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My memory is allways a younger Diego , maybe because he only appears from time to time . Diego was unique , feeling over tecnique..
Rip
Muere a los 78 años el guitarrista flamenco Diego de Morón Su gran aparición ante el público se produjo el 23 de septiembre de 1998 en la Bienal de Sevilla, donde presentó el espectáculo "Añoranza" y se ganó el fervor de la crítica
El artista Diego Torres Amaya, conocido como 'Diego de Morón', leyenda de la guitarra flamenca, ha fallecido a los 78 años de edad, motivo por el cual su localidad natal de Morón de la Frontera (Sevilla) ha decretado un día de luto oficial.
Así lo ha anunciado el alcalde de la localidad, Juanma Rodríguez, a través de sus redes sociales, donde ha enviado su pésame a sus familiares y allegados del fallecido.
"Hoy Morón y el mundo del flamenco están de luto por la dolorosa partida de Diego Torres Amaya, 'Diego de Morón'", ha escrito el primer edil, quien ha recordado que el guitarrista era "Miembro de una dinastía flamenca sin parangón (hijo del gran Joselero de Morón y sobrino de Diego del Gastor)".
Asimismo, ha destacado que "se hizo un nombre propio con su guitarra en este arte, motivos por lo que siempre será recordado". Diego Torres Amaya, artista singular y heredero del duende flamenco más puro, nació en Morón de la Frontera el 18 de abril de 1947. Pese a ser hijo de Joselero de Morón y Ángeles Amaya, hermana de Diego del Gastor, tardó en ponerse ante una guitarra y lo hizo gracias a las clases de su primo Juan del Gastor, que le puso las primeras notas.
Unos años más tarde su tío Diego del Gastor se preocupó por él y empezó a enseñarle sus falsetas; ganó fama en 1975 cuando publicó su primer disco, pero a su vuelta de Estados Unidos abandonó la promoción.
En el 75 conoció al escritor y periodista especializado en flamenco José Luis Ortiz Nuevo y se fue a vivir con él durante dos meses, alternando sus estancias en Madrid con los viajes a su pueblo, donde participó en seis ediciones del Gazpacho.
Pero su gran aparición ante el público se produjo el 23 de septiembre de 1998 en la Bienal de Sevilla, donde presentó el espectáculo "Añoranza" y se ganó el fervor de la crítica.
Deja una discografía en la que destacan 'Aire Fresco', Diego Torres Amaya Vivo en Japón, "A Diego el del Gastor de Morón" o Diego Torres Amaya "Diego de Morón", editado por la Universidad de Sevilla en la Colección "Flamenco y Universidad - XXXIV".
Technique should always be at the service of feeling. His technique, limited though it may have been, made him one of the most compelling musicians I have heard. Olé.
this is old news , but i saw one contest "certamen" that the finalists were all fast modern flamenco players... no feeling . The one that was also great and played slower (a solea-blueria based on a piece from LLorca) beatifully didnt make it..... . I think that something similar happen with Riqueni and or with Cepero .
for example all from 2021 edition (the 2022 they played even faster)
this is old news , but i saw one contest "certamen" that the finalists were all fast modern flamenco players... no feeling . The one that was also great and played slower (a solea-blueria based on a piece from LLorca) beatifully didnt make it..... . I think that something similar happen with Riqueni and or with Cepero .
for example all from 2021 edition (the 2022 they played even faster)
Why are you desecrating this thread (that you even created yourself, man!) by posting this?
this is old news , but i saw one contest "certamen" that the finalists were all fast modern flamenco players... no feeling . The one that was also great and played slower (a solea-blueria based on a piece from LLorca) beatifully didnt make it..... . I think that something similar happen with Riqueni and or with Cepero .
for example all from 2021 edition (the 2022 they played even faster)
Why are you desecrating this thread (that you even created yourself, man!) by posting this?
David Serva knew a lot of Diego’s falsetas. Typically, he’d play something, you’d ask whose it was and he’d say Diego (uncle), and he'd proceed to show you the nephew’s variations. Some of David's takes on Morón falsetas were composites of both.
Diego’s recordings are spread across several rereleases that I suppose are hard to find. Most of them are on three CDs. The first two are studio recordings reissued as part of the Cultura Jonda series, one being his solo playing and the other his accompaniment of his father Joselero. The third is a live recording of he and his father performing at a nightclub in Barcelona called Sala Zeleste. It has just five tracks, and one of them is an inspired instrumental taranta.
El Burdo said:
quote:
Technique should always be at the service of feeling. His technique, limited though it may have been, made him one of the most compelling musicians I have heard. Olé.
Well said. “Old-school” playing like Diego’s provides me with refreshing contrast to modern playing. I like the craftsmanship and technical development that go into modern playing, and I like the personality and creative development that abound in playing like Diego’s. The other day, it occurred to me that the more technically challenging a piece of music is, the less room there will be for the interpreter to make it their own.
Ever the nerdy contrarian that I am (annoyingly so I admit), I honestly feel technique IS the personality of the guitarist in the end. How you prepare and attack the strings is the expression. Like case in point, the nephew is of the few that came out of th Moron circle that had all the nuance and detail down to a T, it is pretty weird actually. I mean of all the people that copied Sabicas or Paco, few (or none?) actually do it exact like they did, maybe (again a nephew) Banderas was very close to his uncle...and it comes down to specifics of technique. Same for Moron style or any style really. Like Manuel Morao...moraito just doesn't have the thumb technique exactly right so it is a clear difference between nephew and uncle.
Along with technique comes the genetics of course and the "spirit". Now I am not one for the hocus pocus voodoo, however, I must relate this story about my friend who is the only person I have met that plays in the "true" moron way. I mean I can't do it, and some people play those falsetas of Diego but it doesn't sound the same. This friend of mine, Carlos from Ronda, really does have it down, whatever it is. To give an idea, he was in class with us in Sanlucar and one night he was performing Bulerias in Moron style, and suddenly he started playing the Gerardo Nuñez falseta we all learned that morning, but it was as if DIEGO had travelled through time and learned it himself, interpreting in his own way! It was crazy cool and we all got the goosebumps etc.
I asked him about how he learned the style and it is scary. He said as a kid, he found a cassette tape in the attic of his family home and it was bootleg flamenco guitar juerga stuff, and he started learning as youngster, that way of playing. Years later, as an adult, he was able to contextualize the style and what he was learning was Diego del Gastor (likely someone recorded it in Moron, though his family home was in Ronda, Arriate specifically). When he got older he found out the home his family had moved into was in fact the home of Diego himself!! He could not help but to feel he had been possessed by the Spirit of Diego as a kid.
Ever the nerdy contrarian that I am (annoyingly so I admit), I honestly feel technique IS the personality of the guitarist in the end. How you prepare and attack the strings is the expression. Like case in point, the nephew is of the few that came out of th Moron circle that had all the nuance and detail down to a T, it is pretty weird actually. I mean of all the people that copied Sabicas or Paco, few (or none?) actually do it exact like they did, maybe (again a nephew) Banderas was very close to his uncle...and it comes down to specifics of technique. Same for Moron style or any style really. Like Manuel Morao...moraito just doesn't have the thumb technique exactly right so it is a clear difference between nephew and uncle.
Along with technique comes the genetics of course and the "spirit". Now I am not one for the hocus pocus voodoo, however, I must relate this story about my friend who is the only person I have met that plays in the "true" moron way. I mean I can't do it, and some people play those falsetas of Diego but it doesn't sound the same. This friend of mine, Carlos from Ronda, really does have it down, whatever it is. To give an idea, he was in class with us in Sanlucar and one night he was performing Bulerias in Moron style, and suddenly he started playing the Gerardo Nuñez falseta we all learned that morning, but it was as if DIEGO had travelled through time and learned it himself, interpreting in his own way! It was crazy cool and we all got the goosebumps etc.
I asked him about how he learned the style and it is scary. He said as a kid, he found a cassette tape in the attic of his family home and it was bootleg flamenco guitar juerga stuff, and he started learning as youngster, that way of playing. Years later, as an adult, he was able to contextualize the style and what he was learning was Diego del Gastor (likely someone recorded it in Moron, though his family home was in Ronda, Arriate specifically). When he got older he found out the home his family had moved into was in fact the home of Diego himself!! He could not help but to feel he had been possessed by the Spirit of Diego as a kid.
I think you are on to something. I have heard the same thing from people who knew him quite well.
Hi Ricardo. There you go again - skiing about architecture.
I can't see what you are saying. How does your assertion that Diego had a similarly developed technique to his uncle affect the quality of his personal musicality? Had he got a more developed technique would he then have been a better musician than Gastor? You can only really say he was not the progenitor of the style and maybe didn't move things along, but he spoke deeply, at least to me.
Your friend from Ronda was au fait enough with the Moron style to be able to play an alien falseta 'in the style of'...I have a jazz album from a pianist who wrote for the media showing him play in a wide range of totally believable styles (he was selling his mimicry). But musically, he was no Bill Evans. Great player though.
Moraito didn't play like Morao? Und? Was Moraito not as creative or original as his uncle then?
I'd say you're missing the point. Technique maketh not ..the musician, it just helps. The 'fact' that very few can sound completely like someone else is unadjacent to the technique/musicality point.
The better you can play in the style of the music you love the better you will be able to realise it well and idiomatically, but if you have nothing to say, you'll just do it with superb enunciation.
I can't see what you are saying. How does your assertion that Diego had a similarly developed technique to his uncle affect the quality of his personal musicality?
That is the thing. "Technique" is the physical way you play, separate from "feelings", yet every bit as "personal". In a way it IS the personality you transmit, ultimately. The better you have it down, the LESS it interferes with your "feeling" or whatever you want to express.
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Had he got a more developed technique would he then have been a better musician than Gastor?
No one, including me said "better". I said he was much "closer" mimic (to use YOUR word). Had he developed other DIFFERENT techniques than the ones he used to express himself, he absolutely would have sounded like a DIFFERENT guy, not a "better" musician, necessarily. But some other singer or whatever, might have "liked" his toque more or less for sure as a result. Technique is not only how "clean" you play a scale.
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but he spoke deeply, at least to me.
That is beautiful, and you are not alone. BUT....that is also subjective and personal. His "technique" that allowed him to sound much like his uncle, is a more physical objective reality. Did you also like his uncle or no? You only felt the music of the nephew? Or he was "better"? You don't need to answer those, it is for you to contextualize. Norman already pointed out he recognized a dissemination of the nephew's variation on his uncles material...that is a place to start discerning how much the technical detail matters.
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But musically, he was no Bill Evans. Great player though.
Again that is subjective. I am sure there were those "fooled" by his mimicry? And likewise, there will be some that prefer uncle Diego I am sure. Cante/baile is the same way as this is a family affair.
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Moraito didn't play like Morao? Und? Was Moraito not as creative or original as his uncle then?
All I am saying is Moraito copied his uncle's techniques and did them DIFFERENTLY. He had his own sound and personality. If he had got it more precise people would say his is copying his uncle. He blue printed the cante accompaniments and general buleria feel in his own way (honestly taking much technique from PDL and just doing it slower), such that he has been the epitome of "jerez style" vs his predecessors that played in a different way. (Uncle, Parrilla, cepero etc.). Oddly, from the technique standpoint again, Parrilla had it closer than Moraito, but these are objective things we could parse out one by one case by case.
quote:
I'd say you're missing the point. Technique maketh not ..the musician, it just helps. The 'fact' that very few can sound completely like someone else is unadjacent to the technique/musicality point.
As we have heard time and time again and as I said, I am the contrarian. Technique is loosely defined by people as "clean fast scales" or whatever "annoys" you about technique. I am saying it is much more than that. Musicality and feeling EXPRESSION is tied directly to it. If you have zero technique you can still express yourself but it will not make you in league with those artists you are talking about. To accuse others of having "nothing to say" is only speaking about your own subjective experience. Every human is individual and has feelings (unless with brain injury), and can express "something" musical if they chose, whether you or I identify with it at all. But to play "in the style of" means you first need THAT technique or you are not even out the door.
The better you have it down, the LESS it interferes with your "feeling" or whatever you want to express.
I'm happy with that, and the MORE it enables you to express whatever you want to express. However, that is music 'in the debt of' technique. You're talking of tools, I am talking of the bookcase. I wonder if there is a similar discussion in the Luthier section about technique. Is it a craft, or an art? For a crafted object, high order technique and skill is needed. We do say an instrument is beautiful, rather than 'well made (mate)'. I like Michaelangelo's attitude (I thought it was Barbara Hepworth) that sculpture is removing un-needed material to reveal the beautiful object within. I don't think you're saying that though.
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I honestly feel technique IS the personality of the guitarist in the end
It's something that allows us to identify musicians for sure so is TO DO WITH their personality. I wouldn't say IS the personality. That might be the case with fingerboard scallopers through.
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His "technique" that allowed him to sound much like his uncle, is a more physical objective reality.
More approachable, more identifiable maybe. I do very much like uncle (and his approach to fame and fortune, similar as it is to technique worship) but there is a different intensity, one bloody daggers of falsetas, the other a long and drawn out stretch on the rack. Technique may have enabled difference but it didn't invent the difference.
quote:
you are not alone. BUT....that is also subjective and personal.
Well, yes but I haven't heard of any objective analysis of 'musicianship' in a player that is not basically about technique. You're talking about language skills and I don't see those as doing anything other than improving one's ability to say nothing. How about the Altamira caves? Thank God they had the right brushes!
Well, it is not THAT different. The technique, as you develop it, "uncovers" and reveals to the outside world, the sound you hear in your head or "feel in your heart" if you want those subjective words. Yes of course your cold mechanical technique can get you through a gig when you are "not in the mood" but have an obligation. But so can your speech deliver a message that you don't really mean, think or feel. There are crippled musicians that can deliver their message via technology. "technology" is "technique" like it or not.
quote:
It's something that allows us to identify musicians for sure so is TO DO WITH their personality. I wouldn't say IS the personality.
Right, but we don't honestly have access to all that...so it is our external way to engage with that personality as the observer. Hence from my objective vantage point, it is what I got to work with.
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Technique may have enabled difference but it didn't invent the difference.
Right. Everything starts in the mind and heart...but that "enabling" issue is THE thing. Otherwise it might just stay there permanently.
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How about the Altamira caves?
We will never know for sure, but I would bet there are art critics of that time "Fred Flinstone's bison? Sure it LOOKS like a bison but it speaks nothing to me who actually hunted the thing! I prefer Barney Rubbles scribble, it gets the essence of the animal across TO ME"... And then there is Mel Brook's first art critic of course.
There are Moron falsetas ( and let’s be honest Moron toque is about the guitar not the dance and is a base for singing accompaniment) that are not difficult to learn for an advanced beginner or intermediate level player, but are super hard to play meaningfully. Part of technique with Moron playing is how you impart feeling into the playing by being sensitive to the way you touch the guitar and coax out a sound. That’s of course true for all guitar music, but Moron falsetas need a certain right hand touch to make them sound like they’re from Diego’s hand, and that’s an important part of understanding that style.
I took a lot of lessons from Sobrino Juan and David and remember what Brook Zern, David and others I took lessons from who studied directly with Big Diego said about it.
Anyway, Diego probably created the best toque in a he big Diego vein than the others, all due to Sobrino Paco, but Diego had a magnificent toque that has been in my opinion under known. When he was in his prime he could give a good concert with a range of his original and uncles toque. Diego’s expansion of the Moron toque was unique and significant.
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