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I don't believe for a minute that we know how to make better instruments now, or how to play better now, or how to rock better now. These guys were the Paco's and VA's of their day...many centuries ago. I wonder how their music sounded?
Oh, and by the way, the songs they played survive, words and music...we just don't know how they played it, what tuning they used, etc.
OK, maybe not flamenco 'as we know it', but not so different, I imagine.
Rob, I mostly agree. Certainly there were some rockers back then. What they did, I bet they did very, very well. What we have now is more homogenization and equal-opportunity at learning the basics, but I'm sure the masters and guilds of the old school were sublime indeed.
But flamenco only came into existence of the 1800's, a mixture of Gypsy, Arabic, Sephardic Jew, and Spanish influences.
I don't know if that's entirely true Mike. There are apparently stunningly close similarities to Sufi, Syrian and Assyrian song forms in a couple of Flamenco forms like Siguiriyas that date back a whole lot longer than that. It's open for debate I realize but I suspect there's a lot in Flamenco that was very much early or "pure" Flamenco that was in Andalucia under the Moors if not earlier. I've heard recordings of traditional Assyrian tribal laments that are supposedly handed down generation to generation that are supposed to date back to their empirical days (which itself essentially collapsed around 3000 BCE or earlier, say nothing of when it flourished). It would explain musical similarities between Indian, Arabic/Persian and other mid-eastern cultures, not to mention Flamenco. The 1800's are more likely when the name or word "flamenco" was first being used to describe what was already there.
Jamey, could be, actually I'm just pedantically repeating what I was taught, by people with their own biases and reasons for believing it. "There's nothing new under the sun," right? :)
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