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The double edge sword of the singing Bailaor or Bailaora...yes they have the skeleton, but it is also tied into a boxed concept of phrasing....so when they hear a singer going out of the box they call it "wrong" and impose their dance concept to the singer (that should be otherwise free)...a sort of artificial selection imposed on otherwise talented singers (as we have done as humans to pets and cattle). Of course this was not consciously done, but a big part of what I see as the "death" of cante.
is that all the way up to the top, then? I always assumed it was just lower level and for teaching, and good dancers would be able to accommodate good singers - but I guess if they want to choreograph down to the finest detail then that means they can't have a singer improvising and stretching lines out over extra compáses etc.
Posts: 14799
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
The double edge sword of the singing Bailaor or Bailaora...yes they have the skeleton, but it is also tied into a boxed concept of phrasing....so when they hear a singer going out of the box they call it "wrong" and impose their dance concept to the singer (that should be otherwise free)...a sort of artificial selection imposed on otherwise talented singers (as we have done as humans to pets and cattle). Of course this was not consciously done, but a big part of what I see as the "death" of cante.
is that all the way up to the top, then? I always assumed it was just lower level and for teaching, and good dancers would be able to accommodate good singers - but I guess if they want to choreograph down to the finest detail then that means they can't have a singer improvising and stretching lines out over extra compáses etc.
This is how they accomodate good cante..."oh he has a great quejio and knowledge...but he can't sing for dance...he is totally out of compas..."....that type of nonsense. Young singers are "taught" how to do it "correctly" ie, orthodox, and further the "in/out of compas" or "if it is out of the box it is wrong" mentality. This is reinforced by aficionados that can't even do palmas.
Of course a good dancer will accomodate an old singer or any with seniority if dancing SOLO...but probably will not use him for a theatre show or whatever pays good. Getting PAID is the thing....That is why if you watch old documentaries like Rito y Geografia they often lament about working in big city tablao vs down south at home with grandma and go on that other non professional family members as being the more desirable and authentic cante.
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
I remember a story (but not the names) of a famous and experienced dancer, whose tocaor could not play one night. Another experierced tocaor was sent and asked if they could practice.
She asked "sabes tocar?" He said yes. She said " Entonces, yo sé bailar, tu sabes tocar, no hace falta practicar.)
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
She asked "sabes tocar?" He said yes. She said " Entonces, yo sé bailar, tu sabes tocar, no hace falta practicar.)
I thought that was the norm in the pro scene. At least seems to be out here. "Practice? For what? Don't you know flamenco?" Way beyond my abilities but all the top players out here function like that.....
Whatever it is, to me it seems like it's really hard to find flamenco puro if you don't have flamenco friends, even in places like Jerez
Yes.
We spent a week in Jerez a few years ago. The hotel where we stayed had brochures in the room touting the knowledge of their concierges about everything in Jerez. "Just ask," they insisted. In the gift shop they had a couple of nicely printed coffee table books about flamenco. But when I asked the concierge to recommend a peña open to non-members, all i got was vague looks, and an attitude that could have been interpreted as, "Why would prosperous and intelligent persons like yourselves be at all interested in flamenco?"
ORIGINAL: DavRom your experience sounds more like what one might get in Madrid, not southern Spain
When I spoke to the concierge he replied with measured cadence, all the consonants present and thetas, the lisped 's'. But later I heard him speaking to a colleague with a much more andaluz cadence, elided d's, and no thetas. He may have shared your idea of Madrid attitudes.
We wandered at random into a downtown restaurant at lunchtime. The waiter was friendly, asking how we were enjoying Jerez. Larisa asked him about flamenco. Once the waiter determined that I at least was interested in cante, he went away and brought another waiter, who was a fount of information.
When I first went to Spain in the early 1960s just about everyone I came in contact with in Andalucia spoke andalú. Not necessarily in the ritzier parts, which I seldom visited on my tight budget, but even there people still distinguished their speech from Castilian, as well as from that of most other people. Fifty years later it no longer surprises me when someone in Andalucia speaks carefully cultivated castellano, but it still catches my ear somehow. Thetas in particular, perhaps because they were absent from the Latin American Spanish I grew up with.
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
Speaking solely about flamenco guitar, the post-Paco scene seems to be decidedly disjointed and without a clear identity. To me, it felt like every new release by Paco signified a sort of shift/evolution in solo flamenco guitar. Almoraima, Siroco, Luzia, etc etc... while there are plenty of interesting and technically proficient guitarists out there now (Antonio Rey and Jose Manuel Leon come to mind right away), in general the field is pretty homogeneous and not particularly original. It also seems like the number of new releases has dried up, or are not up to the level of previous ones (see Vicente's last several "pop flamenco" releases, Nunez's all-too-short and clearly compromised by his injury "Travesia", etc). It makes me sad because it seems like new and interesting releases were coming out all the time, not too long ago.
It makes me a bit uneasy to see stuff like "who is the next Paco de Lucia?," too. Nobody will be the next Paco de Lucia, not only because of his level of playing/musicianship, but also because that way of thinking is toxic to the evolution of the art form. Paco de Lucia was not "the next Sabicas" or "the next Nino Ricardo," he was just Paco de Lucia. I doubt there will be another guitarist who commands the same level of respect and universal acclaim as Paco, but I am hoping that new and interesting guitarists emerge soon...
Edit - Vicente's next CD better have material akin to this. I know that he is playing older stuff here, but it's nice to know he's not just playing the more pop flamenco stuff live nowadays:
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
Vicente's Paseo de Gracia might look like Pop Flamenco on the outside but... listen again, carefully and you might change your mind.
Jose Manuel Leon in my opinion does the Prog Flamenco very well, even with the Mujer Klorica project. Myrddin is also very good at it but he seems to have his own space, I don't believe he is the kind of guy to be influenced by flamenco trends (or any trends).
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Sr. Martins)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Sr. Martins
Vicente's Paseo de Gracia might look like Pop Flamenco on the outside but... listen again, carefully and you might change your mind.
Jose Manuel Leon in my opinion does the Prog Flamenco very well, even with the Mujer Klorica project. Myrddin is also very good at it but he seems to have his own space, I don't believe he is the kind of guy to be influenced by flamenco trends (or any trends).
Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Paseo de Gracia, Tierra, etc... and I am the type to listen to stuff dozens of times before I pass final judgment. To me the themes were very repetitive on Paseo de Gracia, ala "Tres Notas Para Decir Te Quiero." I definitely liked Tierra way more. And yes, Myrddin is of course excellent, but he is in a category all his own!
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Bulerias2005)
quote:
To me the themes were very repetitive on Paseo de Gracia, ala "Tres Notas Para Decir Te Quiero."
Really?
Autorretrato, Azules Y Corinto, Luz de la Sombra, La Estrella... those four would be enough to make it a great album for me but the other five are actually pretty cool too and help balancing things out IMO.
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Sr. Martins)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Sr. Martins
quote:
To me the themes were very repetitive on Paseo de Gracia, ala "Tres Notas Para Decir Te Quiero."
Really?
Autorretrato, Azules Y Corinto, Luz de la Sombra, La Estrella... those four would be enough to make it a great album for me but the other five are actually pretty cool too and help balancing things out IMO.
They're definitely interesting pieces, I just don't think they're on the level of his previous work, especially Un Momento en el Sonido -- that is my absolute favorite, a real masterpiece IMO. But of course this is all subjective, and frankly, with someone like Vicente, not worth arguing about... each of his albums stands head and shoulders above most guitarists' output!
When I first went to Spain in the early 1960s just about everyone I came in contact with in Andalucia spoke andalú. Not necessarily in the ritzier parts, which I seldom visited on my tight budget, but even there people still distinguished their speech from Castilian, as well as from that of most other people. Fifty years later it no longer surprises me when someone in Andalucia speaks carefully cultivated castellano, but it still catches my ear somehow. Thetas in particular, perhaps because they were absent from the Latin American Spanish I grew up with.
Today, on the other side of the International Dateline, it is Monday, October 12, in Palau. It is Columbus Day (an American holiday) and the Embassy is closed, and, being Columbus Day, it set me to reflecting on why Latin American Spanish differs from Castellano. Particularly with regard to the absent theta but in other aspects as well, Latin American Spanish is in some ways closer to Andalu than it is to the Spanish of the Real Academia Espanola and that of Madrid, Central, and Northern Spain. The reason is the Conquistadors such as the great captains Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro came, not from Andalucia but from the adjacent province of Extremadura, as did many of those who followed them and colonized Central and South America. The Spanish dialect spoken in Extremadura is close to that of Southwestern Andalucia. thus, from the beginning Latin American Spanish took on the complexion of that spoken by the Spaniards from Extremadura and Southwestern Andalucia.
It would be interesting to know how Castellano was spoken in Madrid in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, at the time the Spanish discovered and began colonizing Latin America. Linguists who study the evolution of languages know that language changes and evolves much more quickly in the metropolitan cities than it does in the rural areas and overseas colonies and former colonies. It is possible that at that time Spanish spoken in Madrid was closer to that spoken in Andalucia than it is today. Maybe not. But it would make an interesting study. Someone may have already done one, but I am not aware of it. Along that same theme of language changing much less in some of the far-flung colonies than it does in the metropole, there are linguists who say that the "purest" Spanish spoken today exists in parts of Colombia. I suppose by "purest" they mean it is closer to the Spanish spoken five hundred years ago, and it must have been that spoken in Estremadura and Southwestern Andalucia, as that is where most of the colonizers came from.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
If you've ever heard Colombian news broadcast it's really easy on the ears, I grew up speaking/hearing Mexican Spanish but any media I see from Columbia is always really clearly spoken.
It's probably similar to Americans and British, I heard the British were all rhotic like us a few hundred years ago and something changed. I think they presume just a style thing.
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to mark indigo)
I work as a contractor and I always dread when we get to the paint color portion of a house because people can argue about colors till their blue in the face, then argue about whether your face was more blue or more purple. Anyhow, that's because people don't paint their house fisher price colors. There's a huuuuge vast spectrum of mixes and tones. However there are colors that are undeniable, some reds are just plain red. Equally, there are things out there still to this day that are undeniably flamenco and flamenco puro at that. Even though there's a vast array of things to choose from, real puro flamenco does still exist if you choose it.
You, of course, noted that I placed quotes around the term "purest" when referencing linguists' categorization of the language. As a category, "pure," whether applied to Castellano or flamenco, is dependent upon one's frame of reference, and there is no categorical absolute in either case. As Lenny points out, however, there are versions of flamenco that are considered "pure" relative to others, and the same holds true for Castellano. There may not be one version that all can agree is "pure," but there certainly are forms of both the music and the language that, comparatively speaking, are more "pure" than others.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
i'd rather say flamenco is a spirit, a state of being...existential
Now that really is evasive and can be applied to many genres of music, say, for example, the classical music of India: Shastriya Sangit of North India, based on Vedic ritual chants and the Carnatic tradition of South India. And Indian music is just one example. To say a genre of music is a "spirit, a state of being...existential" doesn't define any single genre at all, much less flamenco, and can hardly be used as a marker.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
being that "pure" is an absolute one thing cannot be more or less pure than another
Like any other adjective used to compare two or more nouns (such as flamenco or Spanish) in English usage, "pure" has a comparative and superlative form. Thus: "pure," "purer," "purest."
The fallacy in your attempt to apply the analogy of a pregnant woman to this discussion is regardless how many women are pregnant, they are all equally pregnant. There is nothing to compare, as there is in the case of the level of purity of flamenco or Spanish, even if "purity" in each case can be subjective and a matter of taste.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 1871
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Bulerias2005)
Have you considered that there may not be as many releases because there is no money in it? I recently read that the guy who wrote a huge pop hit-"All about that bass" or some such bs-was complaining that he had millions of streams, downloads, or whatever, and made something like 5k. In the past a hit like that would have generated over a million dollars for the writer. There is little financial incentive for new guitarists to record cd's. I realize people need to prove themselves and if they hope to have a career, they need to record, but if you are an unknown guitarist your chances of making a return on a recording are pretty slim. OTOH, if an up and comer gets hired by this company or that singer, he can maybe make a living.....
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