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Richard Jernigan -> RE: I'm kind of over solo guitar (Mar. 21 2016 2:40:52)
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I suppose my introduction to flamenco had some influence on my present taste.
I grew up with Spanish as a second language. In the summer I spent at least as much time in the ranch foreman's house, where Spanish was spoken, as I did in my grandparents' house. One of the foreman's sons is almost exactly my age. We are still close friends.
While in the 3rd through the 5th grades in San Antonio, Texas, Renaldo Antonio "Reggie" M(an Irish surname) was my best pal and accomplice in crime. Reggie's father was an Irish mining engineer who was often gone on business to various places in Latin America. His mother was from a prosperous Nicaraguan family. Spanish was most often spoken at Reggie's house, and his mother insisted upon proper castellano, though her pronunciation was Latin American.
Reggie even went so far as to ridicule local speakers of Tex-Mex. Not people we knew at school. That would have been dumb. We were careful to form an alliance with them, but he would sometimes harass people we met at random around town. I kept out of it. It embarrassed me. It remains mysterious to me why we never got our butts kicked, or at least had a knife pulled on us. He's now retired from a lucrative career as a lawyer, so maybe he was just a good judge of who to pick on even as a kid.
In the U.S. Army in 1962 I was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Ground for a while, just north of Baltimore. On weekends I would go to New York and hang out at the club Zambra. After a while I was invited to the after hours juergas that went from 2 AM Sunday closing time until sunrise, or later.
Quite a few Spanish artists circulated through New York in those days, and almost all the cantaores and tocaores ended up at the juergas, even a few of the dancers. Sabicas never played for the general public there, but he often played at the juergas. He never hogged the stage, always inviting cantaores and other guitarists to play despite the immense respect they all accorded him. He loved to accompany cante, and often accompanied dancers when they appeared.
I made the acquaintance of Fernando Sirvent, Zambra's house guitarist, and his sister Amor who had a gift shop and dance studio in Washington, DC. I had a guitar with me, and was beginning to learn classical before I went into the Army. Flamenco fascinated me.
When I was out of the Army, back from Central America, and had a little money I traveled to Spain. I hung out at the club with the same name, Zambra in Madrid, where Rafael Romero "El Gallina" was the featured cantaor and Perico El del Lunar (padre e hijo) were the guitarists. I also heard Mairena a number of times, usually accompanied by Melchor de Marchena, and various other great artists on the Madrid scene in the mid to late 1960s. I stayed in Spain for several months, and made it to Triana. The Gypsies hadn't been kicked out yet, and there was cante in many bars. I took a few lessons from an old guy who was the house guitarist in one of the bars. I sampled the scenes in Jerez and Cadiz.
Somehow I never heard of the scene which attracted so many Americans to Moron de la Frontera, centered around Donn Pohren's place, Diego del Gastor, Fernanda and Bernarda until I got back to the USA. My exposure was to Madrid and the bigger cities in Andalucia.
So my introduction to flamenco was heavy on cante, and light on solo guitar and baile. But back in Texas there was very little baile, and even less cante. For the real thing the closest source was Manolo Caracol's place "El Rincon de Goya" in Mexico City, or his competitor "Gitanerias." I worked pretty hard on solo guitar, got to where I could play all the published transcriptions of Mario Escudero's stuff, copped a little Sabicas and Niño Ricardo off records, and hung out with some of Ed Freeman's students when I moved back to Austin for grad school.
Ed knew what he was doing. His transcriptions were accurate, the technique he taught was authentic. He was a literate and educated musician who played dance bands and jazz in his native England, then pulled up his tent stakes and went to Spain after WW II to become a flamenco. I got a little acquainted with him, but had the good sense never to take lessons from him. Our temperaments were not a good match for a student-teacher relationship, but I liked him. He was a great guy, and he attracted some great people as students. I never knew how he ended up in Dallas, Texas, but I'm glad he did.
I suspect my introduction to flamenco differed a fair amount from that of those on the Foro who came to the art mainly via the guitar.
RNJ
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