The first thing was a debut so radiant it consumed its creators. The self-titled album released by Veneno in 1977 has, for some years now, been hailed by a large part of the Spanish music press as the most remarkable record in its particular history of pop. When it was released, it wasn't appreciated by either critics or the public, so it didn't define the music of its time but rather its future and ours: its influence continues to loom like one of those insanely mathematical-quantum perspective crucifixes painted by Dalí.
Its main architect was Kiko Veneno, He was born in 1952 in Figueres. His father, a soldier named López, born in Melilla, had been stationed in Sidamon in the Plana de Urgel region of Lleida to hunt down the last resistance fighters in that area, and it was there that he met his mother, a local girl who worked in a family business. A subsequent transfer of his father took the two-year-old boy to the Bay of Cádiz and then, during the last major flood of the Guadalquivir River, to the Nervión district of Seville.
Except for a brief stint in Madrid, José María López stayed there for good. He went to the University of Seville to study Philosophy and learned a great deal, especially during the student protests where, according to witnesses, he was one of the most confrontational (while his companion Alfonso Guerra left the scene when the police arrived).
It was around this time that the white streak in his bangs earned him the nickname Kiko (a second derivative of "crow": first "Kiriki" and from there to "Kiko"). His political commitment was fully ignited. His first public appearance was during a university strike in 1971. Years later, in verses like those of "Canción antinacionalista zamorana de Veneno" (Antinationalist Song of Zamora by Veneno), the commune of Agustín García Calvo, his pamphlets and gatherings with language as something belonging to everyone and no one and as a zone of rebellion, and his poems with paradoxical verses like "La gracia nevando" (Grace Snowing), which Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio sang, would still resonate.
The initiatory journey
In 1967, fifteen-year-old José María discovered Dylan and felt he had found his path. He heard the maestro Zimmerman in January 1974 in Houston, during a formative seven-month trip through the US that returned him to Seville a complete hippie. With his backpack full of counterculture and a restless mind, he threw himself into music and poetry to change reality. And he did so by focusing on what was closest to him: the taverns and hidden corners of the city and countryside, the everyday news in the newspaper, the characters in the neighborhood, urban legends, proverbs, satirical songs, and everything popular.
That includes suburban music and, of course, flamenco. Interestingly, Kiko had begun to pay attention to it after his trip to America, thanks to a Jewish guitarist and Agustín Ríos, a Gypsy from Morón whom he met in San Francisco and who shared his fascination with Diego del Gastor. In 1975, he met Raimundo Amador, and the first circle was complete. The bohemian artist and countercultural intellectual from the middle-class streets began to forge a connection with the young Gypsies of the 3,000 Homes neighborhood, who were also searching, in their own way and from their own circumstances, for a countercultural approach.
For two years, the trio played until they found chords that no one (not even Smash, Triana, Lole y Manuel, or El Sonido Caño Roto) had ever connected. What emerged from those months making music and a few days recording it haphazardly in a Madrid studio is a flamenco and acoustic rock offering with progressive and pataphysical undertones. The result was an undeniable musical stew, both as a whole and track by track, cooked up with amateurism and anarchy. There, Kiko's rebellious, streetwise, and surreal poetics, transformed into singer-songwriter fare, bathed in psychedelic blues and Dylan-esque influences, floats above the Amador brothers' guitar work, which blends the rapture of Hendrix or Clapton with the panting of flamenco.
The three were joined by Ricardo Pachón (who had just finished recording three albums with Lole y Manuel), adding his own touch to the production, and other musicians in top form, such as Antonio Romero "El Tacita" on drums. Perhaps there's a simple theory that explains the unique character of this project: while punk was emerging in Madrid with Kaka de Luxe and in Catalonia with La Banda Trapera del Río, Kiko and the Amador brothers were stirring it up in Seville with their own particular style.
Skipping the flamenco axis
But almost no one paid any attention to the gem of a record, and the internal rift soon followed. They broke up in 1978—almost at the same time as the Sex Pistols imploded—after a heated argument between Kiko and Raimundo at a concert in Barcelona. After the split, the Amador brothers, who changed their name to Pata Negra, secluded themselves with Pachón at his house in Umbrete and recorded Street guitars. Shortly after, Kiko met there with the producer to brainstorm and prepare the album that forever shifted flamenco's focus, the culmination of a process of revitalization that has been far more significant than its historical continuity. Kiko's participation in The Legend of Time Camarón's was essential.
Alongside Pachón, he provided direction to the journey, selecting poetry by others guided by an intuition of the existence of a certain universal flamenco literature (Lorca, Omar Khayyam), and also his own musical ideas, a blend of blues and flamenco, in addition to some complete compositions (the historic rumba “Volando voy”). Kiko Veneno is one of the masterminds behind a milestone he already knew would be vital and historic. But once again, it received only lukewarm reviews from critics and was a complete failure in terms of public reception.
In 1980, married and with a child, he sought refuge from the disaster on the endless beaches of Conil, where he set up a beach bar to make ends meet. While serving drinks to Joselito, whom he would later immortalize in his song, he began a long decade of musical exodus. Almost nothing he did in the following 12 years took off. Meanwhile, at the height of the Spanish pop explosion and new waves driven by as much talent as payola and public money, many others tasted the fruits of success. He made his least known and least acclaimed albums, yet they are extraordinarily worthwhile. These were years marked by a lack of confidence, a complete absence of opportunities for professionalization, and attempts to adapt to contemporary trends. But they were also years in which he wrote a handful of songs that continue to grow in stature, becoming rare testimonies of paths not taken, cries of modernist inspiration and contemporaneity filtered through a completely personal vision, firmly rooted in a singular poetic narrative of the everyday.
Kiko Veneno's first LP, I'll be a mechanic for you, It was recorded in Madrid in 1981. It was conceived as a comic-album, although it was ultimately not released as such. In contrast to Poison, there are those who perceive in I'll be a mechanic for you A certain sense of abandonment of the street anarchy, shantytown life, and subversion of the previous decade is palpable. But the album is pure Kiko Veneno, a collection of highly suggestive tracks both compositionally and lyrically, with songs that continue his earlier work (“Más al sur,” “Ratitas divinas,” “Tú mismo”) and others that offer a lucid glimpse into his present. Eroticism (“Será mecánico por ti”), Almodóvar-esque and Vainico-esque realism (“Quítate la bata,” “Un catalán muy fino,” “Farmacia de guardia,” “La catástrofe mayor”), and children's stories for adults (“Pata palo,” “Noé”) appear on this funky, flamenco-infused rock album that explains what's happening on the streets and in contemporary Spanish music as well as any other contemporary work, while simultaneously distancing itself from mere trends.
As in the maxi-single of funky, mischievous, southern technopop, with Martirio on backing vocals, If you, if I, A small album, as visionary as it is misunderstood, whose biggest flaw is the Veneno label (since it bears little relation to the band that recorded that debut, even though Kiko and Raimundo are on it). The title track is extremely catchy, although perhaps the most curious artifact is "El deportista por la ventana" (The Athlete Through the Window), which seems like a fantastic, all-out response to Radio Futura's "Escuela de calor" (School of Heat). (Perhaps this isn't a gratuitous connection: If you, if I It was recorded and mixed in the spring of 1984 by Jesús Gómez, the same engineer who had just finished helping Radio Futura with The law of the desert / The law of the sea (at the same Doubletronics studios in Madrid.) It is more pronounced in the songs he composed around 1985, during his participation inThe Crystal Ball. The electro-funk swing with bursts of flamenco-blues guitar in the masterful "Me siento tan feliz," the even more electro and funk-infused tracks "No adivino nada" and "Desaprender," with their flirtations with hip hop, seem today to be the beginning of a path that, had it been traveled with determination and support, would probably have led to who knows what musical territory.
In 1986 he began working as coordinator of cultural activities for the Seville Provincial Council, where he remained until he found his path to success six years later. Office work in the mornings and music in the afternoons. Before the decade was out, he released two albums that have been vilified. But even Little wild one (1987), produced and signed by himself, nor The brave people (1989) are the catastrophes some have chosen to portray, and Kiko isn't so far removed from what he once was and what he became later. On the first album, he erred with arrangements that confuse jazz fusion, Afro-funk, and rap with a complete and irreverent lack of support for his voice and melody, which at times are disconnected from the other instruments (when not downright out of tune). The songwriting also lacks polish. These songs resonate with their time, much like those of Ciudad Jardín, El Último de la Fila, or Radio Futura, but they don't reach the standards of refinement and polish of those Spanish groups that were truly successful.
Blind search
The brave people, Produced by Kiko with the help of Carlos Martos, the album features potentially huge songs, but they're watered down again, diminished by a narrow focus, flawed sound, and a distorted vocal track that doesn't help. They say it wasn't properly mixed, and it shows. Throughout this period, the influence of Radio Futura's later work is evident. Modern music, That is to say, sophisticated lovers of Afro funk and Caribbean pirates with a more or less punk past like The Stranglers, The Clash of London Calling And Sandinista or Talking Heads. But Kiko Veneno isn't afrontman like Santiago Auserón, nor that kind of B-series Veneno that records The brave people It's an established band like Radio Futura, but even the production commitment isn't enough. It's broken.
Truth and beauty can be found in Kiko's blind search for new horizons in the 80s, a natural escape into that street of the universal world, that everyday life, and those intimate moments. Although there's no doubt that this decade of not finding his footing, of trying and failing to find his own way of communicating with the public, was a second fatal blow that Kiko Veneno had to overcome.
He did so precisely with the help of Santiago Auserón, the man behind the scenes. Auserón played a decisive role in helping Kiko solidify his songs and polish them until they shone like gold. He then encouraged him to work with the producer who had been so instrumental in Radio Futura's rise to fame, the Englishman Joe Dworniak. Thinking of it as a gamble, Kiko went to London with some musicians from Seville and a collection of songs that, with excellent sound and production direction, brought rumba and Andalusian music closer to Africa through the Caribbean. He came out on top.Sing a little song That is, 15 years later Poison, another decisive, historic album, with songs about characters (“Lobo López”, “En un Mercedes blanco”, “Joselito”), comic strips and stories (“Superhéroes de barrio”) and ballads so beautiful that they become one of their greatest strengths (“Me siento en la cama”, “Salta la rana”, “Reír y llorar”).
With his voice perfectly in place, his tempos measured, and his melodies carefully crafted, Kiko's resonant smile reappeared—that something in his voice that brings joy and humor to the songs, which here once again prevailed even amidst the bitterness of life's destructive experiences (addictions, heartbreak, bewilderment). Ten tracks that embodied the compositional experience of 20 years, a collection of compelling lyrics, ballads and folk songs, double-length songs, inspired intros and codas, all distilled from a unique brand of folk wisdom.
After the final and decisive boost from the Auserón effect, the 1993 Spanish tour "Kiko Veneno and Juan Perro are coming to sing," thanks to which the venomous little song toured Spain and reached a wider audience, began another chapter for our protagonist: the encounter with the immediate recognition that had been denied him until then. Riding the momentum of good reviews, strong sales, and concerts, in 1995 Kiko reunited with Dworniak, resulting in the LP That's a very nice thing about affection., a more Caribbean and somewhat more flamenco-blues natural continuation than the previous one.
In this collection, where the remarkable takes precedence over the sublime, a masterful adaptation of “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” stands out, solidifying that long-standing relationship with Dylan (already evident in “Los delincuentes” and “El pueblo guapeao,” and continuing in “La chispa”). And above all, one of the undisputed jewels in the crown of Kiko Veneno's entire songbook shines through: the penetrating love story with enigmatic resonances that shoot in various directions (Lorca and Dalí, his own parents), “Casa cuartel,” one of his ballads of profound emotion and beautiful melody, poetry, and a kind of flamenco or African-influenced “tristalegría.”.
Towards the third comeback
It happened here that, reinforced by the reception of the public and critics and the professionalization of music, Kiko entered a phase of stability that seemed to lead his music to a certain conservatism and repetition of winning plays. Punta Paloma y The chicken family They're not terrible, and their strategies and sound are very close to their two previous albums. They're acoustic, rhythmic works with touches of blues-rock and African influences, based on everyday stories that seem to come from a familiar folklore. They contain some good tracks like "Por todos los santos" (For All Saints), "Te llevo dentro" (I Carry You Inside), "Coge la guitarra" (Take the Guitar), and "Tengo el corazón de tinta" (My Heart Is Made of Ink). But they feel stale.
His nods to the everyday life of ordinary people, the cartoonish stories on the street, the magical realism, the poetics of the seemingly trivial with which he had so aptly captured the passage of time, are like stickers, diluted into cliché and self-copying. In general, his melodies are less inspired, the shifts in register and the appropriation of other artists' songs are predictable and barely surprising. The production, which at one time helped to polish the gold, becomes repetitive and begins to sterilize the songs, making it difficult for them to grow on you with repeated listens. Perhaps it's that at this point, more was expected of him. Perhaps it's that he himself, caught up in the game, demanded another hit. And no one, not even Kiko himself, should be asked to do something like that.
This is the third comeback he's had to stage. His decline was partly due to serious disagreements with the record company. It's evident in the exhaustion of a formula, one whose curse good songwriters should avoid. As happened after Poison, Kiko became involved in other people's projects and it took him five years to publish anything that showed his recovery. It was in 2005 with The Invisible Man, a long album recorded in Seville more in his own style (although, in part, he had already recorded in this way) The chicken familyThe album opens with the artist invoking inspiration. He found it at numerous moments, along with renewed energy and joy. This is evident in solid songs like the enormous "Bilonguis" or "Mi morena," where Dylan reappears, influenced by Calamaro's touch, and where the mark of a certain fusion of street rock, flamenco-infused with Afro-Cuban rhythms, takes hold of "Contigo," "Nos estamos mudando," or "Pistachito," and of everything in general, despite good attempts at rock, such as "Los notas del derrumbe," or the Beatles-esque chamber arrangements of "Hoy no.".
And the compensation was confirmed in 2010 with People say. The best album since "El Cantecito," produced by Kiko Veneno with the help of his regular sound engineer, Jacobo Fernández, and with a crystal-clear mix by Joe Dworniak. It opens flawlessly with "La chispa," which serves as a metaphor for what characterizes the album, and from there it's always good; the structures and tempos work, everything is tailored to the voice, including the simplicity of a perfectly executed production with a predominance of acoustic and rhythmic-percussive instrumentation and a clear, weighty approach to African sounds. In "Dice la gente" (reminiscent of Toumani Diabaté) or in "Cadena de oro," he explores his declared passion for the living folklore of Mali and Senegal, already present in songs from the 80s and 90s (like "La canoa"). Something in the mature enthusiasm of this album is reminiscent at times of what Caetano Veloso has created.
Kiko Veneno received the Medal of Merit in Fine Arts that year and, continuing a virtuous cycle of recognition, the National Prize for Contemporary Music in 2012. In the last decade, the composer has reached his peak in terms of media attention and concert bookings. But these awards and professional consolidation have left him jaded. They haven't blinded him as perhaps happened in the aftermath of 1994. In his interviews, he pulls no punches when discussing the state of music and its industries, politics, or society. And his last four albums embody a capacity for disobedience and self-management that is perhaps comparable to that of the 1970s.
Spiral trajectory
Certainly, in terms of sound, his last two releases are the most interesting and daring since that frustration of the first half of the 1980s. In 2013 he released Feels like heat, an album with a level of inspiration almost equal to that of People say, In other words, very remarkable. It featured the brilliant production of Barcelona native Raül Fernández, Refree, who manages to give the sound a more painterly and varied touch, a tone that's both experimental and homespun, but very well executed. These more diffuse brushstrokes result in something musically very polished, while also leaving space for Kiko's personality to shine. He particularly excels in the lyrics, whose rebellious and denunciatory attitude blends with freshly baked poetry.
For example, in “Bad Luck”, in the euphoric “Life is Sweet”, in “Namaste”, in the electro revision of the Afro of “Babú” or in “Malagueña de San Juan de la Cruz”, where he adapts with careless swagger the Spiritual Canticle. He immediately published The untamed pepper, This album, a duet with Uruguayan artist Martín Buscaglia, exudes freedom. The songs were co-written under the influence of the 15M movement, following months of transatlantic communication and a brief meeting in Montevideo that lasted just under a month. The compositions (“Cuando,” “Don Perogrullo,” “América es más grande,” “Dos locos,” “Pescaíto enroscao”) are carefree, uninhibited, and joyful, imbued with a fresh, everyday quality that holds more significance than it initially appears. The project recently culminated in a tour where the two artists performed stripped down, playing guitars, small electronic and acoustic instruments (percussion, ukulele, trumpet, harmonica).
The Kiko we encounter in 2015 is at his peak: mature, wise, composed; a lyricist, poet, and philosopher of the streets, a solid and inspired composer. But above all, he is someone with much to offer and prove, who doesn't take refuge in comfort, nor does he become complacent or sleepy, but rather is driven by his restlessness and nonconformity. Over four decades dedicated to music, he has overcome, like few others, four major challenges: the unexpected good fortune and the face of grace, the treacherous road to elusive providence, sudden and overwhelming luck, and the final laurels buried in the gray years. Like a blazing meteor or fireball, Kiko Veneno has traced a non-linear, spiraling trajectory to traverse his own personal hyperspace desert. The place from which he now smiles is a twin planet to the one of his beginnings. And it shines.
Funded by the European Union through the Digital Kit program using Next Generation (EU) funds from the Recovery and Resilience Facility
