First it was Lola Flores and now Camarón de la Isla. Three years after La Faraona spoke again thanks to Artificial Intelligence and the voice of her daughter Lolita, the Cruzcampo beer brand releases new ads with the flamenco singer as the protagonist, but this time without deepfake.
The new campaign called Gitana was presented today in the center of Seville, in the Guardiola palace house. The spot premiered on Sunday, January 21, the day Lola Flores would have turned 101, and it is a continuation of the previous Con mucho accent, in which the singer from Jerez said “You know why I was understood throughout the world, because of my accent”, “Handle your roots so that you can be heard until the hiccups” or “The accent is your treasure, never lose it”.
This new tribute by Cruzcampo to flamenco and the figure of the gypsy begins in a typical Andalusian bar, where the usual clientele, of dominoes and tapas, coexist with new customers. Next to the television, a gypsy doll from the historic Marín factory in Chiclana, which sheds the cliché of an old souvenir, comes to life and becomes empowered. The actress and dancer Carmen Avilés is the real gypsy who modernizes her eyeliner. Just like Margot Robbie in the movie Barbie sneaks into the real world, she goes out into the street to walk proud of her roots and what she represents because the accent is much more than a way of speaking.”
“I learned to dance flamenco in the living room of my house and under the gaze of one of those flamenco dancers that we had on top of the television,” Avilés recalls, very excited by the opportunity. In the advertisement she is wearing an impressive traditional dress with ruffles and red polka dots weighing more than 30 kilos created by Leandro Cano. “It weighed a lot but fortunately the designer created one weighing 10 kilos for when I had to dance, fly and run,” says the protagonist, who on her way through the streets of Jerez and Cádiz dances a bulería choreographed by Triana Ramos, who has directed Rosalía’s dancers on the Motomami tour.
The gypsy also meets the singer El Pali, the rocker Silvio and Martirio, icon of the modern gypsy. Another of the names that appear in the spot is the tattoo artist Jorge el Llorón, the designer Sara Gómez (ArteKm22), the musician and producer Negro Jari, of Senegalese descent. Throughout this journey through the past, present and future of Andalusia, the song Gitana by the band Derby Motoreta’s Burrito Kachimba is heard.
But without a doubt the value of this new Cruzcampo advertisement is that it recovers Camaron’s original voice, this time without the need to resort to deepfake or Artificial Intelligence. The sound archive, unpublished until now, is a bulería that the singer dedicates to Andalusian beer.
It was in 1989 during the recording of his multi-award-winning album ‘Soy gitano’ at the Bola studios in Seville. There, between song and song, Camaron and his musicians smoked and drank Cruzcampo beer, it was then that the singer improvised the bulería: “I don’t get away from Cruzcampo, I don’t get away from Cruzcampo,” which more than three decades after death de Camaron has historical value.
“At that time the recordings were very direct with the musicians and the clappers all together and when we finished the day we would stay for a while playing flamenco and we would order some Cruzcampo, because it is a beer that has always been very linked to flamenco,” explains Tomatito. , who was Camaron’s inseparable guitarist.
In reality, Camaron’s adaptation is from an old song of his that said “I can’t get rid of the drink, I can’t get away from the drink.” Producer Ricardo Pachón had that recording with Cruzcampo’s lyrics in his archive for more than 20 years, until it reached the ears of those responsible for the beer brand.
For his widow Dolores Montoya ‘La Chispa’, it was very exciting to discover this recording “my husband has never left and I remember him every day.” And she sees it in the faces of her four children that she had with Camaron, in his eight grandchildren and also in his great-grandson, who have singing and music in their blood.
