Miguel de Maria -> RE: A little slow around here? (Jul. 27 2003 12:55:39)
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Wow, I go to Marchena for half a day and get back and there´s a monton of posts! Great! I don´t mind paying an extra .60€ to read them all, either. Last night some friends and I took the 7 oclock to Marchena, which is maybe 30 min. away from Sevilla, to see the 13th annual Festival de la Guitarra, which this year is an homage to Pepe de Marchena (whoever that is). The bus ride took us an hour and a half, as we were taking the scenic route and got to see lots of nice Spanish tenements and run down factories. Now Marchena is a lovely little town! Imagine barrio Santa Cruz, but cleaner and without tourists. We roved around for an hour looking for a place to eat, until finally someone led us to the back of this splendid, turn of the century hotel to a charming little bar, filled with people in suits and celebrating a wedding. It was amazing how nice the people who worked there were to us, giving food recommendations and putting on Jose Merce for us. I didn´t know what to make of it until I realize that in Marchena they must not get very many tourists, and so they were genuinely curious about us. Every guy who worked there must have asked us how we liked our food. Anyone who has ever been to Spain must know that the service there must be among the worst in the world. But these guys were really nice to us! Then we walked to the festival, up some old cobbled stairs through the Arco de las Rosas, through an old Moorish wall some fifty feet high, into an elevated part of the town. There was a plaza, with a beautiful iglesia with a high belltower, with the stage set up right in front of the door. Rows and rows of wooden seats and some guys drilling holes into the side of the church in order to hang up a tapestry completed the scene. We ran into Miguel Angel Cortes, one of my teachers at the school, and he informed us the festival would last to 3 or 4 in the morning at least! Enrique de Melchor and Jose Menese were the headliners, but Enrique was a no-show. As a result, Jose Postigo, who also teaches at my school, did the opening guitar solo, a marvel of heavy handed picado and machine like alzapua por solea. Postigo must be a local boy, because all the old timers were shouting his name and giving him lots of jaleo. Then there was an interminable period dominated by what must have been home town musicians, amateurs. I won´t mentar nombres but this was some of the worst flamenco I have ever seen, a gentleman who had not evolved past Ramon Montoya and who could´t play a single compas without flubbing a note or two, a bunch of amateur singers who screamed loud and who would only sing libre (presumably because they were unable to sing in compas?). Then some woman named Merchora something came up with Postigo, just fabulous. These performers do this trick that I love. They are singing and then they leave the mic and just do it acoustic. Immediatedly the whole plaza goes completely quiet, the guitarist has to back off of the mic real fast, and then the singer does a copla without amplification. It´s quite impressive and always an emotional moment. Then Jose Menese came on with Jose Postigo. Menese has a funny mannerism in that when he gets really into it, he reaches out and grabs the guitarist. I saw him do that to my teacher Eduardo Rebollar, who was surprised and everyone on stage was smiling. Last night, he didn´t grab Postigo very hard but just laid his hand on his leg sometimes. After Menese was a gentleman named Arcangel, who is young and charismatic and can really, really sing. If you like cante I would humbly suggest getting this young man´s CD, for he has a great voice and personality. The ladies in our group fell in love with him! I did too! He was accompanied by Miguel Cortes, one of my teachers, who played well, in the only modern style at the whole festival. However, his playing lacked rhythmic drive and a lot of his falsetas kind of sucked. Still, a good performance because of the singer. We waited for the bus and it came at 6 am more or less on the dot. My old, nasty bed with the springs poking my back never felt so good! (except when I got home from the other festival two weeks ago!)
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