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Francisco Javier Ruibal de Flores Calero was born in Puerto de Santa Mar?a (C?diz)
in 1955. He is self-taught musician, professional
since 1978, whose compositions echo
a range of cultures from both nearby in the distant past and far away
in the present day. The strong presence of flamenco gives them a rich
rhythm and harmony base on top of which there is an array of music
styles from places such as: Istanbul, Alexandria, Granada, C?diz, and the Caribbean, all together creating a new music.
Javier Ruibal writes all the lyrics. They tell of places and characters both
imagined and real. He draws his inspiration
from his love of life and beautiful women, resulting in lyrics dripping
with fantastic tales and evocative Spanish poems of love. He sings about
exotic Arabic gardens, lost souls who are
inspired and saved by lovers, outbreaks of rage, the strong and the
magical, bellydancers in Paris, flamencos in Manhattan, trains and
boats, women and ports, African queens, sailors on the town, blue
roses, the water and moon in Tangiers, all included in the same wide, unending
landscape.
Ruibal acknowledges that he is not a Flamenco singer, even though he uses
Flamenco forms. He defines himself as a songwriter who loves to perform live. A
good opportunity to watch him live is on his 2005 release Lo que me dice tu
boca, a CD+DVD, which includes 17 previously unreleased songs recorded live
at Madrid's venerable Galileo club, and a documentary, Lo que me dicen tus
Ojos.
British agent
David Flower wrote the following article about Javier Ruibal. We reproduce it
here, courtesy of World Music Network
Javier Ruibal ? Secrets and Lives
We all have our secrets; little-known places we like to return to, a
recipe, book or story we may or may not wish to share with others.
Javier Ruibal had been one of mine. During many visits to Spain, I?ve
amassed a large collection of delights and duds of Spanish music, and
it was some time in the 1980s that I came across this wonderful
singer-songwriter from C?diz. I can?t remember how; maybe a lucky dip,
a tip-off or following in some musician?s footprints. The sad truth is,
ninety-nine per cent of Spanish music is simply not released outside of
Spain, and even the best shops abroad tend not to stock the more
interesting releases. Like practically all music sung in a non-English
language, there is little call for it in the Anglo-American-dominated
music business. For some reason, instrumental music suffers the same
fate. But, just as the occasional writer writing in a language other
than English manages to break through to a fully international
readership ? Garc?a M?rquez, Kundera, Calvino, for instance ? so is it
with music.
There I was, having my one-way relationship with Javier and never
thinking to try and promote him. Then, in 2001, a Spanish DJ passed
Javier?s new record to some movers in the world music scene in the UK,
which led to appearances on UK radio and press, and some live shows.
But things seldom move far without there being a record available. So
here we have it: a digest, a primer, the bluffer?s guide to the untold
and clandestine delights of the charmer from C?diz ? or more
specifically, songs selected from his last two releases together with a
new recording especially for this release of ?La Flor De Estambul??
The renowned record producer and thinker Brian Eno was one of those who
came to hear Javier Ruibal play at Ronnie Scott?s during that UK visit
in late 2001. He brought along his teenage daughter, who declared
afterwards that if any man sang such songs to her she would marry him
immediately. Javier has this enviable effect on women. You might say
it?s a fair return, in that women are his primary source of
inspiration. His lyrics are peppered with appreciations of beautiful
women longed for, won and lost, or simply (and hotly) admired from a
distance ? he has something of the flamenco?s bemused helplessness in
the face, and hands, of the slippery charms of women. Just what chance
does an honest man stand?
Beyond this, Javier sings of and to women in a wider metaphorical
sense, in order to express his love of life, using imagery sifted from
African, Arabic and Caribbean landscapes and picaresque characters both
real and imagined, to sing of life?s dreams, pleasures, romance, magic
and heartbreak. Each song is its own miniature, the music beautifully
arranged to evocative and measured Spanish love poetry (and, what is
more, beautifully sung and enunciated, for rarely do you hear a Spanish
lyric so clearly delivered). Spanish works so well in this way ? we
might expect it more from Persian poetry or Indian epics of old or,
closer to home, Lorca or Albert?. It has a style and sensibility that
our more brutal Anglo-Saxon language does not easily encourage, or at
least you?d have to be a poet of considerable powers to translate it
acceptably. This problem affects so much Spanish writing. They will use
three or four adjectives where one might be used in English, set in
florid and playful sentence structures. For example, someone wrote of
Javier that his songs have ?echoes and sounds reminiscent of very
distant cultures of today, and very close ones in the ancient past?.
You know what they mean, and it reads beautifully in Spanish, but
sounds clumsily extravagant when put into English!
Javier writes that Contrabando ? recorded near Tarifa in April 1997 and
from which eight songs are taken ? ?was recorded with the light of the
Straits [of Gibraltar] flooding in through the window of the studio,
with Halley?s Comet passing by every evening to draw a close to the
day?s sessions. It was all enjoyable and relaxing, as it is in C?diz.?
He still lives in his home town of Puerto de Santa Mar?a, across the
C?diz bay ? sea, sun, fantastic food and wine, one of the ancient
cities of Europe, a major centre of flamenco, beautiful women galore,
the greatest carnival in Europe (another secret, with a satirical
poetry tradition all its own, of which Javier is a big fan), with the
dreamlands of Africa within hazy view. Javier, his wife Pilar and two
children have a great lifestyle (when we visited, there was time for
one of those epic four-hour seafood and wine lunches where you emerge
blinking into the sun at 5.30 in the afternoon), and he seems relaxed
about his prospects for the greater fame and acknowledgement that,
particularly, his musical peers in Spain feel he so deserves. If more
and more people catch on to his work, then great, but he?s not going to
lose sleep over it. Maybe, way back, he would have been the court
musician to Scheherazade. Who knows? But the secret, if not the genie,
is now out of the bottle. We will see where it leads.
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