Carlos Cano

José Carlos Cano Fernández (Granada, January 28, 1946 - ibidem, December 19, 2000), artistically known as Carlos Cano, was a Spanish singer-songwriter, composer and poet who recovered relatively forgotten traditional styles of the south of the peninsula such as the popular trovo, and especially the copla, which he recovered to make it contemporary. He was and continues to be a democratic benchmark during the Spanish Transition and his music crossed borders, becoming a link between Spanish culture and Latin American culture. Among his friends, the singer María Dolores Pradera stands out, with whom he performed many of his songs on numerous occasions, which achieved great fame.

His versatility as a composer, capable of writing cuecas, tangos, boleros, rumbas, pasodobles, sambas, lullabies, coplas, carnival murgas or intimate songs, accompanied by just his voice and guitar or by an orchestra, together with the The quality and emotionality of his texts make Cano a prominent figure in the Spanish music scene. Among his best-known songs include "Verde, blanca y verde", "María la Portuguesa", "Ay Candela", "La murga de los currelantes", "Tango de las madres locas", "Que desespero", "Habaneras de Cádiz”, “A glass of green tea” and “The metamorphosis”.

Biography

Carlos Cano was born in Granada on January 28, 1946. In his youth, like so many thousands of Grenadians, he emigrated to Switzerland and Germany looking for work, an experience that, together with precariousness and inequalities in Granada, would deeply mark him and which would be reflected in his work from his first song, La miseria, or in El Salustiano, where he sang of poverty and sadness at having to leave his land to exchange it for the gray industrial landscapes of northern Europe, more economically favored.

He was born in Granada and loved it, as reflected in all his work, but his heart contained more loves, such as Seville or Cádiz, as he left on record in the immortal Habanera, a beautiful Cadiz anthem that he created with his friend Antonio Burgos.

In 1969, together with Juan de Loxa, Enrique Moratalla and Antonio Mata, he created the Canción del Sur Manifesto and began to sing at the University of Granada, accompanied by his guitar and his characteristic tremulous voice, which would become one of their hallmarks. He does so using a Republican family memory as a reference, since his grandfather had been shot in Granada, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (where he was a captain in the El Fargue gunpowder factory). His first period, that of the Spanish Transition, is markedly political and his songs join the general demand for a democratic Spain. During his stay in Paris, in 1972 on the occasion of Unesco's homage to Federico García Lorca, he met Enrique Morente, Lluis Llach and Ian Gibson. At the end of 1975, Carlos Cano seeks to broaden his horizons and abandons the manifesto due to disagreements with the rest of the members.

In the eighties he turned towards intimacy due to the disenchantment caused after seeing what the dreams of the mid-1970s were left with, and records revolved around him such as If all doors were open, De la luna y el sol or Through oblivion, during this period he broadened his style to include tangos, boleros or rumbas while creating very careful musical compositions, such as El King Al-Mutamid says goodbye to Seville, with Arabic influences and whose lyrics are taken from the verses of Al-Mutamid, the poet king of Seville. Subsequently, with Cuaderno de coplas and Quédate con la copla, he vindicated the value of the Spanish copla as a popular song, managing to dust it off after its misused use by Francoism that had led to its contempt for progressive modernity, which was ignorant of its history. Cano was the first architect of this claim, later continued by artists such as Martirio or Pasión Vega who in 2014 dedicated an album to him Pasión por Cano , where he collaborates with an unpublished song Antonio Martínez Ares.

In 1998 he put music to the poems of Diván del Tamarit, the last book by Federico García Lorca, for which he has the collaboration of Leo Brouwer, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Curro Romero, the Orfeón Donostiarra, Paco Ibáñez, Santiago Auserón or Marina Rossell.

In 1995 he was admitted to the San Cecilio Hospital for an aortic aneurysm, a genetic disease that also caused the death of his mother (1986) or his brother Javier (2013), being transferred by plane-ambulance to New York on the direct recommendation of Dr. Ramiro Rivera López, one of the leading experts in cardiovascular surgery in Spain, who traveled expressly from Madrid to Granada to recommend his transfer. He suffered an aortic dissection that was operated on by Doctor Graham Griepp at the Mount Sinai clinic in New York. Doctor Valentín Fuster, head of cardiology at the Hospital, told him a phrase that would be premonitory: “Carlos, I can change your heart, but you have 'the pipes' (referring to the aorta and its ramifications) very badly". After the incident he would comment "I was born again in New York, province of Granada."

After the birth of his son Pablo, the result of his relationship with Eva Sánchez, he projects the work Así cantan los niños de Cuba, recorded in the Abdala studios with the voices of boys and girls from the Solfa Choir from the Schola Cantorum Coralina along with those of the winners of the island's children's song festivals. The album, nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2001, supported the non-governmental organization Proyecto Mundo and the José Martí Pioneers Organization of Cuba, and features a duet by Carlos with Compay Segundo singing “Guantanamera”.

After five years of acknowledgments and an important production, with his last two albums, he manages to bring the copla to musical perfection and record a series of concerts with the pianist Benjamín Torrijo for the production of his third live album, with a selection of his best songs.

In the year 2000, the aneurysm was reproduced in the seat of an airplane that was taking him to Madrid. A deputy who was traveling on the plane detected the seriousness of Carlos Cano and an ambulance would take him to the San Cecilio University Hospital, the Clinical Hospital of Granada, where he was admitted and intervened for more than 7 hours by the team of Dr. Eduardo Ros, and after a tense wait of three weeks, he died on December 19 in his hometown.

In 2001 Let Dreams Sail was published, an album of duets with various artists who performed their greatest hits.

Discography

Study

• Hardly (1976)
• In the light of the Songs (1977)
• Granada Chronicles (1978)
• From the Moon and the Sun (1980)
• The rooster of Morón (1981)
• If all doors were opened (1983)
• Cuaderno de coplas (1985)
• Through oblivion (1986)
• Stay with the copla (1987)
• Moon of April (1988)
• Ritmo de vida (1989)
• Mestizo (1992)
• Way of being (1994)
• The Color of Life (1996)
• Diván del Tamarit (1998)
• The copla, sentimental memory (1999)
• Lost and other flanges (2000)
• Manifesto song of the south, of memory against oblivion (1968-2004)

Live

• Live (1990)
• Something special (1995)
• Last tour (2012)

Compilation

• Chiclanera and other great successes (1996)
• Great songs (1997)
• To ship the dreams (2001)
• My 30 Great Songs (2001)
• A life of copla (2006)
• Viva Carlos Cano (2020) with the participation of his son Pablo Cano

Acknowledgments

• 2001: Predilect son of Andalusia in posthumous title.
• The Town Hall of Granada dedicated a square to the neighborhood of Realejo. In Cadiz it has another one in front of La Caleta. Cordoba also has a street with its name. Subsequently, the town hall of Salobreña also dedicated a square.