Singer blends pop instincts with a passion for flamenco
Before María José Llergo could say the word “flamenco,” before she had an inkling of the music’s lineage, the Spanish singer knew what it sounded like, thanks to her grandfather.
From the time she was a small child growing up in a rural town in Andalusia in southern Spain, Llergo listened as her grandfather sang while he worked the land. The percussive rhythm of his hoe as he tended crops imprinted itself on her so strongly that the sound opens her flamenco-tinged 2020 EP “Sanación.” The EP launched Llergo’s career on a trajectory that brings her Wednesday to the Crystal Ballroom in Somerville on her first US tour, following the release last year of her full-length album “Ultrabelleza,” an arresting blend of her traditional sensibility with the electronic beats and airy synthesizers of cuttingedge pop. The Somerville show is presented by Global Arts Live.
“It all starts there, in the countryside with my grandfather, who is a super intelligent and sensitive person,” Llergo says in Spanish from her home near Madrid. “He is 94 years old, and even today he sings and tells jokes with the best.”
Though she has always been immersed in music, Llergo, 30, didn’t start singing in public until she was 18. That was when she decided, to her family’s consternation, that she wanted a career as a singer.
“My family preferred that I dedicate myself to something else because they knew that a career in the arts was very precarious in Spain,” Llergo says. “They were afraid that something bad would happen to me or that I wouldn’t have stability.”
Despite her inexperience as a performer, Llergo landed a scholarship to attend a prestigious music conservatory in Barcelona. There, she studied flamenco, an art form incorporating singing, dance, guitar, and percussion that originated in southern Spain with the Romani people, probably in the late 1700s. Though the beauty and emotion of flamenco resonated with Llergo, she wanted to fold in other musical influences, too.
“The truth is, I like a lot of different music,” she says, running down a list of recent Spotify activity that includes Spanish folk singer Juanito Valderrama, American rapper A$AP Rocky, Icelandic indie band Sigur Rós, and French composer Claude Debussy. “I think there is a style for every occasion.”
And what occasion does “Ultrabellebegan za” fit? Llergo pauses to consider.
“I think it is music that lets you be emotionally open without being afraid of anything,” she says.
That was the idea underpinning “Ultrabelleza” all along. At a listening party in Madrid last fall, before the Spanish actress Rossy de Palma interviewed Llergo about the album, the festivities
with a video of Llergo reciting her manifesto for “Ultrabelleza.” She summarizes the theme on the phone.
“‘Ultrabelleza’ is an album to celebrate the diversity of the society in which we live,” Llergo says. “So that everyone knows that there is nothing wrong with you, that being sensitive is not a bad thing, and whatever our condition, we have the right to have a full life.”
The combination of her voice and musical vision has increasingly brought Llergo acclaim, and a higher profile: She sang at the Latin Grammys in November in Seville — the first time the awards ceremony had been held outside the United States — and also performed in February at the Goyas, Spain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
“I feel like she has the power to fly high,” says the Spanish singer and songwriter Zahara, who co-wrote the music on four tracks on “Ultrabelleza.” “Furthermore, what she contributes is not only musical. I think there is something very powerful in her lyrics. With this album she has put the focus on beauty, she has made goodness an objective and that, in these times, seems very transgressive to me.”
Along with her voice, the way Llergo combines musical influences is what stands out to Carlos R. Pinto, a musician and producer from Seville who goes by the name Lost Twin.
“One of the best qualities of María José is her lack of self-indulgence: She is always willing to try new approaches to flamenco and contemporary pop, and experiment with sounds and themes she hasn’t dealt with before,” says Pinto, who produced Llergo’s “Sanación” EP. “She has a deep knowledge of flamenco and its roots, and I feel like no matter what style she chooses to focus on next, it will still be influenced by that sense of poetry and passion that she inherits from flamenco.”
For Llergo, staying connected to her musical roots is important, no matter where her pop instincts take her. She’s fond of paraphrasing the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who once likened flamenco to the blues.
“It is a music that comes from resistance and the fight for survival,” Llergo says. “Thanks to flamenco, people were able to describe their experiences in the lyrics of songs. It is a historical account of those who could not write their history.”