Ricardo -> RE: What makes a music "good"? (Jun. 6 2019 14:10:30)
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quote:
When I read about Nino Miguel years ago it seemed that his importance was as a composer whose musical ideas influenced other musicians at the time - including PDL. He was also widely considered a virtuoso at a young age. The aspect of lost potential due to mental illness was yet another factor in the story. What a person of Nino Miguel’s caliber – and others like him - would have accomplished had he been unencumbered by illness is a timeless question which comes up often in various fields. Ok, lots to unpack here off the topic, so forgive the following rant...or just skip this if you are a die hard Niño Miguel fan. We all know by now what “going viral” means. Back in early days of foro and youtube (2003-4 or so), it was not so well understood how a couple matches of verbal nonsense could spark up and catch on and spread like Wildfire and take over a gazillion people’s opinions. Well, I went back and found some postings of maybe 3 guys (including my friend flamencoguru) on foro, huge fans of Nino Miguel, based on these youtube comments on the bootleg videos and such that kept that ball going, and it was a frustrating review to read my comments and theirs. Even back then I was surprised because I had never read any such thing about the guy in the literature I had read about him, nor Faucher’s book of transcriptions. My own opinion was and still is, the guy was a PDL wannabe from the beginning. He was lucky to hangout with Paco and Camaron, and got to accompany camaron on occasion thanks to some gitano bootlegs I have seen, but honestly he doesn’t standout as an important figura due to a lack of work with important cantaores (baring a few fandangueros de huelva), unlike some other peers such as Enrique del Melchor. Enrique in particular I view as a very similar “PDL wannabe” who actually has a more refined technique. Both of these guys drew heavily on the innovations of PDL’s recordings El Duende flamenco, and Fuente y Caudal. Both are Gitano and have their family history etc, but musically speaking that’s all there really is to say about it. Neither of them evolved much further than that solo guitarwise. It doesn’t mean I don’t LOVE their playing and compositions, and even consider them UNDERRATED artists (until this recent Nino Miguel hype I referred too earlier). But this nonsense of Paco being scared of him or stealing his music has to just get squelched. To go further, I don’t feel his sad story of psychotic downfall at the height of his career a unique story either....it’s quite clear how substance abuse has been so pervasive and efficient at taking down so many great artists in this genre. The list is too big to even talk about, plus the obvious ease at which the evangelical culto had at taking a grip on the vulnerable gitano flamenco culture due to this issue is telling. The whole thing is depressing. I try to be scientific about it, what is really going on by the music and the timeline. Niño Miguel has his place in history as the first to put together Montoya’s Rondeña with buleria compas, like chocolate and peanut butter, for posterity. Of course the idea has to be PDL’s Canastera, but still I have to give him that. I once thought he innovated the C# and D# flamenco keys as well, but alas those innovations belong to other players before him. (Velez and American David Serva respectively, as my very honest investigations have pointed to). Regarding the need to include the history of the artist in question to evaluate his final product, I have no dissagreement...but you are totally missing the point I was making regarding the original poster’s frustrations with the ACTUAL topic at hand. He was trying to whittle away at the problem of what makes “us” prefer one artist over another. The problem I was pointing out was how difficult this actually is to do BECAUSE it’s not practical to remove all the history and context and such, hence my use of N. Miguel as an example.
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