Maryní Callejo, the visionary of Spanish pop that no one remembers | Culture

The condition of being an octogenarian is serious enough for such an event to be honored and celebrated with all the honors in popular music. It is an inexcusable tradition, perhaps also a ritual. We lit the candles with a profusion of retrospectives and congratulations to Dylan, McCartney, Cohen or the good Brian Wilson, and of course, to our Raphael, Julio Iglesias and Joan Manuel Serrat. They were all well-deserved tributes. But nobody, absolutely nobody, remembered on June 27 to sing the song. Happy birthday to María de las Nieves Callejo Martínez-Losa. Not even bringing her some sweets to her apartment in the El Candado neighbourhood of Málaga, the city where she found shelter and refuge since a stroke reduced her mobility and forced her out of circulation a little over 20 years ago.

And that forgetfulness, even though she smiles and says that she doesn’t hold it against anyone, is a collective lapse that leaves the Spanish pop family, as large as it is – apparently – unstructured, in a bad light.

The name of María de las Nieves may not be too striking to the average fan. But if we look for it as Maryní Callejo in the credits of the most flourishing Spanish pop of the sixties and seventies, the surprise becomes colossal. No, we are not talking about a cult figure for the delight of the geekinessbut of the woman who acted as discoverer and producer of Los Brincos, who introduced a certain Massiel to the world, or who even pledged her personal savings to convince unbelievers of the immense popular potential that the candid summer anthems of Formula V held.

We are talking about one of the very few people who young Juan Bravo trusted, who has always been aware of his own talent and liked to go it alone. From the arranger of A kiss and a flowerthat work of art that eternally consecrated the ill-fated Nino Bravo. From the reinventor of Los Relámpagos, Marisol or, from 1978, Mari Trini, thanks to the Copernican turn that the album represented Just for you. And, above all, of the great supporter of Rocío Dúrcal throughout her mature stage, a period in which she would become not only a musical director, but also a member of the family that the famous ranchera singer had founded with the singer Antonio Morales, alias Junior.

Callejo is a pioneer in the full sense of the term, which in her case is surely an understatement. She became the only great female figure in the early days of Spanish popular music, where empowerment and sisterhood were neither known nor practiced. No one in the stuttering and timid recording industry of the sixties could conceive of a woman playing a role other than that of a secretary, but María de las Nieves played in another league without even being fully aware of it herself. And a good part of the blame It was Augusto Algueró who discovered Maryní by chance in a youth group, Los Brujos, and insisted on incorporating her into the family publishing house, Canciones del Mundo, where the new signing would share a desk with a talented musician from Jerez, Manuel Alejandro, who would soon become Raphael’s favourite composer.

With a strictly classical background, Callejo was not at all sure what she could bring to that “light music” environment. She had been discovered in the neighborhood of Madrid’s Calle Ferraz, a distinguished environment even in the poor 40s. “That girl of yours sings very well,” they insisted from door to door to Mari Nieves’ mother, who ended up taking the girl to the Conservatory when she was only six years old. Nobody used concepts like “absolute pitch” or “special abilities” back then, but that girl had been born with those gifts. “It’s true. I finished the 29 courses of the higher degree in Music in just nine years, from the age of six to 15,” she confirms over the phone without a hint of boasting, with the same naturalness that she uses to recount many other exceptional life circumstances.

Fate had a sudden twist in store for the perky Callejo the day that Don Augusto asked her to “take a look” at a youth quartet about which he kept receiving good references. They called themselves Los Brincos and rehearsed at Iberofón, a facility in Alcorcón, on the outskirts of the capital. “They didn’t even know how to write music, but they were so sweet and good and handsome…”, recalls the one who would become their godmother. “At first I thought about helping them at least transcribe the scores, so that they could register the songs with the SGAE. But at that rehearsal they started practicing their song Cry And I did indeed burst into tears. Even today, it happens to me almost every time I hear it…”

Callejo instantly became the “fifth Brinco”, the personal George Martin of the only Spanish band that dared to compete in talent and audacity with their Liverpool counterparts. As the distinguished London producer had done with the Beatles, Maryní recorded the pianos, celestas and harpsichords in the recording sessions, arranged the entire repertoire (remember: Flamenco, Drunk, A sip of champagne, Better…) and assumed co-authorship of quite a few songs.

The director of the Zafiro label, Esteban García Morencos, called her to account when he discovered that she had spent 60,000 pesetas of the time on the recording of the band’s first eponymous LP in 1964. “Now there is no remedy, but you should know: Los Brincos are over,” he warned her with a stern gesture while she could barely control her tears. “But the success was so colossal that for the next album, The Jumps II“They sent us to the SAAR studios in Milan, with no budget restrictions,” he laughs.

Maryní was ingenuity, natural talent, freshness… and pure self-confidence. The members of Los Brincos had a weakness for the sandwiches from the Rodilla chain in Callao, and she would take the four musicians and their “cable technician” into her Seat 600 to take them to the central square in Madrid. “Yes, I know there were six of us in the car, but the city police at that time used to turn a blind eye to that kind of thing,” the artist details in successive WhatsApp messages, an application that she loves for its emoticons.

Among the many other milestones he has achieved, his efforts to consolidate Formula V (Tell me, I have your love, Eva Maria, Summer holidays…) is perhaps the most fascinating, especially because the success of the quintet led by Paco Pastor was largely the result of his stubbornness. As soon as he signed with Philips, Maryní was entrusted with leading this Madrid group and commissioned a first single from the composer José Nieto, already famous at the time for his soundtracks. That piece, My lucky day is todaywhich was intended to imitate the style of The Walker Brothers, failed so badly that no one wanted to take on the recording of a second one. singleCallejo not only commissioned a handful of new songs from the José Luis Armenteros/Pablo Herrero duo, but also mortgaged himself by paying out of his own pocket for an advertisement in the American magazine Billboard to revive the project. Moral: without this woman’s efforts, many of our “summer songs” might never have existed.

In addition, Maryní organised the first concert in the history of Massiel (1966), in the Auditorium of the Complutense University of Madrid; she introduced magnificent artists who are almost forgotten today – Daniel Velázquez, Tara from Coruña -, she composed with Juan Pardo, participated in the birth of the children’s duo Enrique y Ana and was so involved in the career of Rocío Dúrcal (whom she always refers to by her real name, Marieta) that the singer’s children still call her “Tita Mini”. With a career of this magnitude, Maryní Callejo should be a myth and an icon, but, beyond an honorary award from the SGAE in 2003, little has been done to vindicate her figure.

A young musicologist from the Complutense University, Marco Antonio Juan de Dios Cuartas, is making progress on his doctoral thesis, and there is perhaps the hope that some publisher specializing in Spanish pop will undertake a proper biography. But Maryní, despite the after-effects of her stroke, retains her memory, her flirtatiousness and her good humor, as well as a stubborn allergy to any kind of reproach. “The important thing is that I have always ended up being friends with the artists I worked with,” she repeats. And this is confirmed by one of those digital memes that people like so much. WhatsApp: “It doesn’t matter where you walk. What matters is discovering the beauty of the path.”