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| Music to
their ears |
| Words by Kate Edbrooke and Sarah Monaghan; pictures by Kate Edbrooke and Virgin Music, Spain |
| What happens when you bring together a former Beatles sound engineer, a passion for flamenco and a love for Spain ? Kate Edbrooke and her partner Harold are living their dream life in their very unusual home in Granada |
| Adapted from an article in Everything Spain magazine in 2004. |
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  here
can't be many houses in the 13th-Century Moorish
quarter of Granada with a 21st-Century recording
studio on the ground floor. But theirs, says Kate
Edbrooke, is the perfect home. From it, she and
her partner Harold work with a host of Spanish
artists, including the celebrated flamenco singer,
Estrella Morente, and her father Enrique. And
in 2003, Kate was tour manager and Harold sound
engineer to one of Spain's hottest new flamenco
groups on their tour of America and Canada.
Kate (42) and Harold (53) arrived in Spain in
1997. In theory, Harold, who had been working
composing music for television and producing for
big-name rock bands and artists such as Ronnie
Wood, Mick Fleetwood and George Harrison, was
going to take a year out and enjoy the sunshine.
Kate's aim was to write her thesis on the Granada
poet Federico García Lorca, for which she
was later to be awarded a first-class BA honours
degree.
To start with, the couple found a cramped cheap
apartment in the Albaícin, the old Arabic
quarter of Granada that Lorca loved and had written
about. It was a neighbourhood overflowing with
scented flowers, narrow cobbled streets and hidden
plazas with fountains, all overlooked by the incredible
Alhambra Palace. The winters were cold though:
"When the snow fell on the Sierra Nevada,
I would be in the kitchen wearing woolly hat,
gloves and fur-lined boots, cooking big stews
of lentils," says Kate.
"Every day," she adds, "we pushed
the thought of returning to London to the back
of our minds, determined to enjoy the moment."
Fate took a hand when Harold received a call from
an English musician who needed someone to mix
a CD to celebrate the year of Lorca's birth. The
artistic director of the project, De Granada a
la Luna, (From Granada to the Moon), was no other
than Enrique Morente, one of Spain's most renowned
flamenco singers.
While Kate was studying hard, Harold suddenly
discovered he had no time to relax. His production
skills were so much in demand that he found himself
goiung from project to project, working on jazz,
flamenco and Spanish television. "So much for
him having a year off..." says Kate. "It began
to dawn on us that we could make go of living
here."
Three years later, they were in a position to
buy their own home and they were keen to remain
in the Albaícin area that they had come
to love so much, although prices were soaring.
"Since we arrived, it had been designated
a protected area of cultural interest by UNESCO,"
says Kate. "We thought we had missed our
chance."
 Kate
was initially unimpressed by the elderly house
that was to become theirs for the price of £40,000.
Originally part of the servant quarters of a large
'carmen' (an Arabic house), which had existed
since the 13th Century, the dark, narrow four-storey
house was in an appalling state, its plaster falling
off, the doors rotten. "From the fourth floor,
you could look all the way down the Alfred Hitchcock
staircase to the ground floor where there was
a stark, cold kitchen," says Kate.
But Harold could see beyond the decay. He came
up with an ambitiousa plan to smash through the
first two floors, install a slim iron staircase
and create a recording studio on the ground floor,
with spacious living quarters on the upper floors.
Six weeks later, builders knocked out the insides
and there was no turning back. It took 43 skips
to remove the debris. The couple were helped by
their friends, mostly gitano (gypsy) flamenco
musicians. "Our gitano friends were shocked
when I pitched in," says Kate. "I got
a bit fed up of the men taking the spade away
and tut-tutting."
A third of the house had been taken up by the
dreadful Hitchcockian stairs. They were replaced
by an elegant metal staircase made by an old gitano
who forged Harold's staircase design in his cave
in the Andalusian hills and carried it all the
way to the house on his shoulders.
The floors they had removed had been almost a
foot thick, packed tight with straw, cement and
mouse droppings, and were now replaced with stained
wooden floorboards and freshly plastered ceilings.
New pine doors were ordered from Homebase in the
UK. Harold made new windows, creating a large
double-glazed patio window for the office on the
top floor. "From my terrace you can also
see the bell tower of the Alcázabar (the
Fortress of the Alhambra) and the snow on the
Sierra Nevada behind it," says Kate.
 Harold
welded new 'rejas' (the iron bars that protect
the wondows of Andalusian houses) himself so that
they could have all the balcony doors and windows
open and still be secure.
The need for the recording studio to be entirely
soundproof entailed some complicated plumbing:
"We found a local plumber who was sympathetic
to our strange needs and took the drain water
on a longer route so as to avoid making a noise
in the studio," Kate explains.
Now, the whole of the first floor is an open-plan
kitchen/living room, with an open fireplace.
"The chimney pipe travels up through the
next two floors, keeping us warm and snug in winter,"
says Kate. The work cost them another £40,000
but they are delighted: "I love the feel
of the old Arab-style brickwork, the warmth of
the wooden beams ans floors, the shiny silver
look in the kitchen, the white Andalusian walls
and the fire in winter," says Kate.
Through Harold's work with flamenco star Enrique
Morente, and then his daughter, Estrella Morente,
(her album, Mi Cante y Un Poema, is one of the
best-selling in Spain and was nominated for a
Grammy), the couple had developed a passion for
flamenco. One evening they saw perform a group
of gypsy youngsters from a marginal housing development
in Granada.
"At the time, the youngest members were only 11
years old," says Kate. "Some were so small that
their feet did not touch the ground when sat on
the cajon (rhythm box, originally from Peru, on
which the musician sits to beat out a rhythm).
I was in the audience and was astounded by their
energy, rhythm and youth."
Harold and Kate were mesmerised. The music was
based on the rhythms of traditional gypsy flamenco
but encompassed the sounds of Africa, Cuba, Brazil
and American rap. The result was a sound born
of the streets yet transportable to the concert
hall. The group, called Taller de Compás
de Almanjáyar (Rhythm Workshop), had formed
out of a project organised by a gypsy association.
Its aim was to refurbish the run-down tenement
blocks to where the gypsies had been moved in
the 1970s and to break down social and cultural
barriers between gypsies and non-gypsies.
The couple offered to produce a record with the
group, and, after two years, they had enough material
to release an album. One of the songs had a chorus
composed by Enrique Morente and permission was
needed to use it on the album. Says Kate: "He
agreed without a second thought, which gave me
the courage to ask if he would sing on it as well.
When the group heard that the great Enrique Morente
was going to perform on their album they could
hardly believe it."
 When
the album, Cale Calé (Gypsy Rhythms in
Caló, the language of the gypsies) was
released, Kate began publicising it and selling
it online. In little time, the first 300 copies
were sold, then another 500, then another 1,000,
and then the group were being asked to perform
all over Spain.
In 2002, the group received the critics' award
for the flamenco 'Oscars', with the best flamenco
percussion album of the year, and Kate went wiith
the oldest group member to receive the award at
the famous Madrid flamenco bar, Casa Patas. Says
Kate: "It was a surreal experience to be among
some of the most famous flamenco faces in flamenco,
such as Carmen Linares, Manuela Carrasco and Manolete.
As is the flamenco way, we celebrated until the
sun came up."
Kate then organised a tour, taking the band to
World Music Festivals in Chicago, Detroit, Wisconsin,
Toronto and Indiana. Sponsorship from an American
company, www.rot.com, helped cover their expenses.
The group perfomed an incredible 16 gigs in 20
days, receiving standing ovations and first-rate
reviews. For rhe gypsy youngsters, it was the
adventure of a lifetime.
Taller de Compás de Almanjáyar are
now aged 14 to 21 and are about to do their first
full tour of Spain, as support to the popular
Catalan band, Ojos de Brujo, who performed in
London in November. Next planned is a tour of
Europe and a return visit to the States and Canada,
while the World Music Institute has expressed
interest in presenting the group next year. They
are certainly destined for greater things.
Meanwhile in the rundown Granada quarter where
the gypsy project was set up, the music workshop
is more popular tha ever. Says Kate: "Our dream
is to get funding for more workshops in dance,
singing, sound-engineering and computer skills."
And, in the neighbourhood school, attendance and
grades have risen, along with the hopes, dreams
and aspirations, not just for the people in the
quarter, but for the gypsies of Granada, and the
recognition of their art and culture.  |
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