Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
RE: Cante Top 200 Master List (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
There is one that has a lower pitch melody goes to Am each tercio. THe other one stays up High and valiente on C major, and only goes to Am on the last line.
Got it. Lightbulb went on after a couple listens. Thanks for those comparative examples.
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
RE: Cante Top 200 Master List (in reply to edguerin)
Thanks, Ed, but don’t be offended if I don't end up officially adding that one to the master list!
I once wrote a long email in which I had named that cante, and when I hit ‘send’, my email locked up, the computer went all freaky and fully froze in a way that’s never happened before or since. I got the computer back up and running, found a draft of the email, excised the name of the cante, and it went through just fine.
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
RE: Cante Top 200 Master List (in reply to edguerin)
Hah, yeah. Kind of like old fairy tales cooked up to frighten children into behaving well.
I dunno. Regardless of origin I think taboos end up accruing a certain amount of bad juju through long-held collective belief. I tend to abide, myself. I never toast with plain water, etc……..
RE: Cante Top 200 Master List (in reply to srshea)
Some corrections:
Pastora's tango is "Del color de cera madre." Torre's taranto is "Ay mi muchacho." The bulería por soleá letra is "Al de la Puerta Real." The "Que te calles" tango letra was recorded by Pastora. The name of the style is "cartagenera" not "cartegenera." The "Noche y día" cartagenera letra appears twice in the list. "A mi madre de mi alma" is probably soleá de Mellizo, not siguiriya.
Regardless of the track listing, Niño Barbate sings "Oí doblar": Oí doblar una campana oí doblar una campana yo creí que era la reina la reina no era era una pobre gitana
A few suggestions:
Important letra for tonás: Y si no es verdad que Dios me mande la muerte si me la quiere mandar
Another one por soleá: Tiro piedras por la calle al que le dé que perdone tengo la cabeza loca de tantas cavilaciones
I don't recall ever hearing Pastora's namesake tango. I think she recorded it so I must have heard it at some point, but I don't think it's popular enough to be on this kind of list.
If you're looking for a particular letra as recorded by a specific singer, you can search for the singer's name on the main page (Ctrl + F). If that recording isn't on the site, you can search for other artists' versions of that letra by doing a Google search with part of the URL (www.telefonica.net/web2/flamencoletras) and a word from the letra. For example, a search with the URL and "campana" shows that Chano also recorded the Niño Barbate letra seen above.
quote:
(Ricardo)...a single letra could be used to demo so many different styles.
I agree. It's one of the best ways to get substyles into your head. For example, the "Tiro piedras" letra is typically Mellizo 1, but it could be sung in practically any other soleá de inicio (four-line letra, or even in three-line styles like Frijones 2 if you omit the first line of verse). This puts all of the focus on the music and shows why some letras work better than others in certain styles. Also it will very quickly show how everything falls apart when the letra is accidentally changed (confusing it with a similar letra, changing the order of the words, etc.)
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
RE: Cante Top 200 Master List (in reply to NormanKliman)
Terrific, thanks for the corrections and additions, Norman! I figured there’d be any number of errors in there and a duplicate or two, but I wasn’t really seeing straight by the time I wrapped everything up. I’ll get your corrections squared away and added soon.
Pastora’s ‘peines’ tangos wasn’t something I had considered at first, but then I realized that it kept popping up in every book I have with letras in it, so I figured that it had become something that others had picked up in homage. But I suppose it’s just famous for being famous in an historical way.
And I knew there had to be some kind of back door into searching for specific words on the letra site, but I don’t know how to work this damn machine and couldn’t figure it out , so thank for that tip!
I’m still thinking to organize this stuff a little better into a single list and I’m curious if anyone out there feels strongly one way or another about how this could best be done. So far I’ve just been trying to list a letra, a style that it’s (not necessarily exclusively) associated with, and a couple few singers who have recorded it or are associated with it. Maybe that’s about as good as it’s going to get for now. Like I said, the “definitive,” “top 200,” etc., language was tongue in cheek, and I’m thinking that the most this sort of list is going to be able to offer, so far as I'm able to put it together, is to just lay out a number of solid clues and leads for people to pursue on their own.
So at some point I think I’ll just roughly organize stuff by style, in the same letra/style/singer fashion, and then put an asterisk or some other footnote sort of notation by the letras that have been discussed in more detail within this thread or elsewhere in the archives, so people can dig a little deeper if they wanna.
At some point further discussion of stuff that’s really locked into one letra/cante association, ‘Me llamo Curro Frijones’, and stuff that’s all over the place and sung por any old style would be interesting and valuable, but that’s definitely over my head for now.
Printable Version
, so thank for that tip! 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread