillermo Mc Guill (drums)

There's been a new generation of jazz musicians around for a while now that is really well-prepared. When I was 16 or 17, it was hard to find sheet music and recordings; and now there are schools like "El Taller de Músicos" or the "Escuela de Música Creativa" that are a big help in getting together all the information that I couldn't find when I started to study jazz.

What recordings would you recommend to a jazz fan who wants to check out flamenco?

For someone that has never heard flamenco, and for people that say that it sounds like the singer is crying, the best thing would be to listen to people that have mixed flamenco with other cultures. There are recordings of Camarón that are great for approaching flamenco, because they're done from a pop approach; or recordings of Enrique Morente. I think "Omega" is perfect. What you can't do, if you've never listened to flamenco, is to jump straight into a petenera of Niña de los Peines, but with some other kinds of things you can start off little by little.

And the other way around, approaching jazz?

I feel that, as a musician, you can never close yourself off to other kinds of music. You have to be open to jazz, to classical... In the same sense, maybe it'd be hard to start off with Billie Holiday, but you can check out Weather Report, Return to Forever, more spectacular things. I got into jazz through groups like that.

What do you think about the attraction to flamenco of musicians like Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, or Coltrane? They all used fragments of rhythms and melodies that approach flamenco.

They must have been surprised at some of the flamenco that they heard. It happens a lot. I've met a lot of jazz musicians that are surprised by flamenco in Spain, and when they get back to New York, they get into a studio to do a bulería.

Daniel Muñoz
Translation: Norman Paul Kliman