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Sabicas in a movie playing por buleria.....
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Sabicas in a movie playing por b... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
wow, he had the guitar fingerboard modified to include a 20th fret, haven't seen that on an old flamenco guitar before.
It was fairly common on Mexican guitars in the 1950s and later--probably before that, but that's the earliest I have experience.
My first guitar, from Paracho, had a 20th fret. The fingerboard was rosewood. Eventually the neck bowed a bit. I had Juan Pimentel Ramirez, the great Mexico City luthier, plane the neck flat and replace the fingerboard with ebony. He reproduced the 20th fret, a common feature on his guitars. The neck was rock solid for years afterward.
Pimentel seemed somewhat to resent working on a cheap Paracho guitar. He charged me as much for the fingerboard as I had paid for the guitar in the first place, 300 pesos = $24 at the time.
Pimentel made guitars for a number of Mexican pros, including David Moreno, who played both classical and flamenco, and Gilberto Puente, the requinto of Los Tres Ases, the best requinto player ever.
I believe Pimentel's excellent first class guitars were running about $200 in Brazilian or Indian rosewood and spruce. Over a period of years I commissioned several and brought them back to Texas for friends. By the 1970s they were around $450-500. For comparison, my wife paid $650 for the '67 Ramirez 1a blanca she gave me.
The atmosphere of the movie reminds me strongly of the ambience of the prosperous stratum of Mexico City in the 1950s. But it's the first time I have heard bulerias in an upper class Mexican accent. 
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 15 2014 18:35:17
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sabicas in a movie playing por b... (in reply to jg7238)
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I received an email yesterday from someone quite familiar with the flamenco scene in Mexico City in the late 1960s. He doesn't personally participate in Internet forums, so I post the info here, with his permission:
Quote:
"I was thumbing (clicking?) through the Foro Flamenco today and came across the posted clip of Sabicas playing in the Mexican movie, which I had never seen before, great stuff! Several points. In the foro they refer to it as a "bulerias" and indeed Sabicas is playing por bulerias to accompany the singer, but the cante form is a Zorongo, as revived by Garcia Lorca. The ancient form of the Zorongo was originally done to the compas of the tango, but the letras have the same poetic form, so you can make them fit por buleria. If you check out the opening credits, you will see they credit the song as a "Sorongo (sic) Gitano, with authorship to "A. Garcia/Padilla." The guitarist who follows immediately is none other than the great Antonio Bribiesca ("la Guitarra que Llora").
"I fast forwarded the movie to 50.09 where there is a spectacular cafe flamenco scene which starts with a bulerias and ends with a long soleares w/bulerias macho. The dancer is none other than Lola Flores, the wife of Manolo Caracol. The guitarist is the great Paco Aguilera, who played for her for many years,” [the cantaor and movie actor Caracol was the proprietor of the Rincon de Goya in Mexico City for several years] “however, I suspect this scene may have been filmed in Spain, rather than Mexico, and then edited into the long drunken conversation between the two obnoxious señoritos."
"I watched the Sabicas clip closely, I think the guitar with the fingerboard extension he is playing is a Mexican guitar, possibly a Solis, looks a bit like a Santos head which was one of the designs used by Solis, who I knew when I lived there. While the clip at first glance appears to have been recorded live, I believe it was actually recorded in a studio (probably with a different guitar), and with very careful editing inserted over the filmed version. There are several places where the cuts and on screen fingerings don't exactly line up with the music, beyond the usual irritating digital delay which YouTube curses us with.
"Final observation is the movie probably dates to around the early 50's, which is precisely when Sabicas did his one week stint at the Electra studios in NYC. They sold the outtakes (after putting together Vol 1, 2, and 3) to other companies such as Columbia, Hispavox, etc, who released the material over a period of nearly 2 decades, but it all was done ca 1952 at Electra. It wasn't until ABC Paramount released "El Rey del Flamenco" that we actually heard his newer material, and it was a shock to those that thought Sabicas had been standing still all those years just recycling and re-arranging falsetas. "
"Well, it was a shock to see a Mexican movie with so much real flamenco in it. Many of the films Sabicas appeared in (anonymously) were American westerns in which they put a moustache and sombrero on him and had him sitting in the corner playing "Mexican" music in the cantina. Was great to hear Bribiesca thank him by name on screen."
End quote.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 17 2014 16:23:59
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