Ángeles Toledano, the singer who unites flamenco with Billy Eillish and Harry Potter | Culture

Ángeles Toledano’s first album closes with The same blood of the body, a song to menstruation. Toledano (Villanueva de la Reina, Jaén, 29 years old) talks, in a chat with this newspaper this summer, about something that, due to prejudices of patriarchal society or modesty, has rarely been discussed: “Performing during menstruation is not at all pleasant. It affects the vocal cords a lot; because of the mucus, which is concentrated down there. The throat becomes dry and it is difficult to the gathering The vocal cords are shaped like the uterus, they are very connected. Even the old singers and guitarists had a joke: when women have their period, they go out of tune on their guitars. I don’t think we go out of tune on our guitars, but we sing in a lower tone. I have had my period many more times than I have fallen in love. How can I talk about love and not about this?” Toledano tells it in a sweet voice and in the accent of her land, which, as she says, transmits kindness. “You only have to listen to Carmen Linares speak: a welcoming, tender voice, like Jaén,” she smiles.

Toledano stands out as a flamenco voice that will be talked about a lot and well this fall. His first album, Mudblood, It will be published on September 27th (you can already listen to it) two previews: Araora and X The Girls), a work that maintains the tension between the flamenco tradition and what a young and restless woman like her thinks and feels in 2024. The dialogue between the roots and contemporaneity, without avoiding the contradictions, the clashesthe gatheringShe has the authority to propose this approach, because Toledano is making her recording debut after a long career that has allowed her to travel the world (Asia, the United States, Europe, Latin America…) as a singer in shows, some of which are quite experimental.

“When I was eight years old I got my first salary. It was in Arjona (Jaén). 150 euros. For playing a Granadan half and The bell ringers”. It was 2004. Shortly before, she had become curious about flamenco in the most casual way. What really drove Ángeles crazy when she was a child It was titled Rather dead than simple, the lively song of María Isabel, a girl from Ayamonte who represented Spain in Junior Eurovision. One day she forgot that CD at her grandparents’ house and went to look for it immediately. That’s how hooked little Ángeles was on Rather dead than simple. He didn’t find it at first glance and since it was nap time he didn’t want to wake his grandparents. So he picked a random record from his grandfather’s collection, “to listen to it while María Isabel’s came on.” It turned out to be a compilation of traditional flamenco: Juanito Valderrama, Pastora Pavón, Manuel Vallejo, Niña de la Puebla… “I loved it and I played it on repeat. I started to learn it. I told my father and mother: ‘Look, I can hold the notes like Niña de la Puebla. ’ That’s when my parents saw that, despite being a monkey, I already sang well.”

That’s when her grandfather, a great fan, came into play. The singer especially remembers one summer when her grandfather would show up at her house at nine in the morning: “Where’s the girl?” he would bellow. The girl was in bed, still sleeping. But she would get up and shake off her laziness when the old records came on. “Look, listen to that turn of voice, and those lyrics… Listen, that’s a soleá,” he explained to his granddaughter.

Her friends danced to the songs of El Canto del Loco, Los Rebujitos, Andy y Lucas… “I liked them too, but I really enjoyed listening to flamenco,” she says. So much so that many nights she preferred to stay at home watching YouTube the series Rite and geography of flamenco singing to go out and do what teenagers do: dance, socialize, have fun. “My parents have been on a roll belly “I had a car that you can’t imagine… I found out what was going on in the flamenco clubs and I forced them to take me. Tomorrow such and such singer is performing in Beas de Segura. And there we went. The next day to the club in Linares. I was left spellbound listening to the older people sing and talk about flamenco.” Meanwhile, she continued her studies: she passed the entrance exams and studied Law for two years. “But I realised that it wasn’t my thing and that I wanted to dedicate myself to singing.” She had already taken singing lessons and passed the exams at the conservatory to then obtain the Superior Degree in Music.

Ángeles has a large tattoo of Lole and Manuel on her arm. An image of them young and handsome. The singer tells of perhaps the most frontal clash she suffered during her training. “As a child I sang old lyrics.” And she recites: “In order not to hit this woman one day, who one day put love and money in her interest and she didn’t even know how to answer me.” I didn’t know what I was singing. But when I turned 18 I realized. It was a shock. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to communicate with my friends, why they didn’t come to see me sing, why only older people came. And suddenly it made me click: Of course, I wouldn’t want to go and listen to that. I was very sad.” She says she is not against cancelling those lyrics. “They are there to contextualize an era,” she considers. But from that moment when she emotionally realized how wrong she was singing, she decided to only tackle lyrics that she felt identified with. Like those contained in Mudblood, signed by her.

The album’s title is inspired by the Harry Potter universe, a saga that fascinates the artist. Toledano uses this phenomenon of children’s and young adult literature to vindicate bastardy, mulatto, hybridity, tolerance, and the exchange of fluids, including intellectual ones. “Mudblood” is what they disparagingly call the character of Hermione (played by Emma Watson) because she is not the daughter of wizards. But then she is one of the most powerful. Lyrically the album is about friendship with my friends,” she says. There are 10 songs that convey a story. Mom you were right, sings: “You wanted to play with me and it was no use “no”. “That song is about the advice my mother gave me when I had boyfriends: be careful with them, they will make you suffer. And it has come true. But I will always throw myself into love in an open way,” she laughs. Religious references appear, even in bars that are inspired by confessional rites. “I was super Christian until I was 15 because my town is like that: my grandmother, my family… Until I reflected and distanced myself from all that. But it is part of my life and I wanted that cyclical count of praying the rosary to be on the album,” she says.

Musically, Toledano takes influences from Paquera, from the Morente family, from the guitar sound of the Montoya family for Camarón… and also from Billie Eilish or Pink Floyd. “Flamenco today,” he sums up. You can hear a tablao guitar from the fifties, but also electronic atmospheres. Without mentioning them, Toledano would look good on a poster with Rocío Márquez, Arcángel, La Plazuela (with whom he has collaborated) or Maria Jose Llergo.

Ángeles lives in Madrid, in a rented apartment, but she is always on the move. She likes to travel alone and look for meetings without an appointment. She was recently in Barcelona for two weeks and spent the summer in an apartment in Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz). She traveled to both cities alone. “I really enjoy solitude. I love sitting in a bar and ordering whatever I want. I don’t have to answer to anyone. Some anchovies, well, some anchovies. I like to live with that freedom, to treat myself. I invest my money in that, in living.” It doesn’t seem like a bad plan.