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Norman Paul Kliman -> RE: Paco de Lucia biography books (May 8 2024 19:04:23)
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I liked Pohren’s books until his Paco bio, and even parts of that weren’t bad. I haven't read those books in many years, so I might feel differently now. It was the first I’d read about Paco's father and the rest of his family. Other books with that information might have been published earlier, but my impression at the time was that it was the first telling of his story (aside from articles in newspapers and magazines). I liked the way Pohren presented the father’s story first. What I didn’t like, even at the time, was his thinly veiled contempt for modern flamenco and his attempt to be funny about it. He wrote something like, “They shouldn’t call it flamenco fusion. Maybe some other name like FLAMFUSE,” in capitals. Also, I got the impression that Paco didn’t collaborate closely with him or at all on that book. There’s a photo on the back cover of the two of them, standing outside the door to someone’s apartment (maybe Paco’s, because he’s wearing a track suit), and it doesn’t look like they were particularly close. Just speculation on my part. Because of the irreverence and other things, I felt that Pohren had lost his writing skills by the time he published that book. And the lack of substance and depth in the part about Paco made it a big disappointment for me.
Like I said, I liked his other books, because I never took them seriously as research. In my opinion, he did a good job of taking inventory of what was available in the early 1960s: “Arte y artistas flamencos” by Fernando el de Triana (the old one with all the photos), “Colección de cantes flamencos” by Demófilo (Antonio Machado y Álvarez), others I’m not remembering now, and even “Cantaores andaluces” by Núñez de Prado. I say “even” because, last I heard, it’s not taken seriously, but it was first published in 1904, so that’s worth taking into account. (Hey, I’ve just found it available online for free: https://tiendaeditorial.uca.es/descargas-pdf/8460047989-completo.pdf.) Pohren’s first book “The Art of Flamenco” was published in 1962, a year before “Mundo y Formas” by Mairena and Molina, who actually cited him in their book, although they did so to reject something Pohren had written. So, there wasn’t much available for Pohren to draw on for his first books, but he provided a lot of information on historic artists in “Lives and Legends” (1964). Things really got rolling around that time, so I see him as a sort of pioneer. But his Paco biography could have been much better.
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