runner -> RE: Why are guitarists such snobs? (a profoundly negative post :-) ) (Feb. 3 2009 16:31:22)
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Deniz, you have identified many of my goals--I will affirm all the ones you have listed. You say, because music conveys emotion, you don't need history to appreciate it. I agree, but my experience has always been that the more one knows about any art, skill, activity, including especially its history, the greater one's capacity to enjoy it, and to perform it authentically. I've found that there are many people now involved in flamenco, though, who are unaware of, or not interested in, what flamenco has been for a century or more. For them, "flamenco" is what their peer group plays and listens to and says is flamenco. I mentioned previously that, on some other flamenco forums, newcomers to "flamenco" think that it is the Gypsy Kings, rumbas, castanets, and guitar hypertechnique. I'm just attempting to retain the integrity of the meaning of the term flamenco by getting people to realize that this art has a past, a long past that we would do well to remain in touch with. It distresses me to read over and over people's setting up their first-hand experience with today's "flamenco" in opposition to listening to and reading about its past, as if the two were opposed. Some say they don't have the time; others say they don't need to know flamenco's history to perform it or enjoy it; others say that because authors disagree, there's no point to reading about something--but these attitudes are not constructive, IMO, for the long-term health of this art. It is impossible to know "too much" about flamenco (or anything), despite opinions to the contrary. Florian and Stu, I do not mean to prescribe to anybody how to spend their time, or how better to spend their time, in doing flamenco. Everybody's time budget is their own. But it really doesn't absorb a lot of time, over the course of a year or whatever, to read a book or two about flamenco--and if you've already done so, so much the better. Peace! runner
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