Pedoviejo -> RE: The Last Station (Dec. 14 2003 15:30:13)
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I just stumbled on this site when I was "googling" Ian Davies. Strange things happend when you pass the half century mark - you wonder "where's so and so" and "whatever happened to...." So I did find info on Ian here (notes from October about his death - more on that later) and more poor, lost flamenco addicts struggling away. I first picked up a guitar at age 13 when I was a fat kid who was just discovering girls and thought rock 'n roll would be my salvation - you know, the girls screamed for all these incredibly ugly guys just because they were on stage playing rock "mak'n me feel that way..." Well, my mother was some distressed, especially since she saw how persistent I was in learning to play - I wouldn't put the damn thing down - so she brought home a pile of records one day: Andres Segovia, Julian Bream on guitar and lute, Carlos Montoya and Manitas de Plata (she didn't know any better) and Sabicas. That was 1966, the end of my career in rock and the beginning of my life long passion for flamenco. I've progressed from that Sears "Goldtone" POS to my present ax, a 1990 Arcangel Fernandez negra (palo santo, french polish) which rests in its stand in a corner of my office. Blows every other guitar I've ever had away, but it was made especially for me by Arcangel, who for some reason befriended me when I first lived in Madrid in 1972. That was a progression from San Francisco to New York to Madrid, back and forth, and now coming more or less to rest in, of all places, New Orleans. I played professionally for many years before switching careers (money, of course, amongst other things too numerous to write in this space) - gutiarist for Jose Greco & Nana Lorca, hanging out at Amor de Dios, etc. Juan Maya was my mentor in Madrid at that time, as I was good friends with his other foreign student and friend, Bill Glidden a/k/a Guillermo Rios. The crazy Aussie, Robert Fletcher, and Ian Davies were "Serranitoistas", Robert even going so far as to say that Victor was a better guitarist than Paco de Lucia. That was over thirty years ago, and of course history has shown otherwise. Very funny to hear these years later that Rober and Ian became buds with Juan Maya. Actually, Robert was schilling for Juan, pumping up the reputation of guitars Juan had to sell to unwitting foreigners then getting a piece of the price. But I digress again. You are very correct that non-native guitarists never, to my knowledge, move away from flamenco once they've really started to master it. It's no coincidence that the only guitarists who can do "fusion" with any degree of success between jazz and flamenco start out as flamencos, and not vice versa (but there is one notable exception - more later). Flamenco requires everything you've got to master, and the only way to really get close to that goal is to live in Spain for extended periods and hang out with the flamencos. And there's the "secret" it took me over thirty years to discover: The natives learn flamenco first, before they move on to mastery of one or more of its forms of expression - singing, playing, dancing, etc. As Paco said in one of his many interviews, "I knew flamenco before I ever touched my first guitar." Like me, I've seen uncountable non-Spaniards struggling to learn, say, a soleares, its compas and aire, its unlimited possible variations, while at the same time trying to master a tricky dance step or an arpeggio, a picado run, a rasqueado variation. It's incredibly difficult. Too difficult, and in fact you're harming the learning process because of the mental and emotional overload. Look for the CD by the daughter of Agujetas, not for what's on it but for the photo on the cover. It's a perfect example of what I'm saying: There's this Gypsy girl, mouth contorted with the cante, right hand knuckles tapping out the compas on the table top - and there's her baby nursing one of her breasts. What is that baby learning? Aire, compas, aire, compas, aire, compas. By the time that child is 5 it can clap syncopated bulerias that will blow you away. THAT'S THE SECRET. You can do it, but you will do it so much faster if you follow that baby's example (and I'm not talking about sucking on a Gypsy breast, even if the idea.... well, never mind). And there's the other aspect of flamenco: It and jazz are the only two native art forms that can express the gamut of human emotion. For many reasons, jazz is the much more universal expression, which accounts for its broad popularity way beyond flamenco. Flamenco remains an indiginous art form rooted to its place of origin. And it continues to become ever more complex. It does indeed take a lifetime to master - if one can in fact master it. But the broader point is that you must approach flamenco as a whole: It's not just guitar, or dance, or singing, or cajon. It's all of the above. There has NEVER been one flamenco guitarist who could solo worth a damn who had not first been an accompanist. So many times I've been at parties where the guitarists get together exchanging falsetas while the dancers (and on rare occassions, singers) are ignored. They're not getting it. Ditto for dance classes where I tried to get the wanna be dancers to understand that they needed to study what the guitar and singer does. "I just want to dance!" is the stock answer, and they're not getting it. Flamenco has always been a team sport, and while you might really love playing one position, you've have to understand all the others for the team to score. Recuerdos y suerte Pedoviejo
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