runner -> RE: Learning traditional flamenco vs learning modern flamenco (Apr. 17 2014 14:38:37)
|
Music88, if it is your primary goal to play some sort of "flamenco" guitar to please yourself, then it doesn't much matter, it seems to me, whether you think it is this or that sort of "flamenco", if you like it and like playing it. But if you want to learn about flamenco, Lenador's post is right on target. Flamenco began as singing, cante. The other disciplines--guitar, dance--were added on organically, early on, and are wonderful additional ways for the art to express itself. But cante remains the beating heart of flamenco. To know flamenco well, I think it is necessary to know "traditional" flamenco well--it didn't change that much, as far as we can tell, between the early 1900's (old recordings of Manuel Torres, for example) and the late 1980s, though obviously more palos entered the canon--some good, some not so much--and the growth of various fusions with other genres began to become more of a factor as time passed. So, I would recommend some useful books first: Donn Pohren's classic The Art of Flamenco; also Paco Sevilla's biography of Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies, to list two. Then I would go on YouTube and check out videos of singers like Agujetas, Terremoto, Manuel Soto "el Sordera", Beni de Cadiz, La Perla de Cadiz, Chocolate, Rafael Romero--the list goes on and on, and you will get more names from the books I've mentioned. Anyway, I think you will begin to get a good grip on what constitutes (or constituted) traditional flamenco, and then be in a better position to decide how and where you want to go, within a flamenco context, or somewhere else. A side benefit, but a very important one, will be that you will learn to know and maybe to really like the many other flamenco palos that are often buried alive under the emphasis on guitar and on bulerias, rumbas, soleares, etc., such as: la caña, serranas, malagueñas, saetas, martinete, etc. Just my view.
|
|
|
|