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runner -> RE: Paco-Camaron (Dec. 22 2009 6:20:32)
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Evolutionists (and their enemies) are especially interested in "missing links" between various groups of organisms, in order to better show how evolution works to transform one entity into another. Stratos and Ricardo have indentified a moment in the history of flamenco--the era of PdL and Camarón--when the hundred-plus-year-old idea of flamenco as cante-centered music "evolved" once and for all into "flamenco" as guitar virtuosity. During that window of time, Camarón and PdL both rose from obscurity to become the equally-famous, equally-matched partners on the see-saw of interaction between cantaor and tocaor. The growing popularity of guitarists like Sabicas, Carlos Montoya, Mario Escudero, in the preceding decades, prefigured by R. Montoya et al, had smoothed the path for the transition to guitar-dominated flamenco, and the PdL/Camarón partnership marked the point of final equilibrium, after which cante increasingly became the poor relation, the stepchild of flamenco.
In another post I also commented on the fact that cante is really only for the (relative) few. The real audience for cante remains small, and constant, despite the growth of interest in "flamenco". While the audience for flamenco was small (mostly aficionados, especially of cante), it was understood what the relationship between singer and guitarist was. The growth of the worldwide audience for flamenco reflects the growth of interest in guitar and in dance, as these aspects of flamenco are much more acceptable and understandable to the larger audience than is cante, a vocal music marked by "untrained", harsh rajo voices singing in an uncouth and almost indecipherable dialect of Spanish. Audiences prefer Andrea Boccelli's smooth cooings to El Borrico's throaty lung-clearings by 1,000 to one. And both virtuoso guitar and sexy Spanish dance represent the romance of Flamenco and of Spain far better than the moanings of some old hag. José Greco once said that all women wanted to be loved by José Greco, and all men wanted to be José Greco. Ditto PdL??
runner
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