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ORIGINAL: rombsix

Paco said, "Whatever I play is flamenco because I am Paco and I am flamenco". There you have it...

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ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha

Flamenco is a living and evolving musical language.

It may be defined by the performance practice peculiar to its practitioners. And there is certainly some validity in asserting that a certain people in a certain part of Spain may be allowed primacy in defining its vocabulary and norms.

Like all languages it is evolving through reinvention certainly but also through the incorporation, evaluation and subsequent rejection or absorption of elements from other discrete performance practices.

It is in my opinion as fatuous to imagine that the language of one era should be enshrined as the yardstick for contemporary performance practice as it would be to evaluate flamenco from the perspective of, for example, classical music or pop music norms.

These tendencies would result in either fossilising the language or homogenising it.

To a certain extent one could see these tendancies in the loosely defined concepts of Sabicocentricity or Fakamenco.

In the end we must all seek our own evolving understanding of what flamenco is. No two will be the same but some may be more or less risible depending on the company one keeps.

D.

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ORIGINAL: z6

But, it all boils down to sex, in the end.

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ORIGINAL: Morante

Flamenco is a way of life. Pohren said it and it is true. It has nothing to do with techniques such as rasgeo etc.

In Cádiz we used to have lots of juergas: Nani had a puesto in the market where we all gathered at midday, lots of cachondeo, cante and guitarra. At night with two great juerguistas, Rafael López and José Millán flamenco until dawn.

I remember one night with José, when we had drunk at least a bottle of Rioja each, we found ourselves in a bar, with closed doors and a small group of aficionados. At 5 am he was still singing and we had drunk even more Rioja. Eventually José said "play por Huelva". At this point, I was playing por medio, so just continued, though most of Huelva, apart from Alorno and Huelva Ciudad, is usually accompanied por arriba.

All went well until José sang por Almonaster (Santa Eulalia). This is my favourite fandango and calls for a change from E to A and a short outing por Am. But I was so drunk that I could not work out that in A, the next chord should be D, so I stopped. José stopped too, looked at me and said " I think its time to go home".

Everybody in agreement, we all sneaked out the back door and home to bed.

Now that Rafa and José are dead, Cádiz if left without juerguistas and flamenco de verdad is dead.

I used to be flamenco, now I am just an aficionado.
[:@]

quote:

ORIGINAL: rombsix

Paco said, "Whatever I play is flamenco because I am Paco and I am flamenco". There you have it...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Morante

Flamenco is a way of life. Pohren said it and it is true. It has nothing to do with techniques such as rasgeo etc.

In Cádiz we used to have lots of juergas: Nani had a puesto in the market where we all gathered at midday, lots of cachondeo, cante and guitarra. At night with two great juerguistas, Rafael López and José Millán flamenco until dawn.

I remember one night with José, when we had drunk at least a bottle of Rioja each, we found ourselves in a bar, with closed doors and a small group of aficionados. At 5 am he was still singing and we had drunk even more Rioja. Eventually José said "play por Huelva". At this point, I was playing por medio, so just continued, though most of Huelva, apart from Alorno and Huelva Ciudad, is usually accompanied por arriba.

All went well until José sang por Almonaster (Santa Eulalia). This is my favourite fandango and calls for a change from E to A and a short outing por Am. But I was so drunk that I could not work out that in A, the next chord should be D, so I stopped. José stopped too, looked at me and said " I think its time to go home".

Everybody in agreement, we all sneaked out the back door and home to bed.

Now that Rafa and José are dead, Cádiz if left without juerguistas and flamenco de verdad is dead.

I used to be flamenco, now I am just an aficionado.
[:@]

quote:

ORIGINAL: rickm

I love you guys to death and your a immensely talented group but you have misunderstood the question and no one answered it. Lets put it like this. your driving in yr car with yr friend from the north pole who has never heard music. A song comes on the radio and he asks what is it? and you state well that is rock and you can tell its rock because it has a backbeat, its 120 beats a measure and follows a form of the blues pattern. then another song somes on the radio and he asks what is that, and you say that is blues because it stay true to the original blues patterns blah blah. and then a classical song comes on and you say its classical because there are no embellishments its played strictly in accordance with as the author intended and its follows cleanly along the lines of that intention. [Im making this up you understand] and then a flamenco piece comes on and you say its flamenco because --------
for me the one thing that seperates flamenco from anything else that you rarely hear in other forms is the dynamics associated with the right hand, that is golpe, ras and of course alzapua.
that is my question, what technique typifies flamenco other than the progression of the notes themselves. It has to be right hand versatility.

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It's flamenco cus it's in a flamenco compas established by the andalou many many years ago.

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but I dont think we should call it our music.

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ORIGINAL: jof

<NOT FLAMENCO>


Being a bald-head bourgeois in his midlife-crisis and trying to learn flamenco and complaining about the so called "assholistic-behaviour" of some members here.