Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Sánchez and the second or maternal family name is Ferlosio.

José Antonio Julio Onésimo Sánchez Ferlosio, better known as Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio (Madrid, April 8, 1940 – July 1, 2003), was a Spanish singer-songwriter, and the author of numerous songs performed by other artists, such as Rolando Alarcón, Joan Baez, Soledad Bravo, Víctor Jara, Quilapayún and Joaquín Sabina.

He was the son of the writer and founding member of the Falange, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, brother of the writer Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio and the mathematician and philosopher Miguel Sánchez Ferlosio.

Biography

Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio was born in Madrid on April 8, 1940, son of the Italian Liliana Ferlosio and the falangist writer Rafael Sánchez Mazas, being the younger brother of Miguel Sánchez-Mazas Ferlosio (1925), Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (1927) and Gabriela Sánchez Ferlosio. Chicho received a careful education and soon took a path opposite to that of his father, joining the opposition to the Franco regime and applying his poetic talent to the composition of anti-Franco songs. In 1957 he met Ana Guardione at the Italian Institute, whom he married in 1960. The marriage lasted until 1974. As a result of the marriage, four children were born, but only one survived: Andrés Sánchez Guardione. The others died from accidents as children or at birth.

He began to study Economy, Law and Philosophy, courses that he did not finish. In 1961 he published what would be his only book during his lifetime, Italian Narrations, with nineteen stories collected from Italian tradition. In 1962, he completed military service in the Sahara for fourteen months, less time than usual when he was the father of a son.

In 1964 he recorded several of his songs on a homemade tape recorder and the writer Alfonso Grosso took the cassette to Stockholm (Sweden) where they were published on the LP Spanska motståndssånger ("Songs of the Spanish Resistance"). Ferlosio's name is "silenced for security reasons" and this anonymity leads to the popular belief that the themes originate from the civil war era. One of them, Gallo Rojo, Gallo Negro (Red Rooster, Black Rooster), became an anthem of the fight against the dictatorship. Something similar happened with Paloma de la Paz (The Dove of Peace).

For the singer-songwriters who began working at the end of the 1970s, Chicho became a myth and a faithful friend, ready to collaborate with anyone who asked him. He often performed with Jesús Munárriz, a singer-songwriter before being a poet and editor, and convinced Javier Krahe to make his debut on the Madrid stage. Joaquín Sabina made one of his songs famous, Círculos Viciosos (Vicious Circles), for which Ferlosio sued the record companies CBS and April Music, linked to each other, in 1981 for copyright falsification, when it appeared attributed to Sabina on his album Malas Compañías (1980). Already in the 1990s he collaborated as a lyricist with Alberto Pérez on the two albums that he dedicated to dance music, Sobre la Pista (1990) and Tiempo de Baile (1999) and sang poems by Kiko Veneno.

In 1978 he released "A Contratiempo" (At the Wrong Time, reissued on CD in 2007), an album that faithfully reproduces his live performances, with austere instrumentation but with great melodic talent, and which included some of his best-known songs, such as La Paloma de la Paz and Gallo Rojo, Gallo Negro.

With his partner Rosa Jiménez, with whom for many years he regularly performed in Madrid nightclubs performing songs and poems, he was the protagonist in 1981 of a documentary film by Fernando Trueba entitled "Mientras el Cuerpo Aguante" (While the Body Endures), recorded at his home in Sóller (Mallorca), where it presents Ferlosio acting and chatting tirelessly until he falls exhausted and the couple's philosophy of life is imprinted. In the documentary, in which Isabel Escudero also participates, Chicho performs his songs La Paloma de la Paz, El Canto Arval and Afró Tambú, from A Contratiempo, and two other unpublished compositions of his own, "Hay una Luz en Asturias" (There is a Light en Asturias) and "Coplas Retrógradas" (Retrograde Couplets), as well as "Zumba que Zumba", a Venezuelan popular song popularized by Soledad Bravo and "Maremma", an Italian popular song.

Ideology

His militancy in politics developed as a process of progressive distance from the most Stalinist and orthodox tendencies of the Spanish left, until reaching the vicinity of anarchism after Franco's death. First he was a member of the PCE, later in the PCE (m-l), a party with a Leninist-Maoist tendency from which he disassociated himself—according to what he says in "Mientras el Cuerpo Aguante". After a trip to the People's Republic of Albania, a country in which he says who observed the disastrous repercussions caused by an authoritarian and bureaucratic direction of the State, added to this with an attitude of hypocrisy on the part of the Spanish communist militants. He then joined a Trotskyist-inspired group, to finally embody a political attitude close to that of his friend Agustín García Calvo, a Spanish poet who, being recognized as an anarchist, prefers not to define himself as such. For Chicho, “ideas are for men, and not men for ideas.”

Like the philosopher Agustín García Calvo, of whom he successfully set many poems to music, he chose to remain outside official culture, acting wherever he was called or felt like, but without showing the slightest interest in commercial promotion.

In addition to music, his work covers multiple fields: he wrote poems and a book of stories and made musical accompaniments for other performers. He also published articles in various newspapers, such as El País, Diario 16, El Mundo and ABC. In addition, he delved into the field of linguistics and invented numerous games and puzzles. He also worked as a proofreader in the written press.

Discography

Ferlosio, a prolific composer, only recorded a minimal part of his repertoire. Their official discography includes a single album "A Contratiempo". Thus, its songs are known by the interpretations that artists such as Joaquín Sabina, Amancio Prada, Quilapayún and Soledad Bravo have made of them.

His unofficial discography, which consists of four albums recorded as such and two taken from documentary films in which he participated, can be found in digital format on the Internet. It consists of the following disks:

Spanska motståndssånger (Songs of the Spanish resistance). Recorded clandestinely, Madrid, during the years 1963-64. A Contratiempo 1978 (Dial Discos S.A., ND 5,016), recorded in the months of November and December 1977. Mientras el Cuerpo Aguante. From the film of the same name, released in 1982, directed by Fernando Trueba. Coplas Retrógradas. Single. From 1982, recorded by Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio and Rosa Jiménez. Romancero de Durruti. From the 1999 film Durruti, anarchist, directed by Albert Boadella and Jean Louis Comolli.

External links

• Canciones de la resistencia española. 1964. Investigación sobre el disco sueco de Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio.
• Fotografía de Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio Archived December 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
• Hasta que el cuerpo aguante
• Romancero de Durruti