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Piwin -> RE: Guitarists not interested in flamenco singing or dancing? (Sep. 26 2016 22:31:57)
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What I find interesting is how this seems to be fairly specific to countries other than the country of origin. It seems to be yet another case of what happens when a "grassroots" style is uprooted from its place of origin and achieves some degree of success abroad.
In France, anything tango-related, or even, but probably to a lesser extent, flamenco-related, has become somewhat of a high-brow activity, be it for traditional tango or the more modern forms. And they seem to enjoy looking down on anything slightly different from what they do, so they look down on anything non-tango, or look down on those who are not doing the exact same type of tango as they are, be it traditional, nuevo, neo, or whatever the particular brand might be. I know several dancers who have left tango altogether because after years in the vipers' nest, they decided the benefits just weren't worth the hassle. In flamenco its seems to be slightly different as the old-schoolers somehow seem to have taken the moral high-ground and those into more modern forms of flamenco seem to just sigh and accept that.
In the meantime, the people who brought about neotango most likely did not approach the style unawares of the traditional music form, quite simply because they most likely grew up with it. In the very same way that young gitanos are mixing in rap or other styles into flamenco. Some of the traditionalists in Spain very much hate what this younger generation is doing with flamenco, but at the same time many of them really don't hate the people doing it, simply because they can't: it's their sons and daughters that are doing it!
Just last week I was talking about this with a friend at the local pena..the kind of still thinks flamenco would be better off without guitar, so that kind of purists. His grandson is in a local band, rapping his way into flamenco, mixing it up with RnB stuff, etc. My friend just shrugged and said "what you gonna do...".
But I guess this kind of tension exists in any form of music. Another friend, a rather devout Christian from the US, told me that his church was going through a rough patch on what kind of music to sing during their service. Apparently there is some sort of divide between those who prefer traditional hymns and those who prefer more modern ones.
This doesn't take anything away from what you were saying, just perhaps that it might be different in the "country of origin", or at least in those places where the artform is very much part of the social fabric.
Another thing I've noticed, but this brings us well into the field of sociology, is that Argentine tango is much more popular in France than in Spain. I suppose I thought that it would be a bigger deal in Spain given the cultural and linguistic ties between the two countries, but apparently not. Anyways, that's neither here nor there.
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