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Brook Zern on Segovia and flamenco
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Thomas Whiteley
Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area
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 Brook Zern on Segovia and flamenco
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This might interest some people as it does interest me. We hear bits about what Segovia thought about flamenco. Here is one story.
With permission from Brook Zern, and thank you for your fine work.
My last post referred to Andres Segovia, and his retro-even-for-1930 taste in
flamenco guitar and flamenco in general. If it's okay, I'll take the liberty of quoting from an interview with him conducted by Vladimir Bobri, his longtime friend in New York who headed the Society of the Classic Guitar. It appeared in issue 42 of the Guitar Review, which Bobri edited (and I flamenco-edited).
Asked about his attitude toward flamenco, Segovia says:
"I love the flamenco, but the *true* flamenco, not the flamenco heard these
days. The flamenco guitarist of today has removed his attention from the
ideals of yesterday, when this noble art was prized for a depth of emotion, which could be produced by a certain simplicity of approach. Today's guitarists are more theatrical, they want to show their technique, to dazzle the public with pyrotechnics. And so they not only insert chords not belonging to the true flamenco, but they also emphasize the rapid scale passages, tremolos, and so forth. The result is not to my taste."
Asked then about Manolo de Huelva, Segovia says: "But of course I knew him.
The last time I heard him play as when we went together, a group of friends,
to a little hotel that had been inaugurated at Alcala de Guadaira, near
Sevilla. And Manolo de Huelva was accompanying Manolo de Jerez [Manuel Torre]
--
"Er Nino de Jerez" -- "el nino" (boy) -- a "boy" (fifty years old!), who sang
the seguiriya better than anybody, save La Nina de los Peines.
It was just before the beginning of the revolution in Spain [1936], the
fighting was on the verge of starting. Somebody had been killed, just the
night before -- some persons who were going to that hotel. One of my friends was relectant to go there; and that same Manolo de Huelva said to him in a very low voice, very slowly, "Sir, where the body goes, there Death goes"" And then we all went. Manolo de Huelva played in a *very* simple manner – very flamenco, just as it should be, being folklore. He never resorted to a cheap display of pyrotechnics; his playing was simple, emotional and expressive. He was a distinguished follower of Paco Lucena. Yes, Manolo de Huelva was the best during the time of my youth...
I remember another incident with Manolo de Jerez, or El Nino de Jerez. I
was with a group of friends in what is called in Spain a juerga, a gathering for amusing each other with playing flamenco, dancing, and wine, and beautiful girls...accessible... Then, entered Nino de Jerez, who, as I said, was the best singer of seguiriyas. We invited him to join us. He accepted, but conditionally. "Listen, young men, if it is for your amusement that I have come here, I don't sing. Because I sing only to make peopole suffer!" Then he looked around at the other singers with us, all excellent cantaores, and said, "Now, from this moment, we will sing nothing but seguiriyas!" And all the others, who didn't sing it so well, remained quiet. Then El Nino de Jerez began to sing...And that is not all! After he had been singing for only a short time, La Nina de los Peines arrived, and she immediately joined our group. And so it became a kind of singing contest between El Nino y La Nina, each inspired by the other, being both the very best cantaores of seguiriyas. And we were fortunate to hear their extensive repertoires of the cante jondo, so profound, intense and moving. An unforgettable experience!
But guitarists today--! What they do has absolutely nothing, nothing,
nothing to do with flamenco., They play chords that are altogether foreign to
the character of flamenco. Besides the theatrical technique in such poor taste.
There was a flamenco player in Granada, also named Manolo, who began this
flamboyant style of playing. Falla commented, after listing to him, "Poor
Manolo jumps from the seguiriya to the polka!"
End of the excerpted section from Guitar Review.
Where do I start? This is "ya shoulda been here last night" raised to the
nth degree. In fact, I can only think of one imaginable case in flamenco
history when the sudden arrival of Nina de los Peines at a fiesta might have
secretly disappointed me, and that would have been when Manuel Torre had just
sat down to concentrate on Siguiriyas with Manolo de Huelva on the axe. But as Segovia had known or at least suspected, Pastora was able to give Torre a real run for his money even there. Not a bad memory, Andres.
Fascinating to think that a self-appointed guitar critic (okay, Manuel de
Falla) was already miffed at modern guitar "pyrotechnics" in what was probably 1922, certainly not very much later.
My first thought, partly confirmed by memory, is that Segovia's dislike of
"modern players" was directed at the like of Sabicas -- never mind, say, Paco de
Lucia who might not have been in the old man's field of vision. But this is
contradicted by an oddity: Andres Segovia went out of his way to publicly
praise another major modern player, namely Serranito.
Serranito was, as I recall, the first of his generation to make a bid for
greatness. His name was on everyone's lips as the new master innovator,
musician and technician until the advent of Paco de Lucia all but wiped him off the map.
Now, I've never gone deeply into Serranito's music. I respect it, but don't
need it. On the surface, at least, it would qualify as being everything
Segovia says he hates in new-fangled flamenco guitar.
Yet there was one aspect of Serranito's playing that struck me as evident and
dominant: his approach was in some fundamental way classical. Just listen
to his early Tarantas -- a marvelous piece, marked by huge, rich, resonant
sonorities that I don't think were ever heard before in flamenco guitar but
which(to me) epitomized the ideal of the classical guitar while still fitting the parameters of flamenco. (But of course, if I wanted to play classical guitar, I would play Bach, just Bach, Bach 24/7, the whole Bach and nothing but the Bach, Bach Around the Clock -- well, you get the idea; so how come I can barely get through my one little number, the man's brief E-minor Bouree, after 45 years of intermittent trying.)
In any case, that aesthetic may explain why Segovia, despite his expressed
disdain for dazzling technique, new chords, rapid picado passages, lush
tremoloes and other complex fripperies, might've detected Serranito's essential underlying classicism and genuinely liked the sound, as an almost classical interpretation of flamenco.
Or maybe not. Who knows?
Brook Zern
_____________________________
Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 1 2003 17:29:37
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Brook Zern on Segovia and flamenco (in reply to Thomas Whiteley)
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Segovia, the man the myth the legend. Who knows what he really thought. The only thing certain is that it was not always what he said!
To me this quite represents a great example of the "it was better in the old days" line, so despised by youngsters such as myself... and of course I do the same thing, only I say "it was better with Paco" since I don't get these new-new guys who play solea por bulerias on every song.
Flamenco has only been around for 200 years or so, nothing the same age as the United States can possibly deserve to be called ancient or sacrosanct. Just as it was a fusion of Arabic, Jewish, Gypsy, and Andalucian sounds and culture at the "beginning," so now it has come to incorporate Cuban and now American (jazz) sounds. There is nothing pure about a mixture, as every chemistry student knows.
Everyone is entitled to love what he loves, but it's arrogant to say that my preference, simply because it's my preference, is better than anyone elses. To trumpet one's own taste as the best is in bad taste! I know Tom likes "old school" stuff, but he never feels compelled to bad-mouth Rafael Riqueni.
Anyways, that's a great quote. I love to hear these stories about the greats' lives. Segovia was certainly Andalucian, no?
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 1 2003 18:06:17
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