Rosario Flores: “‘De Ley’ was the album that really saved my life”

Madrid, Sep 25 (EFE) .- On the 30th anniversary of her first album, the Spanish singer Rosario Flores receives awards -Latin Grammy for Musical Excellence 2022- with projects such as a documentary that will reveal her personal intimacy and and an album to celebrate that “De Ley” (1992) with “national and international artists”.

“It was the record that really saved my life. He arrived when he was 26 years old, but he wanted to do it since he was 16. I waited for my moment, because I came from a very popular family and I couldn’t go wrong. I couldn’t try to see what would happen, ”recalls the artist in an interview with Efe about that debut that marked a stylistic revolution and her consecration.

With emblematic songs like “Mi gato”, “Sabor, gusto”, “Mía Mama” or “De ley”, it was the result of years of “struggle” to find a personal style that combined, for example, a funky bass with the Catalan rumba of her origins, as a good daughter of Antonio Flores “El Pescaílla”.

“It took me a long time to get to that mix, but when I found it I put all the temperament that I had since I was a child, when I got nervous attacks from not knowing what to do with so much energy”, she remembers amused after working side by side with her brother Antonio and producer Fernando Illán to find his mark.

If she hadn’t succeeded, she says she didn’t have a plan B. “I wanted to be an artist since I was little and I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t sing or dance. Maybe I would have gone to help people, things for humanity to take away that energy that I have, ”she points out.

In music, he follows his almost 59 years, a number with no apparent correlation with the person who still electrifies stages. “I come from parents who were an explosive wave and I am not very aware of how old I am,” says Lola Flores’s daughter.

LATIN GRAMMY AA MUSICAL EXCELLENCE 2022

With thirteen albums on the market until “I tell you everything and I don’t tell you anything” (2021), the 2020 Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sports has recently been joined by the Latin Grammy for Musical Excellence awarded by the Latin Recording Academy for his contribution.

“It’s very rewarding. I think of everything I have worked and done, how much I have also been alone and how much people love me, who have stayed there all that time, ”he celebrates, however unable to express what he thinks his differential value has been. : “I have only made songs to make people feel with my art”.

He has achieved this on this and the other side of the Atlantic, something curious considering the strong Spanish roots of his music. “Latinos are like us. I’m flamenco and they really like our soniquete, because we’re all hot people. We like to live and we work for it”, he says.

A DOCUMENTARY AND A NEW ALBUM IN THE FUTURE

Whoever has used flamenco, rumba, funky, r&b and even a bit of the bata de cola, in tribute to his family, does not live anchored in the past and already savors his plans for the future.

“I have a lot to explore. Music is changing a lot and new things come out every day. Look what has changed in the last 10 years. I’m interested in all the good things that come along and being an inspiration for young people, like when C. Tangana called me”, she stands out proudly when referring to the loan of “How do you want me to love you” that she made to “El madrileño” for his song “I’m never here”

He reveals that among his new projects is a documentary about his personal and artistic life that is currently in negotiations.

“I have always been shy when it comes to showing my life. Since I was very well known since I was little, I was very close to the surface. It was very fragile. That’s why people don’t know my people, neither my house nor how I compose. I would like them to know how all those songs have turned out for me and how I have lived my life, ”she argues.

He is also thinking about an upcoming album that in his opinion “is going to be powerful”, with the illusion of the 30 years of “De Ley” and together with “national and international artists”, he reports.

Javier Herrero