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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Is it normal to feel that flamenco died with Paco? (Apr. 16 2018 21:05:44)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Leñador
I don’t think I have the same cognitive biases, I’m fully prepared to say the music of my teenage years(96-03) was terrible and music on the radio continued to be terrible with exceptions very few and far between.
Radio music in the USA has been through at least a couple of cycles in my lifetime. Talking to my son I get the idea there has been at least one more cycle since I stopped listening, maybe more than one.
When I was a teen in the 1950s it was largely crap. The vibrant creative scene of the 1930s-1940s, with the big bands, shows like Louis Armstrong's New York broadcasts, etc. gave way to Tin Pan Alley commercial shlock like Dean Martin's "When the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore." The suits had taken control away from the artists, with the results you would expect.
Big bands were expensive, so they got phased out by the record companies, with only a couple of exceptions like Stan Kenton and Les Brown. Kenton was a little too far out to attract a big following, and Brown was too smooth and ironed out to get people excited. Woody Herman's Third Herd was still touring in the 1950s, but when they came to Washington DC the only place they could play was an outdoor pavilion in an amusement park.
The suits could put a few people in a studio to record a song they bought from the production workers in the Brill building, and bribe the DJs to play it. Young people needed a sound track for their lives, and bought what was on offer.
My band got together on Saturday morning to listen to the Top 40. The music was so simple and sappy that we did head arrangements of the top 10, so we could play requests at dances. But what really got the kids out on the floor was when we played stuff from the 1930s. Even traditional jazz from New Orleans got the accomplished dancers out to show their stuff.
The commercial shlock of the 1950s held the airwaves until rock 'n roll came into its own in the second half of the 1960s. Then there was tremendous innovation. The artists were once again the major force.
History repeated itself. By the end of the '70s the suits had regained the upper hand. They began to crank out disco "hits" while the consumer poseurs hit the dance floor.
I have no idea what's going on now on the radio. When I happen to hear "popular" music on the radio, it seldom interests me. The last time I listened regularly was before the new management at the local NPR station took "Blue Monday" off the air, after I moved back to Austin in 2010. Larry Monroe, a local DJ nearly as old as I am, had a blues show that featured stuff from the late '50s-early '60s. Some of it I hadn't heard before. Paul Ray's "Twine Time"--early rock and rhythm & blues--bit the dust soon afterward.
I spent more time in Spain while Franco was still alive than I have since. It's clear that things have changed radically and rapidly. So has commercial flamenco. As recently as the late 1980s the big touring shows still featured traditional performers, music and dance. I even heard Chocolate in San Francisco in the '80s. Though Camaron and Paco were very popular in Spain, their influence hadn't reached the big touring shows.
The last time I saw Tomatito, the only thing that interested me was the dancer, Paloma Fantova. Tomatito's show was obviously influenced by the latter days of Paco de Lucia, but to me it lacked Paco's good taste and musicality.
Traditional flamenco persists, but seems diminished. We will probably take in some of the Sevilla Bienal this year--I'm wondering how it will be. Yesterday I listened to Maria Terremoto on Youtube and was impressed.
RNJ
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