Ricardo -> RE: Does understanding letra help guitarists? (Aug. 25 2012 21:06:47)
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After a couple years of performing with our group, I discovered that said guitarist doesn't understand much of what I sing nor does he feel that it's all that important to understand it. This is fascinating to me. What do you other guitarists think of this? Do you bother to learn the meaning of the lyrics, and if so or if not, why or why not? He is correct, also lenador is on right track. The lyric content is virtually meaningless to accompanying cante or any singing period. Following rhythmic contour of melody and tonos (harmonic progressions) under a simple held vowel sound should be proof enough to any one with a musical ear and mind (a large and important portion of flamenco singing is exactly this and even nonsense words like tirtiritran, trabili tran pilo pilo le le obi oba ay na nay traca tran etc). The emotive details of the poetry of a letra while important to audience aficionados singer himself etc, need not affect the guitarist EXTERNALLY at all. For example, "you took my money bad gipsy girl, im returning to my mom"...has a lot of meaning to me personally, but doesn't need to inspire me to burst forth with an emotional explosion of picado and alzapua WHILE ACCOMPANYING the singer singing it. My role is to accompany well and that need not involve getting all emotional. Regarding words and sounds/syllables separate from deeper poetic meaning, again, they tie to rhythm, but in various was, not a single specific way. Its funny when ethno musicologists focus on numbers of syllables and rhythms to categorize singing, and totally ignore musical phrasing and form. I dont' want to go off topic though. As an example, Jason Mcguire "knows" tons of letras and how exactly to accompany them and their variations, but seems to have zero conversational spanish. How can you argue you MUST know Spanish to accompany well? Know CANTE yes, but spanish and cante are two different things. Otherwise you would fine many latin american people doing far greater with cante than say europeans....but that opposite is more the norm. And in fact even the words themselves make sense to the spanish speaking listener, but not the BACK story tied to the culture, so the emotive details again are missing. The reason you find more non spanish european people into flamenco than say than latino people is because cante is MUCH more than poetry. It is MUSIC, and that dealing with it (accompanying) requires a MUSICIAN first, and the deeper you go sure you end up in heart of andalucia and all that goes with that. I will say that if you dont' understand the letras, and you find yourself accompanying say a singer doing only ONE style of fandango, while it wont' hinder the guitarists ability to accompany perfectly and emotively well, you can see after say 5 letras all the same musically, well its boring. You as the guitarist will be missing out on the whole point if you are not grasping the meaning of the words. Again it doesn't affect the performance, but it's an obvious reason to start understanding lyrics for full enjoyment of the art. I will admit that other styles where we have to follow tonos and keep compas (more challenging for accompanying than fandango as stated above), knowing what is being sung, not knowing the exact letra but simply understanding and focusing on words an meaning, can get you lost. I have seen it happen and had it happen. To accompany you need to step out of "audience listener" role and focus on the role you have which is to support the singer and react to what ever gets thrown at you....MUSICALLY. Rhythm is number one. Doesn't matter how good your spanish or even your aficion...if you can't maintain compas no matter what or how something is sung, you can't accompany. Number 2 is to be familiar with melody and form. Lyrics and actually lead you down the wrong path if you are going based only on words. If some one sang the melody of solea in chinese, the spanish guitarist could still accompany it perfect as weird as that sounds. Being familiar with more and more letras gets to the heart of what most people mean when they reiterate "listen to cante more"....as norman said, 200 something things should be predictable when performing. Knowing the meaning behind each and every one is great for aficion and enjoyment, but if you are not from the culture already, and you want to understand the musical aspect and contribute, its about the melody and phrasing first. Without much further and making any aficionados upset, I will submit that some of this pertains to singing as well. I mean, I have met people from andalucia who only because of their birth place, THINK they can sing better than any foreign person. Then you hear them and while they have the accent, with no musicality or compas it can be horrific. A non spanish speaker can potentially do a more convincing job simply learing phonetically (like many opera singers) and get tons of detail of the cante, a native speaker would miss out on....if and only if this person was a musician and good singer already. Of course hearing someone sing with good voice and compas and clear melody of the cante, but with severe accent on spanish (rare that they do this AND get the melody and compas right too), can be just as offensive to an aficionado (even non spanish speaking) as the andaluz cantaor "imposter". LAst thing I want to relate about my past. I used to do pop/rock in high school and would work hard practicing playing guitar and singing. It turned out that to do a perfect and natural job, I was totally detached from the words, and only the sounds connecting to my hands made things easy and comfortable. I remember learning 'More than words". My friends and i played it and sang it for some years just perfect like the recording. So many teen girls, "what a pretty love song".....well I never realized till someone pointed out, a non musician, that the lyrics spoke of a guy frustrated with his girlfriend for not putting out, selfishly telling her to shut up with "I love you crap" and just get busy. The meaning had no bearing at all on the performance of the song, nor on the emotive qualities it exuded. I further on found myself composing songs with guitar in hand, often inspired by a person or event, and the lyrics also come out. I didn't even understand my OWN POETRY till I sat back and saw what it was the song was saying and often had nothing to do with original inspiration...and this came out of my own head!!! So poetry and music go hand in hand, but are totally separate from each other. Ricardo
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