Late check-in, and background check (unverifiable, I hope).

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solea1

Posts: 12
Joined: Apr. 27 2014

Late check-in, and background check ...

Hi -- just checking in, finally, and trying to figure out the protocol around here.

Since the late fifties, I've been trying to figure out what flamenco is all about, and trying to play the flamenco guitar. Both obsessions are very problematic -- my clinical term for the condition is FlamencOCD -- but always fascinating and rewarding.

I've spent most of the past eight years in hangin' in Jerez, but am now usually stranded stateside. (In the sixties, I spent years in stuck in Seville or marooned in Morón.)

When I'm over there, I shut up and listen, and take guitar lessons. When I'm here, I write about flamenco in my long-winded way (tip: just skip every other paragraph), and talk about it to bored friends, interested groups, university classes, or anyone else who'll listen -- always to no apparent effect until 2008, when I was knighted by King Juan Carlos for the dissemination of Spanish culture in the U.S. (Unexpected is an understatement.)

In 1972, I began a quixotic quest to ensure the protection and preservation of the 100 neglected and endangered documentary programs in the fabulous "Rito y Geografia del Flamenco" Spanish TV series. Fifteen years later, I was finally and reluctantly permitted to buy the first rescued copy. (Expensive is an understatement.) Along with some sixty other programs from lesser series, they're all now on YouTube, free to one and all, including superbly spiffed-up versions done by José María Velázquez Gaztelu, the onscreen interviewer and key man in creating the original Rito series.

In 2002, I was asked to write the U.S. contribution to the international petition to UNESCO, asking that flamenco be declared an Intangible Patrimony of Mankind and describing its acceptance and current ascendence in the this country. Nine years later, the petition was granted.

Two months ago, I was writing something for my blog about Paco de Lucía right after he died. I mentioned that in Spain, people always said his art had a unique "propio sello" or "personal stamp". I suddenly realized that Paco de Lucía should indeed have an actual personal stamp -- an official Spanish postage stamp. I wrote to a Jerez friend and flamenco authority, Estela Zatania. We drew up a formal petition, she figured out how to push it through channels, and last Wednesday the stamp was issued. (Who says you have to wait forever to get anything done at the Post Office?)

Yesterday, April 26th, Estela gave her first block of those stamps to Tomatito -- no one could be more deserving -- during an homage to him at veteran player José Luís Postigo's Casa de la Guitarra in Seville.

The stamp will be officially unveiled in Madrid in a few days, as part of the presentation of Paco's new record, "Canción Andaluza". (Yes, there surely would've been a Paco stamp someday -- but then the stars were perfectly aligned because a stamp had already been scheduled to celebrate the "Guitarra Española". The petition precipitated a quick redesign bearing Paco's name and image as well as those same words. To me, he just like Jesus, and he's holding the cruel wooden device upon which he would sacrifice himself -- but hey, maybe that's just the Holy Week timing of it all.)

So far, my blog (www.flamencoexperience.com/blog) runs to about 1500 pages of hard-core information in English about every aspect of flamenco. Most of it is my translations of info and interviews (many of Paco) from hundreds of Spanish sources, plus some comments. The rest is random reflections and rants, based on my own biased taste. Some fraction of it should be of interest to any aficionado -- just search for a keyword, or choose from among the many categories

I post about flamenco on Facebook, mostly referring folks to new blog entries; my Facebook page shows what I've been doing. There's always a lot of arguing, of course. (Sometimes I think flamenco is above all a vehicle for arguments among aficionados. In June I'll be talking at the Flamenco Festival in New Mexico, revealing "The Top Ten Flamenco Arguments and the Winning Sides".)

If there are any guitarists left who wonder about the many pre-Paco approaches to flamenco, and about those precious not-very-jazzy but very Andalusian falsetas that have become an endangered musical species, i can teach that oldfangled material via the newfangled Skype.

(Honest, those vanished men like Niño Ricardo and Sabicas and Diego del Gastor and Mario Escudero weren't all that incompetent. In fact, Paco always insisted that flamenco didn't begin with him and Camarón, and that it was imperative to grasp the prior tradition to understand what you're doing, or not doing, right now.)

I also love and play lots of early Paco, incidentally, but lots of other teachers can do that better. They just don't realize it's even finer than the later Paco material they prefer.

Regards to all,

Brook Zern

_____________________________

Brook Zern
www.flamencoexperience.com
www.flamencoexperience.com/blog

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Apr. 27 2014 20:39:08