"Doña Concha", vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

"Doña Concha", vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

«Doña Concha», vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

"It is one of the things that most defines the character: dignity, professionalism and brave.The fact that I would not want to sing in a theater if they did not pay him is very representative of her.And that last performance at the Isla Cristina Theater in which he decides to retire because his voice is no longer the one before represents a respect for the public and a love of precious song.They are two moments, one at the beginning and one at the end of his career, who say a lot who was Concha Piquer ».

«Doña Concha», vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

Carla Berrocal did not take her love for the couplet until she started listening to her with her grandmother.«Ell had a very severe senile dementia and with the music that reacted the most was with the couplet.Of all the singers, with whom I felt more related to his way of interpreting was with shell piquer.I started seeing his vital route and there I realized that he was a very interesting and very unknown character ».

«Doña Concha», vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

It was then that he decided to write the biography of that daughter of a mason and a seamstress who, from the Morvedre neighborhood, reached fame first in the United States and then in Spain and all of Latin America.

«Doña Concha», vignettes for a dignified, brave and empowered woman

‘Doña Concha’ tells how he was discovered by Master Manuel Penella, how he took Conchita and his mother to New York and how still a teenager triumphed there singing "El Vase" in the inter -ever of ‘The Montés Cat’.While in Spain it was an unknown, I was already turning through Cuba and Mexico and in the United States recorded for Odeón Records "Sighs of Spain".The book also shows us her romantic relationship with Penella - which she cuts when she discovers that she was a married man - and her return to Spain with a Broadway show that does not receive the reception she expected.

"It was probably more modern than its audience," says Berrocal.And not only in artistic issues.The comic also tells how he falls in love with another married man, the bullfighter Antonio Márquez, and how he has to leave for Spain to be able to marry him and have his daughter."He was someone who has grown in the time of American cultural splendor, in the happy 20s, where there was sexual freedom and in all aspects of life ... it was like being 20 years in the future of what Spain could have been".

But Doña Concha ’is not a normal biography.Without leaving the vignette, the story also deals with the historical and sociological context of the myth, and claims the singer as an empowered woman and copla as a genre to rescue from the ideological cage of Francoism.Berrocal accepts that you can't talk about the piquer as a feminist, "but we can give its history a feminist critic"."He was a woman of character and history has judged him hard for a matter of misogyny," he adds.The book reveals how the strong and safe woman was qualified for it as a "tyrant".In a world dominated by men, she was a modern and clairvoyant businesswoman -as demonstrated.

"She is the daughter of the American show model," the illustrator recalls, ".He grew up in Broadway theaters and that conditions his way of facing the show.I was always aware that everything was fine because I had a huge cult and respect for the public ».Long before James Brown set a system of sanctions for his band's musicians who presented themselves on stage, the piquer had already fined Manolo Caracol (when he was a member of his company) because he lacked a shirt button.

In one of the "cameos" we found in 'Doña Concha', the music historian Martín de la Plaza tells the bad or no relationship of the Valencian with the "star system" of the time and ensures that he has never found anyone in theentertainment world that will speak well of her as a person."Only in his intimate circle the thing was different, but even there it was brave sometimes," he adds."I was above many things, in the most diva sense," he says, ".But if you succeed in Broadway theaters, you play an international career and you even succeed in the cinema that runs through Europe, it is very normal for you to feel above the world ».

Another fundamental aspect of which ‘Doña Concha’ does not shy away is that of the relationship of the Piquer in particular and the coupler in general with Francoism.The researcher and disseminator Lidia García and Hispanist Stephanie Sieburth defend in the book a genre that claimed aspects of femininity badly seen in full Franco and gave voice to hidden women.This is demonstrated by songs from the artist's repertoire as "I am that" (about a prostitute), "romance of the other" (about the lover of a married man), "Lola stabs" (about a vindictive woman) or "compound and" composed andNo boyfriend »(about a woman proud of her sentimental situation).

«It is time to give a different reading to the couplet, the left has to reappropriate it and give it a different and feminist vision.The couplet is equal to fascism is an association too easy ».

Just as you can't say that Concha Piquer was feminist, it cannot be said that he was Franco or anti -Francoist."Unfortunately, he had to work and make his life in a dictatorship, and within those possibilities he did what he could good," says Berrocal.But even before Franco, he imposed his character.In ‘Doña Concha’ we see how the Valencian diva did not hesitate to accept the fines imposed by the authority rather than accept a letter touched by the censor on duty.

"Doña Concha" is the result of three years of dedication to Carla Berrocal, illustrator and designer who debuted in the comic in 2004 with "Hire: the terrible samurai vampire".In 2016 he published the experimental comic "Epigraphies", dedicated to the poet Nathalie Clifford Barney.

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