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Jon Boyes -> RE: Quick Review on "Understanding Flamenco" (Feb. 26 2004 10:31:28)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ron.M
Hola Amigos,
This morning, the postie brought good and bad news.
The good news was that my package of goodies arrived from Flamenco World. [:D]
The bad news came in the form of a brown envelope from the Inland Revenue. [:@]
Earlier this week, my very own package of goodies arrived from Flamenco World. A Tomatito album (more later..) and the above book. Thought I'd add my thoughts..
As Ron has already said, this is a kind of flamenco rhythm reference manual. I have to say I have mixed views on it.
A lot of time is spent describing compas structure in terms of in terms of standard theory - time signatures and bars. So for example, the Solea compas consists of two bars of 3/4 followed by one bar of 6/8 if it were notated 'properly'.
This will be a good thing for people familiar with theory who want to get a grasp on flamenco, but I wonder how useful it is to people learning flamenco who haven't studied theory? I imagine a lot of the stuff about binary and ternary subdivision would be a little tough going, when its much easier to think of a twelve beat cycle with acents in the right places.
It has a few gems in it that do a geat job of clarifying little details that seem murky or poorly exaplained elsewhere.. Here's a good example - confused by Solea Por Bulerias? Think of it as a Solea por medio, but played with the aire of alegrias, thats the crucial difference.
That might sound odd at first, but when its played on the CD, its obvious. It makes all the difference to the palo and sets it apart from being simply a slow bulerias, or a fast Solea por medio, which is where I had it.
Another major plus is the dissection of rhythm WITHIN the compas itself. Most guitar methods cover compas, and discuss rasgeado tech in great detail, but I haven't seen this attention to the internal rhythm itself before -what you should be doing WITH the rasgueado to give the palo its true characteristics. I'm not just talking about accents (though they are covered), but the actual foundation rhythms of the rasgueados themselves. The is probably confusing if you can't hear the CD, but for me this is the main thing I'll get from the book. Its opened my eyes (ears) to Sevillanas and Fandangos, for example, and what I'm supposed to be doing with all that ras.
There are some very frustrating things about the package - like the fact that the book and CD don't follow each other! It would have been nice to have each track on the CD clearly labelled in the book, and have them both progress together, but there are things in the book not on the CD and vice versa, and the order does seem to jump around a bit.
Another frustration is the different ways of displaying the rhythms - in some sections the author does this just by notation which is fine by me - and in other sections he uses his own simple system which is described at the start of the book. It would have been better if both systems were used side by side for every example. He (the author) badly needs a good editor.
Other points of interest - there is an interesting little Cante reference section, some pointers on palmas variations in the main toques and a flamenco jargon buster (which has most, but not all, of the main spanish terminology).
The guitar technique section as Ron has already pointed out, is pretty worthless, and would have been better left out. And I agree that the guitarist is a great player. He makes the simplest rhythm really come alive, and is certainly capable of virtuosity as the background 'fills' demonstrate.
Thats about it after a few days with the book. If I come across any other gems/drawbacks, I'll post them here.
Jon
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