Richard Jernigan -> RE: How not to sing alegrías (May 9 2018 4:04:05)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: El Burdo I have just finished reading DE Pohren's Lives and Legends and many, if not most of the real deal worked in day jobs. The idea of a professional who sought fame and fortune is given short shrift by the author and he saw compromise in all those who succeeded. I wonder if we like it, that they struggled. Two things struck me in reading that book: 1) they all wore suits and formal clothes so the notion I had of the landless peasants breaking their hearts to the moon was erroneous - it was even then a performance art, and 2) 'proper' flamenco seems always to have belonged in the past, yea even unto El Mellizo. IOW the past holds the key that is missing 'today' - for the last 100 years! Pohren was involved with the flamenco ambience of Moron de la Frontera, far from the financially successful artists of Madrid, Sevilla, etc. He was married to the daughter of a guitarist who was successful among the flamenco elite, though she was a bit lesser figure than her father. If you are interested in a cultural product of abject poverty, living on the brink of actual starvation, may I recommend the biography of the matador Manuel Benitez Perez, El Cordobes, "...Or I'll Dress You in Mourning." The title is a quotation from the matador on the event of his first corrida that paid a significant fee. His older sister raised him and the rest of his orphaned siblings. She always tried to dissuade him from his ambition to become a torero. She was very concerned for him on the day of the corrida. He told her, "Don't worry, today I will either buy you a house, or I will dress you in mourning." Opinions vary as to El Cordobes' artistic merit as a matador, but his long road through the very depths of itinerant poverty, his bravery in the ring, and his spectacular popularity and financial success are beyond doubt. I had passed up the book when it came out, but I was given a well worn copy a couple of years ago by someone whose judgment I respected. Though written by a pair of non-Spanish authors, I found it an interesting account of the culture that brought forth a character like its subject. The flamenco greats tended to come from stable families with intergenerational traditions in the arte, not from the family-destroying depths of extreme poverty. There were exceptions of course. Agujetas began singing in public as a boy, begging for bread crusts at the tables of outdoor cafes. His father, also called Agujetas, was a knowledgeable cantaor, though not commercially successful. Antonio Chacon was a payo orphan, raised by a gitano shoemaker in the Barrio Santiago de Jerez, and so on...Chacon and the brothers Javier and Antonio Molina went on a youthful adventure, hiking throughout Andalucia, supporting themselves by performing at country taverns and inns. Antonio was a dancer. Javier was a guitarist, who eventually owned a tablao that employed both Niño Ricardo and Manolo de Huelva, as well as noted cantaores and bailaores. In later life Javier was a highly respected professor of the guitar in Jerez, who played some classical pieces as well as flamenco. Among his noted students were the father of Manolo Sanlucar, and Paco Cepero. RNJ
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