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Posts: 3514
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RIP Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot has passed away. RIP. What, you ask, does Brigitte Bardot have to do with flamenco? Back in the mid to late '60s she was the lover of Manitas de Plata. There is a YouTube video, taken in 1968 or 1969, of Manitas de Plata playing for Brigitte Bardot who was his paramour at the time. (BB looks as cute and sexy as ever in the video, sucking on her finger, playing with her hair, and giving adoring looks to Manitas!) The guitar Manitas is playing has a couple of Matadors drawn on the upper bout and something on the lower bout that I cannot make out. In any case, Manitas must have liked drawings on his guitar because there are several of them. And Brigitte certainly looked like she was all-in with Manitas.
Manitas died on 5 November 2014, and his obituary in the Washington Post quoted Brigitte Bardot, in an interview with Agence France Presse, as saying, "Manitas carried with him all the joie de vivre and carefree attitude of my youth.” Not a bad way to be remembered by such as la Bardot.
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."
Brigitte Bardot had a strong cultural impact, in both Europe and the USA. Evidence of this is the publication in April,1959 by Esquire magazine of a long article by a French cultural heavyweight, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir.
"If we want to understand what B.B. represents, it is not important to know what the young woman named Brigitte Bardot is really like. Her admirers and detractors are concerned with the imaginary creature they see on the screen through a tremendous cloud of ballyhoo. In so far as she is exposed to the public gaze, her legend has been fed by her private life no less than by her movie roles."
De Beauvoir says that "Brigitte Bardot," the cultural figure, represents a woman freed from sexual repression, completely sincere in her total impulsiveness. This figure frightened and angered the old guard moralists, as well as inspiring the young and progressive in France and the USA. You may or may not agree with all of de Beaivoir's detailed analysis, but I think she is correct in this.
I was 18 when "And God Created Woman" came out in 1956. I was away from home and the family I rebelled against, for the second year at university. It was the only time I ever fell in love with a movie star. Looking back, I believe Bardot influenced some of the girls I knew at the time.
Some time in the late '80s-early '90s the Directors' Guild showed a restored print of the film at their theater. I drove down to Hollywood from Santa Barbara to see it. There was a lecture and philosophical discussion beforehand. Even in my fifties, after a 20-year marriage that had begun as a heated love affair, and a handful of "serious relationships" before and after, I was moved by Bardot's performance on the screen.
This is one of the most iconic guitar videos ever made. Those camera angles and close up shots. Props to the camera man. It's like an act of love making. Foreplay-Play-Climax. At 3:35 a prelude to climax.
In my sector of the world, the artists who are ridiculously talented and ridiculously leftist, Bardot isn’t being eulogized positively. The word on the street regarding her is that she was an anti immigration nationalist who associated with the Le Pen political family in France and has been branded bigot.
Personally Bardot never meant a lot to me, but I find it reductionist that she’s placed in a position of being a bigot, when honestly she’s not been relevant as a sex symbol in over fifty years. If the people who call her bigot has been concerned with her actions and opinions, I sure didn’t hear about it the last three decades.
In my sector of the world, the artists who are ridiculously talented and ridiculously leftist, Bardot isn’t being eulogized positively. The word on the street regarding her is that she was an anti immigration nationalist who associated with the Le Pen political family in France and has been branded bigot.
Personally Bardot never meant a lot to me, but I find it reductionist that she’s placed in a position of being a bigot, when honestly she’s not been relevant as a sex symbol in over fifty years. If the people who call her bigot has been concerned with her actions and opinions, I sure didn’t hear about it the last three decades.
I've heard about her racism and far-right views for years, well over a decade, and I was not paying any particular attention. Nothing new here.
Her political activity is what cemented her as a bigot, not any reductionist viewpoints.
RE: RIP Brigitte Bardot (in reply to Bulerias2005)
Yeah, for a short while some portions of the left in France were hopeful because she was coming out strong on animal rights issues. Then some started to notice that she was strangely more concerned about the tiny amount of ritualistic killings in Muslim communities than about the mass killings involved in the food industry. Then she started going RFK Jr. levels of insane by saying sh1t like how in the animal world "bastards" are waste that animals want to get rid of and that it's a shame that in human societies we don't treat "bastards" the same.
She was condemned in court at least a half a dozen times for incitation to racial hatred. No idea if that news was broadly disseminated internationally, but it's common knowledge in France. She wasn't exactly shy about those opinions and about her ties with the far right.
I'd imagine a lot of it is just generational. I'm of a later generation that those here who remember her fondly. To me she was always an old bat with mostly only gross things to say on panels and talk shows. Basically a French Rosie O'Donnell, but sexy when she was young? Beats me. RIP nonetheless.
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"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."
My involvement was with the cultural phenomenon which went by the same name as an actual person. As attention faded for the cultural phenomenon the person herself began to emerge, even to change. As time passed, the two diverged radically.
I paid little attention to the embittered old woman who inherited sole ownership of the name. She made use of the name recognition to attract attention to her causes. Her avowed concern for animals didn't compensate for her racism. Hermann Göring reportedly loved animals.
At one time the two personas may have overlapped. In her youth the life of Brigitte Bardot the person often paralleled that of "Brigitte Bardot" the movie star. She was quoted to the effect that what you saw on the screen was just herself. I thought her directors and script writers might have influenced her idea of herself, literally providing a role model. Or maybe the influence went both ways?
I started this thread because, as I pointed out, Brigitte Bardot was at one time the lover of Manitas de Plata. It seems to have morphed into a critique of Brigitte Bardot's later involvement in right-wing politics, bigotry against Muslims, and anti-immigrant stance. This just makes her one in a long line of entertainers, writers, singers, and others who have embraced authoritarian and totalitarian leaders, primarily on the left. Compared to many, Brigitte is pretty small beer.
During his reign as the Soviet Union's dictator, having murdered millions via the KGB and induced famine, Stalin was embraced by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In fact, both had a falling out with Albert Camus because Camus condemned both Fascism and Communism as equally repellent. Sartre and de Beauvoir refused to condemn Stalin and Soviet Communism because he thought it would "play into the hands of the West," which he equated with garishness, if not outright Fascism. A double standard taken to the extreme. In the US, the playwright Lillian Hellman refused to condemn Stalin and never apologized until her death, even though it was evident what his crimes were.
More recently, the number of Hollywood types who genuflected before Fidel Castro after meeting with him is phenomenal. Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, and others made the trek to Havana to pay their respects to "El Comandante." The great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez was another one who made the double standard his credo. Garcia Marquez once said he would not set foot in Chile as long as Augusto Pinochet was in power, yet he considered Castro his "amigo" and embraced him during many visits to Havana. Pinochet was no angel to be sure, but it is estimated he "disappeared" (killed) 3,000 opponents during his 17-year reign. And he held a plebiscite on his rule according to the Chilean constitution, lost, and stepped down after 17 years. Castro executed an estimated 10,000 so-called "counter-revolutionaries" between 1960 and 1970. Castro and his successors have never had a free election in Cuba, which remains authoritarian after 66 years of Castroite rule. So much for Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
As I say, compared to those above and others, Brigitte Bardot's transgressions were pretty small beer.
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 started this thread because, as I pointed out, Brigitte Bardot was at one time the lover of Manitas de Plata. It seems to have morphed into a critique of Brigitte Bardot's later involvement in right-wing politics, bigotry against Muslims, and anti-immigrant stance. This just makes her one in a long line of entertainers, writers, singers, and others who have embraced authoritarian and totalitarian leaders, primarily on the left. Compared to many, Brigitte is pretty small beer.
As I say, compared to those above and others, Brigitte Bardot's transgressions were pretty small beer.
Bill
Bill,
I agree that Bardot is a minnow in a pool of sharky sized bigots. Her opinions only carry the weight of having been a pop icon, who had somewhat of an impact on influence in women’s sexual liberation by transgressing Mid 20th century cultural expectations. She wasn’t an intellectual with the credibility of a deep comparative thinker and honestly, in reality, outside of France she was regarded as an eccentric aging icon, that is if she was thought of at all. Godard’s muse is much more famous and influential on the generations going forward.
The U.S. does everything bigger, John Wayne swung a bigger racist dick than any European cinema star. And Bardot is a lightweight class bigot like our own Sarah Palin, the only reason eurotrash bigots end up in court for saying the same dumb things as US bigots is that libel laws are stricter and hate speech is semi protected by our constitution. ( although I wish hate speech were more condemnable by constitutional standards).
My point was, and sorry for redirecting the conversation as that wasn’t my intention, when someone famous dies there’s a bums rush by certain factions in US media culture and in the online social media space to ‘shame the fame’. If a person is famous for a particular sports event or being the author of a book everyone knows, or a sex symbol celebrity the first the political virtue assessors do is point out his that person should be shamed in death and the achievements not recognized because the rest of their life is wasn’t ethically of morally superior. My point is that very few people become famous because they are considered high examples of moral or ethical value. People become famous by being who they are, and while are famous in their own time it’s seldom pointed out that they are not perfect, hold bad personal opinions or beliefs. The example of Bardot being ‘dragged’ on social media is a perfect illustration; she’s a product of her times and became famous in a cultural background where her audience gave permission to her opinions, she never evolved out from her understanding of the permissive attitude that enabled her to be famous for her various stances on sexuality and politics.
It’s an interesting aside that she ‘dated’ a Roma guitarist, showing again that bigotry is general and not interpersonal if you like someone.
What I find fatiguing and mildly hypocritical, but hypocritical enough to draw my fire, is the group of social do gooders who shame their peers for recognizing the feats and positive accomplishments of regular people who would never become famous were it not for a particular talent they possess in droves. Now then there are certain others who tower above the famous, the famous among the famed who are extraordinarily good at being psychopaths, racists, anti-empathic or non compassionate above all other attributes they have. These are the people who are the real bastards, and you don’t even need to reach far back into history to finger a Stalin or a Pol Pot, they walk among us now.
Here’s what I say, tonight I drink to you Bridget, you racist old bitch, you were wrinkled as she was, but you were no Judy Dench.
My involvement was with the cultural phenomenon which went by the same name as an actual person. As attention faded for the cultural phenomenon the person herself began to emerge, even to change. As time passed, the two diverged radically.
I paid little attention to the embittered old woman who inherited sole ownership of the name. She made use of the name recognition to attract attention to her causes. Her avowed concern for animals didn't compensate for her racism. Hermann Göring reportedly loved animals.
At one time the two personas may have overlapped. In her youth the life of Brigitte Bardot the person often paralleled that of "Brigitte Bardot" the movie star. She was quoted to the effect that what you saw on the screen was just herself. I thought her directors and script writers might have influenced her idea of herself, literally providing a role model. Or maybe the influence went both ways?
RNJ
This is the basis for a euphemism that I used to tell my employer Ted the Plumber.
Ted was the husband of one of my sculpture professors at the San Francisco Art Institute, Louise Lieber. I studied with some other well known people, but she introduced me to Ted because he need a guy with UBS to schlep his tools and do demo work so he could access plumbing in the walls of old houses.
Ted was very interesting, he was a journey man plumber from NYC replanted in California and he had a masters degree in English literature from Columbia. So he was both highly intelligent and disgustingly vulgar, which I of course found irresistible.
We’d get arguments about how to tackle a job and if I disagreed with his opinion I’d say “Yeah sure Ted, even Goering loved animals, we’re not going to do it that way.” And I was his Sherpa, UBS stands for upper body strength, I held some sway in which way we’d work. He had a bad hip and couldn’t carry heavy tool boxes, or so he claimed.
Once we were in the basement of a five story apt building and we had just cut a 6” cast iron main sewer line that was as running vertically through the space. First we put a sign in the lobby that said ‘Do NOT FLUSH TOILETS UNTIL AFTER 2PM
I cut the pipe with a sawzall ( you know how this ends already) and we were going to put a temporary coupler on it and work out how to make a new building to underground sewer connection. When there was a rush of air in my face and I said: “Ted I feel air” he said CLOSE YOUR MOUTH! knowing I couldn’t duck aside fast enough at that point.
Slpooshh! I was hit in the neck, chest and chin with a gush of poop water. And Ted started laughing uncontrollably as he wiped my face with a shop towel. Don’t open your mouth he kept saying. Yeah right I’m going to open my mouth…
He pronounced me baptized as a full plumber on the spot and when I got cleaned up he treated me to the requisite succulent Chinese meal for lunch.
Goering may have been charming sociopath, but he was no Ted the Plumber.
——————
He had all these terrible working class NY sayings: Hey a$$hole where did you learn to drive? If you hit my van I’m gonna punch a hole in your chest and take a dump in it! Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you!
Then he’d go back to discoursing about Lord Byron.
“ Here’s what I say, tonight I drink to you Bridget, you racist old bitch, you were wrinkled as she was, but you were no Judy Dench. “
I’m sure glad I watched that video of guy playing for her… it was beautiful she was beautiful he was beautiful. It was just that moment in time, and I think we’re lucky enough to experience it vicariously today, what man would not want to be loved the way that woman was loving him, and what woman would not want to be loved the way he was loving her?
Then I saw a few things, some young artest influencer came out and made a scene about her right leaning views. Then everything up thread. My pop artist idol, Bob Geldof said in a song “ the politically correct are the Nazis of our time” and he wasn’t that far off base, you know, for a pop star.
Im a strong proponent of let he who is without sin throw the first stone kind of atheist…
RIP dear…
HR
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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy, doesn't have to be fast, should have some meat on the bones, can be raw or well done, as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
Politics aside, this woman was a beautiful inspiration in many ways, from sheer beauty to trend setting in film... and now, I thank you for sharing these examples of flamenco!
(and politically, her promotion of animals is very correct!)
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"The main secret about singing ain't so much to have other folks listen to as it is to pick up your own spirits." -Woody Guthrie [and playing guitar!]
To my mind it's closer to Salvador Dali's support of Franco. It's support for authoritarianism in her own country and culture, with no room for the kind of idealisation and romanticising that often arises when it's international.
A party founded by former Waffen-SS almost won the majority in Parliament and is very likely to win the next presidential elections. I understand why, in this particular context, some people are concerned about Bardot's legacy being whitewashed. It both baffles and saddens me to see that some people are still more concerned about the figurative nazis when the literal ones are knocking at the door.
Beyond that, certainly we can expect people to be able to hold more than just one thought in their head. I mean, I can do it and I'm pretty dumb! Polanski made good movies. He's also a pedophile. Bardot was a cultural icon. She also supported a party founded by Nazis. So goes it.
edit: happy new year everybody!
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"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."
Muslim= a race now? Or an ideology? I don't really know what she said but white girl getting it on with gypsies is the opposite of "racist" behavior.
sigh...
happy new year.
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"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."
There are more words written about politics in foroflamenco these days, than actual flamenco. But since we're at at, let's make it a really interesting discussion.
Forget B. Bardot, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Woody Allen, etc. Because it only gets really interesting how one would react, if the person in question is really close to what you're intensly involved in (this is only hypothetical and we know it probably won't happen 99% in our field but just a thought experiment):
What would you do, if in couple years, some document or someone comes out proving with 100% certainty, that some flamenco Maestro or a flamenco Luthier you adored was in to something "very weird" nobody can accept or a political or whatever view you absolutely hate (whatever that might be, it doesn't matter).
Would you all of a sudden stop listening to all his compositions? Throw away your recordings? Throw away your guitar built by that Luthier or sell it asap? Stop building acc. to his "plans"? Out of principle?
or
Go the "everyone can have an evil and a good side" and one can seperate the artist from the person route, etc.
What if you find out those weird things before you listen to their music? Does that change anything?
I suspect that it does, which is why I think this Bardot thing might be generational.
Bill, Richard and others here experienced her art long before her racist inclinations were apparent. On the other hand, I heard her spouting racist nonsense on television long before I became interested in the cinema of her era. I'd imagine that had some impact on how I experienced the movies she was in.
Just a thought.
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"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."
her racist inclinations were apparent. On the other hand, I heard her spouting racist nonsense on television l
Again, I'm not trying to cause trouble...I am confused as to what race she was against? I only read about muslim bigotry, which are people of many races. Did she say something against some specific races or non-whites? I can't find it in her bio.
Would you all of a sudden stop listening to all his compositions? Throw away your recordings?
I feel Aurelio de Cadiz is an important exponent of cante. He sings very fast and precise scales like a good picado. Especially, it turns out the "payo" branch of cante. His interview with brook Zurn revealed a deep truth about flamenco culture and race. He was EXTREMELY racist, calling all his colleagues that were not payos, "hindu" and low class. With exception of a few that he specifically named. Mellizo family (his friend Morcilla also friend of payo Pericón), and Manuel Torre. He did not (couldn't?) distinguish "cante Gitano vs cante payo", other than to say many gypsies sing "wrong". Mairena has been dubbed a "racist" from the opposite direction (pro-Gitano), again same assertion the "payos" have learned the cante wrong. Without judgement on the two racists, I find that an important reality is emerging about flamenco culture with is in fact the racial mixing at the heart of the story. "Flamenco" being a synonym for "gypsy" makes no sense with this stuff going on. Turning away from the "racists" of the genre on principle means not engaging head on with the problems prejudices stir up. In USA an amazing documentary exists by Daryl Davis "Accidental Courtesy" and it is not for no reason the guy is a pro musician. If you care at all about this issue it will make you cry. But sadly what I see around me is hypocrisy on this issue.
Arash: Would you all of a sudden stop listening to all his compositions? Throw away your recordings? Throw away your guitar built by that Luthier or sell it asap? Stop building acc. to his "plans"? Out of principle?
I can provide an example of a closely related situation.
Years ago there was a classical guitar forum--not Delcamp. It was moderated, but much more lightly. Eventually it imploded in flame wars.
A highly skilled and productive luthier posted, pretty much daily. So did I. When I first began to participate, the luthier talked about his foreign born wife, a poet, and their near term plan of moving to her home country overseas. He also promoted a few beliefs which I saw as conspiracy theories. Other forum participants, who had visited the luthier's off-grid home and workshop, remarked on some unusual ideas he held. One said that during his visit the luthier imagined there were rattlesnakes behind the refrigerator, and insisted on the visitor's help moving it to deal with them.
Before long the luthier's marriage fell apart in a highly contentious divorce.The overseas move wasn't going to happen. The luthier began to attack other forum participants, including me. He became a classic troll, but seemed to believe the rest of us did not detect his taking positions only meant to annoy us. At times it was hard to distinguish his trolling from his delusions, but his hypocrisy was often apparent.
A typical episode: The luthier posted that astronauts had never been to the moon.
"Why not?" I asked.
The astronauts could not have survived the Van Allen belt of radiation that encircles the Earth, the luthier replied.
I pointed out that you could stay out shirtless in the sun for five minutes with no ill effect, but if you spent four hours out there you were in for a severe sunburn. The astronauts would pass through the Van Allen belt quickly enough to escape harm, unless the Earth happened to be in the path of a solar flare of such intensity that it had occurred only once in a century and a half. Observation of the sun allowed fairly accurate prediction of especially violent solar flares.
The luthier persisted. "They would have been fried!"
I Googled for five minutes or so, and came up with the paper that set limits for astronaut exposure in the Van Allen belt, detailed the sensors and measurements to be monitored, and said the Medical Officer was to be notified if the limits were exceeded. They never even came close.
"How do you know?" asked the luthier. "It's all part of the fake data."
I replied that the author of the memo was the Medical Officer, my brother, who was Head of the Flight Medicine Branch of NASA throughout the Apollo Program.
The luthier fell silent about the moon landing. But this was about the only time he ever even appeared to give up.
Months or years later I specifically called out the luthier for trolling. To my surprise he treated me with respect afterward.
Now to the point:
The luthier has re-married, seems to be happy. He has moved into town. He has followed his friends' advice and stays off internet forums. He has remained highly productive. His instruments are beautiful. He has a relationship with a virtuoso young pro who demonstrates his instruments in expertly produced and recorded videos. The guitars sound great. One of the most respected luthiers and dealers in the USA, whom I count as a friend, occasionally praises his instruments. They are reasonably priced for such high quality.
But I would never buy one of his guitars from anybody, at any price. When I think of the idea, an image presents itself. I see his guitar sitting in its case among the rest of them in the wide closet, giving off evil emanations, polluting its neighbors. Nope.
Would you all of a sudden stop listening to all his compositions? Throw away your recordings?
I feel Aurelio de Cadiz is an important exponent of cante. He sings very fast and precise scales like a good picado. Especially, it turns out the "payo" branch of cante. His interview with brook Zurn revealed a deep truth about flamenco culture and race. He was EXTREMELY racist, calling all his colleagues that were not payos, "hindu" and low class. With exception of a few that he specifically named. Mellizo family (his friend Morcilla also friend of payo Pericón), and Manuel Torre. He did not (couldn't?) distinguish "cante Gitano vs cante payo", other than to say many gypsies sing "wrong". Mairena has been dubbed a "racist" from the opposite direction (pro-Gitano), again same assertion the "payos" have learned the cante wrong. Without judgement on the two racists, I find that an important reality is emerging about flamenco culture with is in fact the racial mixing at the heart of the story. "Flamenco" being a synonym for "gypsy" makes no sense with this stuff going on. Turning away from the "racists" of the genre on principle means not engaging head on with the problems prejudices stir up. In USA an amazing documentary exists by Daryl Davis "Accidental Courtesy" and it is not for no reason the guy is a pro musician. If you care at all about this issue it will make you cry. But sadly what I see around me is hypocrisy on this issue.
So I watched this documentary. The way he did it, with dialogue and listening as opposed to demonizing and hating against, is certainly the way with the best chance of "reforming". Though, I have my doubts about some of the details, which I don't want to get into, since the positives in what I saw predominated. Also, not being american may make those details a bit harder to understand than somebody who is living there.
But generally speaking and to be perfectly honest (and I know this will probably be controversial) for me personally 99% of so called "racists" aren't actually racists. I will try to explain.
They just hate and are angry and those feelings always search and find a way to be released. One day it could be racism through circumstances of their life, but I'm convinced that if all of a sudden one day every single human being of that hated race the person is hating on (for example blacks) would simply magically vanish from the planet, those people would not be done or happy, if the real issues in their lives are not solved. They will soon after search and find something else to hate and be angry about. Specially combined with fear and uncertainty about the future, and finding a group which gives them a sense of regaining control and power, is the toxic cocktail. Next could be women, men, neighbours, some politics, another race, disabled people, muslims, jews, or whatever else. There is also often a change from one extremism to another (like extreme change from radical left to radical right or vice versa). The source of the problems remains the same dark inner source, there are just different ways of people trying to release it.
B. Bardot was troubled throughout her life. Several attempts of suicide at a young age. Later on she also probably was angry that she was getting old and attention fading away (as many actors who were mostly sex symbols do). I never look at these issues in a simple "she was racist" way. I know that there is always something else deep rooted inside causing issues and preventing a healthy balanced life (and aging in grace). And most of us get such negative feelings at some point in our lives, but the way is to solve it through something positive.
I can provide an example of a closely related situation.
That was an interesting story, thanks for sharing. I can relate to the "bad vibes" aspect. I have to say though (and also related to what Piwin said), I think it makes a difference if you already know before as opposed to after one has "invested" in somebody already (be it financially, or otherwise emotionally and mentally, etc.) That will probably be more intense and more difficult in some ways to deal with.
Brigitte Bardot has passed away. RIP. What, you ask, does Brigitte Bardot have to do with flamenco? Back in the mid to late '60s she was the lover of Manitas de Plata. There is a YouTube video, taken in 1968 or 1969, of Manitas de Plata playing for Brigitte Bardot who was his paramour at the time. (BB looks as cute and sexy as ever in the video, sucking on her finger, playing with her hair, and giving adoring looks to Manitas!) The guitar Manitas is playing has a couple of Matadors drawn on the upper bout and something on the lower bout that I cannot make out. In any case, Manitas must have liked drawings on his guitar because there are several of them. And Brigitte certainly looked like she was all-in with Manitas.
Manitas died on 5 November 2014, and his obituary in the Washington Post quoted Brigitte Bardot, in an interview with Agence France Presse, as saying, "Manitas carried with him all the joie de vivre and carefree attitude of my youth.” Not a bad way to be remembered by such as la Bardot.
Bill
Again apropos of Bill’s original post, I’d like to just point out a guitarist to fangirl universal.
I watched the video again and once more confirmed that the section where she appears to get the horniest is when he plays tremolo.
Women have repeatedly told me tremolo makes them horny. So if you are in the guitar playing game to use it as a helpful way to get the babes, you best work on that tremolo.
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Arash: Would you all of a sudden stop listening to all his compositions? Throw away your recordings? Throw away your guitar built by that Luthier or sell it asap? Stop building acc. to his "plans"? Out of principle?
I can provide an example of a closely related situation.
Years ago there was a classical guitar forum--not Delcamp. It was moderated, but much more lightly. Eventually it imploded in flame wars.
A highly skilled and productive luthier posted, pretty much daily. So did I. When I first began to participate, the luthier talked about his foreign born wife, a poet, and their near term plan of moving to her home country overseas. He also promoted a few beliefs which I saw as conspiracy theories. Other forum participants, who had visited the luthier's off-grid home and workshop, remarked on some unusual ideas he held. One said that during his visit the luthier imagined there were rattlesnakes behind the refrigerator, and insisted on the visitor's help moving it to deal with them.
Before long the luthier's marriage fell apart in a highly contentious divorce.The overseas move wasn't going to happen. The luthier began to attack other forum participants, including me. He became a classic troll, but seemed to believe the rest of us did not detect his taking positions only meant to annoy us. At times it was hard to distinguish his trolling from his delusions, but his hypocrisy was often apparent.
A typical episode: The luthier posted that astronauts had never been to the moon.
"Why not?" I asked.
The astronauts could not have survived the Van Allen belt of radiation that encircles the Earth, the luthier replied.
I pointed out that you could stay out shirtless in the sun for five minutes with no ill effect, but if you spent four hours out there you were in for a severe sunburn. The astronauts would pass through the Van Allen belt quickly enough to escape harm, unless the Earth happened to be in the path of a solar flare of such intensity that it had occurred only once in a century and a half. Observation of the sun allowed fairly accurate prediction of especially violent solar flares.
The luthier persisted. "They would have been fried!"
I Googled for five minutes or so, and came up with the paper that set limits for astronaut exposure in the Van Allen belt, detailed the sensors and measurements to be monitored, and said the Medical Officer was to be notified if the limits were exceeded. They never even came close.
"How do you know?" asked the luthier. "It's all part of the fake data."
I replied that the author of the memo was the Medical Officer, my brother, who was Head of the Flight Medicine Branch of NASA throughout the Apollo Program.
The luthier fell silent about the moon landing. But this was about the only time he ever even appeared to give up.
Months or years later I specifically called out the luthier for trolling. To my surprise he treated me with respect afterward.
Now to the point:
The luthier has re-married, seems to be happy. He has moved into town. He has followed his friends' advice and stays off internet forums. He has remained highly productive. His instruments are beautiful. He has a relationship with a virtuoso young pro who demonstrates his instruments in expertly produced and recorded videos. The guitars sound great. One of the most respected luthiers and dealers in the USA, whom I count as a friend, occasionally praises his instruments. They are reasonably priced for such high quality.
But I would never buy one of his guitars from anybody, at any price. When I think of the idea, an image presents itself. I see his guitar sitting in its case among the rest of them in the wide closet, giving off evil emanations, polluting its neighbors. Nope.
RNJ
I know exactly who you are talking about. He viciously attacked woman friend of mine on Facebook in 2015. He’s an absolute misogynist clown, a super bigoted anti science freak. He wouldn’t have been able to live in SE Asia. I saw one of his guitars in a shop I wouldn’t touch with my hands. He needs to be in therapy. I’m surprised a classical guitarist would work with him..
He’s a fragile turd, screamed at me about his much he hates Mexicans because NAFTA made him lose sales because Mexican guitars are cheaper. Well, duh, it’s a different economy. If you can’t work as hard as a Mexican, you’re a worthless luthier.
There are a lot writers and visual artists who are unsavory human beings, but since we don’t have to know them personally it’s easy to just look at their work. Caravaggio comes to mind. I don’t think I would want to know him, he was a strange violent street urchin who could paint. He attracted patronage, but was always fighting and he murdered a guy in a street fight. But I’d wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to look at one of his paintings up close.
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