Paul Magnussen -> RE: Four Questions about Minera (Jun. 22 2012 16:26:43)
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There are basically two answers, depending on whether you’re a singer or a guitarist [8D]: The songs from the mining regions around Linares, mostly (unsurprisingly) about what a pain in the butt it is being a miner, are, generically, called the cantes mineros. The most common, as I’m sure you know, is the taranta, which is normally played in F# Phrygian, is in the fandango group and is free. The a compás version is the taranto, which, however, has the compás not of the fandango but of the tango. However, in 1936, Ramón Montoya recorded a solo taranta in G# Phrygian which he called a minera; and this terminology has been taken up (for instance, by Paco de Lucía), so that now "minera" means the G# version — to guitarists. But you will still occasionally hear singers referring to tarantas as mineras — as indeed they are, cantes mineras*. As to chord progressions, all the fandango family have the same basic structure: so as the fandango de Huelva (for instance) relies on Am-G-F-E, modulating to C for the verse; so the minera (in theory, anyway) relies on C#m-B-A-G#, modulating to E. Hope this clarifies. *Correction, mineros. Thanks, Norman.
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