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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Sabicas in a movie playing por buleria..... (Aug. 17 2014 16:23:59)
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I received an email yesterday from someone quite familiar with the flamenco scene in Mexico City in the late 1960s. He doesn't personally participate in Internet forums, so I post the info here, with his permission:
Quote:
"I was thumbing (clicking?) through the Foro Flamenco today and came across the posted clip of Sabicas playing in the Mexican movie, which I had never seen before, great stuff! Several points. In the foro they refer to it as a "bulerias" and indeed Sabicas is playing por bulerias to accompany the singer, but the cante form is a Zorongo, as revived by Garcia Lorca. The ancient form of the Zorongo was originally done to the compas of the tango, but the letras have the same poetic form, so you can make them fit por buleria. If you check out the opening credits, you will see they credit the song as a "Sorongo (sic) Gitano, with authorship to "A. Garcia/Padilla." The guitarist who follows immediately is none other than the great Antonio Bribiesca ("la Guitarra que Llora").
"I fast forwarded the movie to 50.09 where there is a spectacular cafe flamenco scene which starts with a bulerias and ends with a long soleares w/bulerias macho. The dancer is none other than Lola Flores, the wife of Manolo Caracol. The guitarist is the great Paco Aguilera, who played for her for many years,” [the cantaor and movie actor Caracol was the proprietor of the Rincon de Goya in Mexico City for several years] “however, I suspect this scene may have been filmed in Spain, rather than Mexico, and then edited into the long drunken conversation between the two obnoxious señoritos."
"I watched the Sabicas clip closely, I think the guitar with the fingerboard extension he is playing is a Mexican guitar, possibly a Solis, looks a bit like a Santos head which was one of the designs used by Solis, who I knew when I lived there. While the clip at first glance appears to have been recorded live, I believe it was actually recorded in a studio (probably with a different guitar), and with very careful editing inserted over the filmed version. There are several places where the cuts and on screen fingerings don't exactly line up with the music, beyond the usual irritating digital delay which YouTube curses us with.
"Final observation is the movie probably dates to around the early 50's, which is precisely when Sabicas did his one week stint at the Electra studios in NYC. They sold the outtakes (after putting together Vol 1, 2, and 3) to other companies such as Columbia, Hispavox, etc, who released the material over a period of nearly 2 decades, but it all was done ca 1952 at Electra. It wasn't until ABC Paramount released "El Rey del Flamenco" that we actually heard his newer material, and it was a shock to those that thought Sabicas had been standing still all those years just recycling and re-arranging falsetas. "
"Well, it was a shock to see a Mexican movie with so much real flamenco in it. Many of the films Sabicas appeared in (anonymously) were American westerns in which they put a moustache and sombrero on him and had him sitting in the corner playing "Mexican" music in the cantina. Was great to hear Bribiesca thank him by name on screen."
End quote.
RNJ
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