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Son of Modern vs Traditional (conclusion)
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X
Posts: 72
Joined: May 21 2009
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 Son of Modern vs Traditional (conclu...
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OK, let me start "Part 2" by describing past modern-vs-traditional debates. As a convenient f'rinstance, let's consider Concha Jareño's baile, which I got to see last Friday (she stole the show BTW).
Usually the argument would be that her baile is modern because it incorporates ideas from hiphop (popping and locking), from kung-fu floor-fighting (extended arm work supine on stage), from Thai/Cambodian royal dance, plus she only does short intervals of taconeo (perhaps 30 seconds total in a four-minute routine). It's also modern in the way the tocaor is part of the choreography, walking around on stage while she dances, often with his back to her, a movable prop whom Conchita uses once to hide from the audience. All very capital-"M" modern.
Now someone else jumps in, arguing that what looks like popping and locking are actually very traditional poses found in ancient Egyptian papyri and Hindu temple statues, memories which Conchita surely channeled from the long Gypsy trek out of India; and that lying-on-the-floor thing? That comes from belly dance, part of traditional flamenco's Arab roots; as for minimal taconeo, traditional flamenco as danced in families is just like that-- no one wears Begoña-Cerveras to a house party. And what's so modern about ambulatory tocaores? Look at traditional jaranas or village processions or the tango in "Blood Wedding." And when ever did a dancer not interact with her guitarist? What Conchita does is just the same interaction, ramped up. Her baile is traditional all the way.
And so it goes, on and on and on... with no conclusion.
So I'm trying to start with something we could all agree on. In "Part 1" I tried to show that over its long march from distant beginnings to modern day, flamenco exhibits a distinct movement from MODAL to CHORDAL, from HORIZONTAL to VERTICAL, from MONOPHONY to POLYPHONY. Now, are all those capitalized words the criteria by which we distinguish modern flamenco from traditional? Not quite, but they do hold a clue.
Let me present a thought experiment, a flamenco dance which everyone, I think, will agree is unquestionably modern:
Flamenco folklore has a traditional taboo against dancing the petenera. Yet we see for example Maria Pages doing exactly that in Saura's "Flamenco." Does that make her dance modern? I don't know, but consider the following scenario: Say in the middle of her dance she collapses on the floor. Uniformed paramedics rush up the aisle and cart her away in a gurney. The theater manager comes onstage and asks the audience to remain calm, the show will go on. The next day her obit appears in the papers. Everyone talks about the taboo and clucks their tongue. Days later at her funeral, Menese and Rodriguez, who were doing the petenera with Pages, agree to perform it in her honor. When they reach the point where she'd collapsed, she rises from her coffin and finishes the dance. The whole thing had been scripted from the beginning.
Now, I'm confident no one here will seriously argue that that performance would be traditional flamenco. It's not only modern, but POSTmodern. (Side issue: is it flamenco or performance art? The bona fides of Menese and Rodriguez make a strong case that it's still flamenco.)
So what exactly makes it modern? IT'S THE FACT THAT IT WAS CONCEIVED IN THE CONTEXT OF AESTHETIC THEORY. To someone unfamiliar with theory, the whole thing might be just a stupid joke. To one who does, it speaks of freedom and daring, of the power and gullibility of mass media, of a host of other things difficult to verbalize. Exactly what the art of flamenco is supposed to do.
Now go back to the capitalized words above. They're all taken from music theory. So I propose the following modern/traditional criterion:
A FLAMENCO PIECE IS MODERN IF ITS CREATION IS INFORMED OR GUIDED BY A KNOWLEDGE OF MODERN THEORY.
When I for example say to myself, "let me do a tritone substitution in this traditional farruca-tangos de malaga cadence," then the altered cadence is MODERN because I arrive at it from theory. Similarly, when Jake Mossman sat down and said, "I'm now going to compose a bulerias falseta using the symmetric whole-tone scale," the resulting falseta is MODERN because Jake used scale-theoretic concepts to create it.
But now for the kicker: it's not beyond the realm of possibility that an unlettered ten-year-old unfamiliar with theory could come up, based on what he hears on the radio every day, with the exact same tritone substitution, or compose Jake's exact same falseta. In that case the same altered cadence and the same falseta would be TRADITIONAL!
The piece could be BOTH modern and traditional, depending on its provenance! WTF???
This is like the surprise I once got from a Russian girlfriend when I asked her opinion of writer Viktor Pelevin. She dismissed his stories as no good, because "to write great literature, one must have suffered." In essence she was saying that a work of art didn't stand on its own; you had to know something about its creator in order to tell whether it was good or bad. (I didn't argue with her because I didn't want to pay the "withholding tax," which she was prone to impose.)
But I've painted myself into the same corner: A flamenco piece doesn't stand on its own, we have to know about the way it was created in order to decide whether it's modern or traditional.
See what I mean about permanent crystallization of confusion? Or does the question even matter?
There's no help here, none, for those who were hoping that an answer to the modern-vs-traditional question would point the way how to compose modern flamenco.
There, my two cents. Your two-cent donations actively solicited.
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Date Oct. 18 2010 3:33:26
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Ron.M
Posts: 7051
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Scotland
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to X)
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Interesting and thought provoking post there X.
Just off the top of my head...I think a cause of a lot of dispute in the Modern/Traditional debate is trying to squeeze everything under the same umbrella called Flamenco.
For instance, I may like Delta Blues sung and played on acoustic guitar (by black, Americans whose lives were pretty tough and plagued by poverty and racism).
I may NOT like Electric Progressive Blues played by white, middle-class, educated European kids showing off their "shredding" technique.
I don't mind the different musical forms co existing for their respective fans, but it DOES bug me when the Electric/Progressive fans try to "re-educate" me by saying, "It's all the SAME thing...ie BLUES...one is just a more "evolved" version of the other....If you like BLUES then we can't understand why you don't like this".
I like Haddock. Haddock is a fish. So I should like ALL fish. But I hate Anchovies.
So there must be something wrong with me...it's all the same thing! 
I could spit the Anchovy out in disgust and say "That's not fish! REAL fish is Haddock!"
Both positions are incorrect, but that is the kind of argument the modern/trad debate attracts IMO.
Someone says "That's NOT Flamenco" and the other then shows that the music obeys all the rhythmic "rules" of Flamenco so it IS Flamenco....and "BETTER" Flamenco, since it has "escaped from the boring old chords and musical form".
So we're back to the Haddock/Anchovy/Fish problem, which just goes round and round.
cheers,
Ron
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Date Oct. 18 2010 16:22:53
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XXX
Posts: 4400
Joined: Apr. 14 2005
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to Ron.M)
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interesting theory Ron...
Chocolate is something to eat (i could say meal too). I like Chocolate. I like something to eat.
Some people eat dogs. Dogs are something to eat. I like dogs.
Or
I like fresh air. Fresh Air is also air right? So i like air.
If somebody farted it is dirty air. Dirty air is air too, right? LOL.
@topic: there are so many generalizations made here, that i see no sense in pursuing this kind of thing. And especially i think that discussing this matter would require discussants who know both traditional and modern, or at least have developed tastes in both fields quite far, if they dont play guitar, that almost every attempt to discuss this has failed.
But it is also not important, people will like what they like no matter what the correct definition of modern is. And the truth is of course, that people who usually have big knowledge, care more about whether its good stuff, and not whether its modern or not, coz there is good stuff in both fields.
_____________________________
Фламенко
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Date Oct. 18 2010 16:31:31
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Guest
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to X)
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guess you can think of it as one long evolutionary musical.... 
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Date Oct. 18 2010 22:50:16
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Pgh_flamenco
Posts: 1506
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to Ron.M)
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Nice post X!
quote:
For instance, I may like Delta Blues sung and played on acoustic guitar (by black, Americans whose lives were pretty tough and plagued by poverty and racism).
I may NOT like Electric Progressive Blues played by white, middle-class, educated European kids showing off their "shredding" technique.
I don't mind the different musical forms co existing for their respective fans, but it DOES bug me when the Electric/Progressive fans try to "re-educate" me by saying, "It's all the SAME thing...ie BLUES...one is just a more "evolved" version of the other....If you like BLUES then we can't understand why you don't like this".
There used to be a distinction between African American blues guitarists and their white counterparts. That seemed to change after SRV hit the scene. BB King said SRV was “the greatest blues guitarist” in his opinion. Kenny Wayne Shepherd, who has sold more blues records than any other blues guitarist, put out a DVD a few years back. Even though he’s a blonde, skinny, white kid the African American guitarists that he claimed as influences were on the DVD to support his claim as an authentic blues musician. In the 90’s the Black Entertainment TV channel (BET) promoted Jonny Lang by airing his concert at Wolf Trap and one of the African American bluesmen who attended claimed this white teenager was “the future of the blues.” Maybe things are different in Europe, but in the USA these distinctions don’t really exist anymore.
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Date Oct. 18 2010 23:52:08
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Guest
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to X)
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quote:
See what I mean about permanent crystallization of confusion? Or does the question even matter?
enjoyed this post
IMO...
thing is in the post{?} modern age generally something new is something old that has been either buried or almost forgotten then re-invented..re harmonised or simply re produced...either by intent or accident.
point is nothing is 'pure' or traditional..never was...continually evolving...no-one owns any music....
anything else is folly ...really....bit like thinking in black and white and not looking at the grey matter...
all that remains is the aesthetic...[ie anchovies]
love folklore!!..
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Date Oct. 19 2010 1:11:50
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NormanKliman
Posts: 1143
Joined: Sep. 1 2007
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to edguerin)
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Here's my opinion:
Rather than trad/modern, old/new, etc., I prefer a different way of looking at it.
Talking about extremes (it's a dualism), some aficionados prefer to hear/see something recognizable, like variations on established forms. Other aficionados like things to be fresh and new all the time. In my opinion, the former are representative of real flamenco and the latter have never had a clue and are never going to have a clue. Of course there are exceptions, most aficionados fall somewhere between those two extremes, etc. Personally, I enjoy a track or two of radical experimentation, or maybe even a whole CD of weird stuff, but definitely not as the basis for an artist's entire career.
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Date Oct. 20 2010 11:19:13
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Chiste de Gales
Posts: 298
Joined: Jan. 13 2009
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to X)
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Here's my theory-
After gypsies made it to Spain and learned to play guitars, what we think of as flamenco was born- the combo of Baile/Cante/Tocaor. I think we can say that this
arte was puro del puro. It doesnt exist anymore.
Then non gypsy music began to be adopted. Folk dances such as Zapateado, Guajiras, use of castanets, etc... Some performers and afficionados were fussy that flamenco wasnt living in a bubble anymore and didnt approve of these new sounds. They said there old stuff was puro and the new was not authentic.
The Cafes sprang up and provided flamenco to tourists. The tourists didnt like the cante jondo too much. They were on vacation and wanted to have a good time. There was more demand for the lighter, less serious palos. Some performers were more concerned with making a living, so they altered the art to cater to the outsiders. Some performers and afficionados were fussy that flamenco wasnt living in a bubble anymore and didnt approve of these new sounds. They said there old stuff was puro and the new was not authentic.
Non-spanish sounds and non-flamenco instruments were introduced. Jazz chords, flutes, electric instruments, cajon (with few complaints). In this case there wasnt so much audience demand, but more like very dedicated and innovative musicians who wanted to experiment with new sounds and keep it fresh. Some performers and afficionados were fussy that flamenco wasnt living in a bubble anymore and didnt approve of these new sounds. They said there old stuff was puro and the new was not authentic.
I think its the same reaction every time except for the crappy new age wannabe stuff that took the inspiration of a modern hybrid flamenco and made it even less flamenco.
For me, I prefer playing and listening to flamenco with no more instruments than guitar and cajon. However, Id say if it is all in compas and pays homage to certain traditional material, at least the music is on target.
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Date Oct. 20 2010 14:01:44
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3459
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to Chiste de Gales)
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quote:
After gypsies made it to Spain and learned to play guitars, what we think of as flamenco was born- the combo of Baile/Cante/Tocaor. I think we can say that this
arte was puro del puro. It doesnt exist anymore.
With all due respect, I do not think that "flamenco was born" with the arrival of gypsies in Spain. Gypsies certainly contributed their part in the development of flamenco, but there were elements in Spain that contributed just as much as, or more than, gypsies, and these elements continue to influence flamenco today. The Moros of Al Andalus and Jewish elements heavily influenced the development of what we know as flamenco. The idea that flamenco originated with gypsies is something of a chamber-of-commerce sales job, put forth for the benefit of tourists who think of it as some wild, smoldering, untamed music. Flamenco is much more than that, and has been from the beginning.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Oct. 20 2010 15:48:38
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X
Posts: 72
Joined: May 21 2009
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RE: Son of Modern vs Traditional (co... (in reply to edguerin)
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Hey, edguerin,
Good point. I guess I really didn't spell it out in a clear and concise way. What I was trying to say is this:
Today musicians have available this sharp tool called "modern" (or maybe "academic"?) aesthetic theory, including music theory, which is a nice implement to have for a systematic analysis of "stuff" like flamenco.
As an example, I'll stick my neck out and say that most young flamencos learn compas today through music-theoretic concepts such as a time signature showing the accented beats against which contratiempos can be explained. I'd say this method has contributed to the systematization of modern compas, as opposed to earlier days where many flamencos went in and out of compas willy-nilly (some still do )
There's no rule saying that a flamenco artist must use this tool, but my argument is that if he does use it in creating a work, then I'd call the work "modern."
A better counterexample against me would've been the following: Suppose Escribano writes a computer program to compose a solea for solo guitar. Say he uses neural nets to teach it by feeding it hundreds of pre-1960 soleas. Would its output be modern or traditional?
I'd be inclined to say modern, especially if it includes techniques like string detuning on the fly or chords and scale runs that are impossible to finger on a regular six-string guitar.
But suppose the computer program happens to reproduce one of Ramon Montoya's soleas? (As Judy Tenuta used to say, "It could happen!")
We're back at the same paradox: The program output is modern, Montoya's solea isn't, though the tabs or partituras for both are identical.
And I just noticed I'm really long winded. What a lot of words to say basically nothing important
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Date Oct. 22 2010 5:20:06
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....makes me thinking 
