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"La Niña de los Peines--El mundo flamenco de Pastora Pavon" by Cristina Cruces Roldán is a detailed artistic biography, with a lot of sidelights on the scene in Spain during the first half of the 20th century.
"Mundo y Formas del Flamenco" by the distinguished singer Antonio Mairena and the scholar Ricardo Molina is a classic. Like just about anything written about flamenco, it has engendered controversy.
"Las mil y un historias de Pericón de Cádiz¨ by Jose Luis Ortiz Nuevo is a charming little book of stories told by the great singer and story teller to Ortiz.
I try to read a little Spanish every day to keep the language alive in my brain.
Very nice photos, accompanied by texts about village flamenco and the wave of (mostly) american seekers who came to places like moron etc. Goes well with Pohrens book.
RE: Books about Flamenco (in reply to mark indigo)
Pohren did a third book called "The art of Flamenco" Long out of print and hard to find though. I can also recommend "in search of the firedance" by James Woodall.
In Spanish there are many classic works. Try checking out "mundo y formas del cante flamenco" by Ricardo Molina and Antonio Mairena. Also"memoria del Flamenco" by Felix grande
Posts: 3446
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Books about Flamenco (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
what about Paco Sevilla's books? one on Paco, one on Carmen Amaya, one on Silverio...?
I've read "Queen of the Gypsies", Sevilla's book about Carmen Amaya. I recommend it highly. Unfortunately it seems to be out of print, and used book dealers are asking insane prices--about $300 USD. If all the out print books I own are priced like this, I'm sitting on a gold mine!
I think there is no book on the market that is up to date about flamenco. All dusty old stuff..
The best book you can have about flamenco is this foro. But you need to stick with it. Over time you´ll learn all details. (And as positive side effect you become resistant to ugly jokes. Thats good for your character )
As Richard points out, some of these books are hard to get because they are long out of print.
Does anyone have experience with The Bold Strummer Ltd.? They seem to carry many books on flamenco including some that are out of print?
I have already ordered a few of these great suggestions, and I agree Doitsujin, this forum already has been an incredible resource. I should have joined up years ago.
I believe Paco Sevilla's books are still available, he's just bad at marketing. Let me know if you want to buy any of them and I'll see what I can manage (he used to be my wife's teacher).
I know this isn't what you asked, but some books about medieval Spanish history (and the relationship between the Moors of Al Andalus and the Hispano-Roman/Celtiberian Christians) give a cultural context to the world of flamenco thats indispensible
Does anyone have experience with The Bold Strummer Ltd.?
I've just spoken to Nick at The Bold Strummer. You can order straight from them at boldstrummerltd.com. Click Catalog and then The World of Flamenco. The books that are going for a fortune on Amazon, they have at normal prices.
Lives and Legends does seem to be out of print, though.
Just got this email from Bold Strummer, about Paco Sevilla's "Searching for Silverio":
"I regret that we are no longer handling 'Silverio, as our supplier has proven to be unreliable. We are about to remove it from our web site. I hope no inconvenience has been caused.
Best wishes
Nicholas Clarke"
...but www.flamencoconnection.com seems to have it. We'll see.
Hi! I`ve just bought a marvellous book called HISTORIA SOCIAL DEL FLAMENCO by Alfredo Grimaldos. He`s a very experienced flamenco writer and critic. As the title says, the books deals with the social conditions of the flamenco performers. There are a lot of interesting stories, from the "El Cabrero" law problems, a great story about a young Antonio Mairena forced to sing "Cara al Sol" (An unnofficial Franco`s anthem) "por Bulerías" at gunpoint, the Paco de Lucia`s pain with the Jose Candado´s false accusations at the time of Camaron´s death, etc etc. Altought I live in Argentina, a spanish-speaking country (you must have guessed by reading my chip n´dale english jaja) there is very difficult to obtain flamencobooks. This one is the only "new" book i could buy in stores. Everything else is luck and time in flea markets, second hand shops and alikes. That way, i got some nice treasures like "Flamencologia" of Climent and "Memoria del Flamenco" by Felix Grande
-Las confesiones de Antonio Mairena -De los moriscos a la zambomba de Jerez with an intersting theory about the from of the gypsies. -the book about manuel torre write by juan de plata
if you like short novels. I enjoyed "duende" by jason webber. was interesting to hear about flamenco from a foreigner like myself, but he has a very strong understanding of the language used in flamenco (which was very interesting for me)
Flamenco: Gypsy Dance and Music of Andalusia. A series of essays (by a group of German scholar-aficionados) edited by Claus Schreiner. Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon. First printed in German, 1985; English in paperback, 1996.
if you like short novels. I enjoyed "duende" by jason webber. was interesting to hear about flamenco from a foreigner like myself, but he has a very strong understanding of the language used in flamenco (which was very interesting for me)
its a nice story with a good ending
Having lived in Granada and taken lessons there, I thought it a very poor and inaccurate device of shoddy imagination. You can search here for other opinions.
Una nueva biografía bucea en “el enigma Paco de Lucía”, a diez años de su muerte El libro escritor por el periodista español César Suarez revela la angustia y perfeccionismo del genio de la guitarra, y explora las complejidades de “uno de los dioses del flamenco”, según el autor
El enigma Paco de Lucía (editorial Lumen) es el título de este libro que se publicará a pocas semanas antes de que se cumpla el décimo aniversario de aquel 25 de febrero de 2014 en el que la muerte sorprendía al guitarrista en Playa del Carmen (México), con 66 años, y a sus miles de admiradores de todas las edades y de todo el mundo
It's the only comprehensive book about flamenco I have seen in English. I've read a fair amount in Spanish. This book agrees pretty welll with much that I have read.
Amazon bio of the author:
"Peter Manuel is a professor of ethnomusicology at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been an amateur performer of sitar, flamenco guitar, jazz piano, and highland bagpipes. His documentary videos, "Tassa Thunder: Folk Music from India to the Caribbean" and "Drumming for Ganesh: Music at Pune's Ganpati Festival" are accessible on Youtube and Vimeo."
He appears here on the Foro occasionally as "Steelhead."
It's the only comprehensive book about flamenco I have seen in English. I've read a fair amount in Spanish. This book agrees pretty welll with much that I have read.
I have it too, it seems really excellent to my untutored mind. I haven't had a chance to read much of it, I've been dipping into it though. I really like his writing style.
I enjoyed the book by Leblon about gypsies and flamenco (it is in English too). He does a good job isolating the Flamenco “dynasties” and discusses their important contribution to the art. I did track down some miss information (such as Gypsies fighting in the Flanders war. That was misrepresented, it was only Montoya early on in the war, late 1590’s and then the later story was about a militia of misfits that the Spain gov never allowed to leave the country, for obvious reasons. He made it sound like many gitanos fought and returned as “Flemish” soldiers, which is false). But I like the way he presents a lot of the information. The other issue with his book is like many pro-gitano authors, after making the distinction between the FLAMENCO artists and the nomadic Roma, they go on to talk about the problems Roma endure racially, in a GENERAL way…leading the readers to wrongly assume the wandering nomadic people in Spain are carrying the flamenco music traditions.
For Spanish, Guillermo Castro Buendia has a definitive work that focuses on Silverio epoc and provides pretty much ALL the information, in a free to download dissertation (also a book that is sold that goes with this) that is basically one-stop shopping on the huge subject. I did not find it hard to read, and it is well organized, however, I would recommend the reader take all the opinion/conjecture/conclusions with a grain of salt. It is 3000 pages, but that is because more that half of it is musical scores that are discussed in the appendix. There is some technical musicology there as well, but maybe that is why I prefer it to general writing of the subject. But in terms of information, every thing is in there, and I asked him online earlier this year if there is any updated info to what is in there and he said no. One relevant historical thing is the familial links of Planeta’s lineage to Caracol, because it ties the story of flamencology (much is based on the book by Estebañez Calderon) to modern traditions in a personal way. I don’t recall if that was known when Castro Buendia published, but it is important to me anyway, because it forces us to take that early record seriously. And again, he and most scholars, tend to downplay the contribution of the gitano to the art, making sure the readers accept ANDULZ people in general carry the flamenco traditions, and the gitano community that is involved are interpreters.
I really dislike that stance and everyone needs to know that the gitano contribution is deliberately downplayed as to counter the public misconception that GITANOS are the first and only CREATORS of the genre, as if the non-gypsy Andalusians are “pretending” to be gypsies by doing the flamenco music. While the art is certainly a shared cultural phenomenon amongst Andalusian people, it should always be emphasized that the gitano contribution is not mere “interpretation” but a MASSIVE dominant creative element to the whole genre. It is therefore not made very clear the situation: flamenco is DOMINATED by a specific subset of the gitano community, and likewise as specific subset of non-gypsies that share in this. It is NOT all of andalucia, or all of gitanos in spain that are the stewards of the art form. It is an elite specific group of families. Leblon shows clearly how those families are tied together, but majority of flamencology does not seem to focus on this aspect. Perhaps the more glaring obvious situation not discussed is that at the heart of flamenco we actually have the racially mixed artists that seem to be a central part of cultural story. The literal “mixing” of peoples culturally and physically is going hand in hand with this unique art form, and, perhaps, the most beautiful thing about it.
About a third of Peter Manuel's "Flamenco Music..." describes and analyzes the flamenco repertoire palo by palo, with examples in musical notation. I don't know of any other English source that does this. It's rare enough in Spanish.
About a third of Peter Manuel's "Flamenco Music..." describes and analyzes the flamenco repertoire palo by palo, with examples in musical notation. I don't know of any other English source that does this. It's rare enough in Spanish.
RNJ
The collaborative book about Malagueñas that classifies all the traditional styles has excellent scores all transposed into C major with large note heads for “target notes”, and small note heads for the mellismas. I sometimes disagree with certain “target notes”, however it was so well done and organized I realized ALL flamencology would hugely benefit from their approach. The book is in Spanish, but today we have auto translate on our IPhones so I don’t see a special need for English books on the subject (which after all is a Spanish art anyway). So far Carol Whitney is the ONLY transcriptions of cante I have seen that I totally agree with (or rather I would do exactly as she was doing in that article much discussed). Sometimes, a hap hazard transcription is more harmful than good (Castro Buendia has been discussed in this regard, some of his are pretty good though, again in the 3k page dissertation I recommended). It is good more authors are using scores in general these days (Manuel transcribed the SAME solea as Whitney years ago, in an article and it would be good to compare them yourself, for example he skips the repeat of the cambio on the first letra, absolute pitch is harder to read, etc.), as even a bad one provided a basis.
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