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: 3467
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
I don't think any genre of music can be said to only be played properly by a particular ethnicity or race to the exclusion of other ethnicities. Whites can play blues and have for decades, just as non-gitanos can play flamenco. The ability to produce music transcends ethnicity and race.
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: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
I met Tino three years ago. His wife is from Geneva and he gave a course here in Switzerland. Sadly I was just at the beggining of my study of flamenco so I could not really benefit from that course. But he is a really humble and great guy.
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
The middle part of the opening falseta sounds weird at around 0:17-0:30. He shoulda left it. He should have emphasized the Andalusian cadence more by playing it more expressive and loud. A musical rest is a powerful tool. He should have used it a bit more. Rarely seen a guitarist look at the cantaor all the time during accompaniment. Last but not least, the background looks too futuristic for flamenco.
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
First time I saw him perform was at Casa de la Memoria in Seville. Don't remember when exactly, but I'd say well over a decade ago now. He was fantastic, both as a player and as a human being (he graciously answered a bunch of questions I bombarded him with after the show ).
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Posts: 1945
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
I signed up for weekly lessons from Tino via onlineflamenco.com several months ago. He posts a new lesson each week and at the end of the month, he reviews uploaded videos from students and offers advice on how to improve. I really had not had time to spend a lot of practice time on his stuff until a few months ago, but I've found the opportunity to get feedback has given me more enthusiasm to participate.
The material is not super difficult. For me, the value is getting feedback and material from a guitarist working in Spain. That is something I've never been able to access regularly.
Also, he is a professional and has done his homework in that he can offer traditional material specific to an artist or region as well as updated versions of traditional stuff. I get the irony of his origin but bottom line, he plays better and more authentically than I do, and I've learned some cool stuff that is playable for me.
At 19.00 per month for four lessons, it's also the least expensive instruction I've ever had. I'd highly recommend it to all but really advanced players, even if you have to pay more than the promotional price I was offered when they started. It's well worth it.
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Mark2)
quote:
even if you have to pay more
Looks like it's 49 dollars a month now, which seems decent given what you describe.
The price for the standard recorded courses has been halved compared to what they had been doing back when I had that little spat with them here on the foro.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Posts: 3446
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Morante)
Can a white man play the blues?
Driving around Austin one night listening to the radio, an interview with Albert King came on.
As I recall part of it:
Q: Did you ever play Austin?
A: Yes, I went down there and played that Armadillo some times.
Q: What was that like?
A: Whenever I played there some kid always wanted to come up on stage with me. I didn't like that. I was there to entertain the people, not listen to some kid mess around. One night there was this white boy kept after me, saying let his little brother come up on stage with me. Kept on, kept it up, kept after me. Made me kind of mad. After a while I said, "Go ahead, send him on up here." Thought I'd cut him a little, see how he liked that. You know what? That skinny little white boy could play the guitar...
Posts: 1945
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
SRV I guess. Stevie was from a younger generation and by the time he broke through I was already into flamenco and not listening to blues much.
When I was younger I was interested and saw many of the greats including Albert, B.B., Freddie, and tons of lesser known guys. We used to go to black blues clubs in Oakland when we were in high school and get drunk - we loved the music.
I met Albert briefly when he played a gig in SF in the late 70's. He was in his bus waiting to start the gig and being stupid kids, we just climbed on board and introduced ourselves and invited him to share a joint. He politely declined.
When I hear Stevie, I hear lots of Albert and Jimi. I just don't hear a lot of Stevie.
Posts: 15242
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Mark2)
quote:
I get the irony of his origin but bottom line, he plays better and more authentically than I do, and I've learned some cool stuff that is playable for me.
Well, I met Tino in Nuñez’s class in 1999. He was the best accompanist for cante and sounded just like Moraito at the time. It was of course funny to SEE that, but he was not the only Dutch guy there...there was another almost as good as him. A year or two later there came a group of like 5 or 6 tall blonde Dutch guys, all decent guitarists. I inquired about wtf was going on here. Rotterdam, the school set up by Paco Peña seemed to be the explanation. I asked Tino about it and he plainly said you can learn guitar there but not about “flamenco” ...meaning the guitar technique program was advanced but in order to learn accompaniment you still had to go to spain. I was glad to see him once again in 2019. The album he came out with “Desatino” many years back had a curious intro blurb about how the Dutch artisans shared textiles with Sevilla and he felt the aesthetic connection in his home region when seeing this artisan work.
Lately I have been realizing the word “flamenco” is actually “Flemish” or “Fleming” people, in other words, Dutch people from Flanders or Belgium. So, the REAL irony is that he is a TRUE “flamenco” and it is assumed by his looks he could not have anything to do with the “spanish flamenco” but actually has a direct connection by blood and history.
Posts: 3467
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Lately I have been realizing the word “flamenco” is actually “Flemish” or “Fleming” people, in other words, Dutch people from Flanders or Belgium. So, the REAL irony is that he is a TRUE “flamenco” and it is assumed by his looks he could not have anything to do with the “spanish flamenco” but actually has a direct connection by blood and history.
You bring up an interesting bit of history, Ricardo. The term "flamenco" is derived from "Fleming," or "Flemish," spoken in today's Belgium. But that is not as unusual as it might at first seem. Under the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs, Spain ruled what was called the "Spanish Netherlands," the southern part being Belgium, from 1556 to 1714. So there is definitely a Spanish connection.
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: 3446
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
Lately I have been realizing the word “flamenco” is actually “Flemish” or “Fleming” people, in other words, Dutch people from Flanders or Belgium. So, the REAL irony is that he is a TRUE “flamenco” and it is assumed by his looks he could not have anything to do with the “spanish flamenco” but actually has a direct connection by blood and history.
you have to cut and paste that link in or add the accented élgica to the link
I just finished reading Jose Manuel Gamboa's "Una Historia de Flamenco," copyright 2004. Unlike most histories, it starts with the present and proceeds backward in time.
Gamboa cites the earliest occurrence of the phrase "musica flamenca" yet found up to the time of writing, in the newspaper "La España" February 2, 1853. The music had existed for some time previously, called "cantes andaluces," "canciones gitanas," "bailes de palillo," etc.
Gamboa cites numerous contemporary sources which identify "flamenco" and "gitano" as synonyms. He remarks that the newspaper article may be the first printed instance of "musica flamenca" discovered so far, but the article clearly implies that the phrase was already in common use.
How the word naming Flemings and big pink birds came to be applied in the 19th century to gitanos remains mysterious.
Posts: 3446
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH Under the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs, Spain ruled what was called the "Spanish Netherlands," the southern part being Belgium, from 1556 to 1714. So there is definitely a Spanish connection.
Bill
As it happened, Carlos Quinto, the first of the "Spanish Hapsburgs" was born in the County of Flanders, which he inherited from his Austrian ancestors. He was the grandson of the Austrian Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and of the Spaniards Fernando and Isabela "Los Reyes Católicos."
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
quote:
ORIGINAL: Mark2 When I hear Stevie, I hear lots of Albert and Jimi. I just don't hear a lot of Stevie.
Stevie and his big brother grew up in Fort Worth. Somewhere I read or heard that as teenagers they spent a lot of time copying Albert King records.
RNJ
Albert’s influence is clear in virtually every single note SRV played. However, I think Stevie put his own personality into it - he wasn’t a mere copyist. You can see the mutual respect between the two in this video. I don’t think Albert would have acted like that if he thought Stevie was ripping him off. Also, blues is similar to flamenco in the sense that everyone learns by copying the great players that came before them.
Posts: 1759
Joined: Jul. 11 2003
From: The Netherlands
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Ricardo)
@ricardo,
The Dutch where ruled for 150 years by the Spanish king in 1556, ending in the 80 year war against the Spanish. So, there could be some “Spanish blood” too In Leiden, Alkmaar and other city’s we still celebrate the liberation.
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
quote:
How the word naming Flemings and big pink birds came to be applied in the 19th century to gitanos remains mysterious
It's quite possible that the demonym and the bird name are an example of "true homonyms". Like "school" in English: "school" as a place of learning and "school" as a group of fish have two very different etymologies, leading all the way back to separate roots in PIE. Despite sharing the same phonological and orthographic space, they are not at all the same word (and in a good dictionary they would each have their own entry, as opposed to being listed as different meanings of the same word).
The Ancient Greeks called the flamingo "φoινικóπτερoς", which translates to "red-feathered" / "red-winged"). The Ancient Romans took the word as is, slapped a Latin ending to it, and called it "phoenicopterus". That is the name that stuck in scientific usage. So when natural historians / ornithologists started hearing words like flamingo/flamenco/flamant or whatever iteration the word had in their own language, they saw it as a translation of the Greek/Latin into their contemporary vernacular.
At least as early as the 1600s, you can find writings by people like Francis Willughby, and later Leclerc de Buffon, writing about people who mistakenly saw a connection between the vernacular word for flamingo and the Flemish demonym. They observed that Flanders lay well outside the natural habitat of flamingos, which in Europe was limited to the Mediterranean region. To them, it was far more likely that it was simply a translation of the scientific name into the vernacular. Basically put, it would have been a derivation of the Latin "flamma". In several Latin-based languages, there is evidence that "flamma" evolved to describe a color, which was already a small but possible use of the term in Latin actually. Not always to the same extent though. In some languages it remained a metaphor, I suppose as in "of the same color as a flame"; in others it became a more literal word for some form of bright reddish color.
Whether these scientists were correct or not in their observation is anyone's guess. But it attests that this was already a confusing term several hundred years ago. Personally, it's just a hunch but I would bet my money on those scientists. It's just a more straightforward route than Dutch nobility going down to the Mediterranean and their name somehow sticking to that of the bird. Of course, they may have held lavish garden parties where they played croquet using live flamingos and hedgehogs, and the name may have stuck. ^^
If they were correct, then we'd have a case of true homonyms, with one "flamenco" coming from an Ingvaeonic word for "flooded", and the other "flamenco" coming from a Latin word for "flame".
Where the "flamenco" as in Andalusian music fits in all of this, who knows? Some want to add a 3rd cognate, usually some derivative of North African languages that would have been brought by the Moors. Those are usually dismissed, not because they're necessarily bad ideas per se, but because they require a big leap in time between when the root term used by the Moors is attested and when "flamenco" as a descriptor of Gypsies or music is attested. For now, the connection to the Flemish "flamenco" seems to me to be the more likely route. But even the better arguments for that are far from iron-clad.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
Posts: 3467
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Piwin)
Then there is the Andalusian politician and musicologist Blas Infante who was executed by Franco's forces when they took over seville in 1936. Blas Infante in his book "Orígenes de lo flamenco" (Origins of flamenco) claims that the word “flamenco” was derived from the Arabic term Felah-Mengus, which means “wandering peasant”. I find that a bit far-fetched and think the etymology of the word "flamenco" points to Flanders and "Flemish," as we have discussed above.
The question is, when and why did the term "flamenco" begin to be applied to the music we know as flamenco? One can go back and find the earliest written instance, but clearly the term would have been used to describe the music before written evidence. And why "flamenco"? Just because the term owes its origin to the Flemish during Spain's rule over the Spanish Netherlands, why did the term come to be applied to the music? What is the connection?
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: 3467
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Stu)
quote:
But also..... Really??? Can white guys really play the blues? I mean really? Can non gitanos really sing cante jondo? No, of course they can't. I mean I'm white and I'll never stop trying to play the flamenco guitar but I'll always carry with me a feeling of 'not worthiness'
I respectfully disagree, Stu. Whites can and have played the blues very well. And non-gitanos can sing cante jondo. There have been some non-gitano Spaniards who play and sing very well.
There is nothing in one's DNA, genes, or skin color that determine whether or not one can play a particular genre of music. To ask the question, can White men play the blues? is the same as gerundino63's question in response, can Blacks play Bach? Blacks can play Bach, White men can play the blues, and non-gitanos can play and sing flamenco.
When we associate a particular genre of music with an ethnic or racial group, we shouldn't mistake nature with nurture. Culture is the determinant. While the culture a particular ethnic or racial group grows up in may result in greater numbers of that group playing its music, it does not mean others outside the group cannot.
Shake off your feeling of "not worthiness." You may not be a professional flamenco guitarist or cantaor, but it's not because you're White; it's because you are not devoting full time to the art and immersing yourself in the culture.
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: 1945
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to agujetas)
To be fair, I've never sat down and listened to his recordings-just whatever was on the radio or whatever happened to reach my ears. I do remember Albert commenting on the first time he heard Bowie's "Let's Dance" which broke SRV nationally. He said something like he heard "someone playing all my stuff."
quote:
ORIGINAL: agujetas
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
quote:
ORIGINAL: Mark2 When I hear Stevie, I hear lots of Albert and Jimi. I just don't hear a lot of Stevie.
Stevie and his big brother grew up in Fort Worth. Somewhere I read or heard that as teenagers they spent a lot of time copying Albert King records.
RNJ
Albert’s influence is clear in virtually every single note SRV played. However, I think Stevie put his own personality into it - he wasn’t a mere copyist. You can see the mutual respect between the two in this video. I don’t think Albert would have acted like that if he thought Stevie was ripping him off. Also, blues is similar to flamenco in the sense that everyone learns by copying the great players that came before them.
Posts: 1945
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Ricardo)
That is interesting regarding Flemish folk, but I think the issue is people who grew up in the culture or did not. And for the record, just por Alegrias, I have ingrained falsetas by Tino, Jason McGuire, and David Serva, all of whom at some point I took lessons from. So I have no prejudice against non Spanish teachers.
To the contrary, I think these guys, and other non Spaniards who have reached a high level, offer insight to other non Spanish players in that they faced the same challenges, and overcame them. That is pretty inspirational to me.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
I get the irony of his origin but bottom line, he plays better and more authentically than I do, and I've learned some cool stuff that is playable for me.
Well, I met Tino in Nuñez’s class in 1999. He was the best accompanist for cante and sounded just like Moraito at the time. It was of course funny to SEE that, but he was not the only Dutch guy there...there was another almost as good as him. A year or two later there came a group of like 5 or 6 tall blonde Dutch guys, all decent guitarists. I inquired about wtf was going on here. Rotterdam, the school set up by Paco Peña seemed to be the explanation. I asked Tino about it and he plainly said you can learn guitar there but not about “flamenco” ...meaning the guitar technique program was advanced but in order to learn accompaniment you still had to go to spain. I was glad to see him once again in 2019. The album he came out with “Desatino” many years back had a curious intro blurb about how the Dutch artisans shared textiles with Sevilla and he felt the aesthetic connection in his home region when seeing this artisan work.
Lately I have been realizing the word “flamenco” is actually “Flemish” or “Fleming” people, in other words, Dutch people from Flanders or Belgium. So, the REAL irony is that he is a TRUE “flamenco” and it is assumed by his looks he could not have anything to do with the “spanish flamenco” but actually has a direct connection by blood and history.
Posts: 6440
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to Mark2)
I listen to both of them and, of course Albert influenced SRV but SRV plays a lot more aggressively. High action with very thick strings on his Strat. It's a different approach.
RE: Can a white man play the blues? (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
Blas Infante in his book "Orígenes de lo flamenco" (Origins of flamenco) claims that the word “flamenco” was derived from the Arabic term Felah-Mengus, which means “wandering peasant”. I find that a bit far-fetched and think the etymology of the word "flamenco" points to Flanders and "Flemish," as we have discussed above.
It's getting ridicilious here. Recall the Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in Andalucia, between 711 and 1492. It's almost 800 years, I repeat 8 hundred years. So Moorish/Arabic influence on Andalucia is huge. I'm pretty sure the word flamenco is derived from the arabic word felah-mengu. Get real!
Printable Version
). 
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