runner -> RE: What is true flamenco, who performs it. Any restrictions or rules? (Jan. 6 2009 16:48:09)
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Ron M. and John O. have put their fingers on a very important, powerful explanation for the perceived estrangement of older flamencos and aficionados from much music they hear today that they are told is flamenco. Ron and John suggest that much "flamenco" music these older listeners hear today does not sound like what gave them so much shared comfort and pleasure in their past. We can understand these feelings if we consider the profound changes in attitude required from those, for example, who passed through the Great Depression and World War II, and then entered a world of Rock 'n' Roll, televison, and supermarkets. There is another factor augmenting this estrangement, and that is the fact that evolution of/in the arts is episodic. There are longish periods of stasis or slow change that are interrupted and ended by bursts of rapid change. This is certainly true of flamenco. Disregarding whatever has been written about past flamenco and relying only on the recordings, it is clear that much flamenco actually changed very little between the early 1900s and near the end of that century. One can listen to tientos and siguiriyas, for instance, recorded in 1909 by Manuel Torres and Juan Gandulla "Habichuela", and then to similar utterances by the Pavons, by Terremoto, by the Sisters, by Chocolate, right up through the decades. If Torres came back in 1989 (80 years later) and listened to siguiriyas and soleares by Jose de la Tomasa and Paco del Gastor, he would have felt at his ease, among friends and the music he was used to. It would all still be, to Torres, Flamenco. But as rapid change occurs in the arts, a name is given to the period of stasis or slow(er) change that has been closed--Baroque, Classic, Romantic, Hudson River, Hellenistic, etc., etc. The burst passes, we enter a new period of stasis, and apply a new name to that new, next period. Florian is right when he accuses many older flamencos of trashing the newer music, but I think that the trashing is a reflection of the fact that the older listeners hearing newer "flamenco" think that the music is bad because it calls itself flamenco (but is not flamenco as they knew it to be), not necessarily because they think it is bad music. This is an important distinction: many older listeners would probably like/enjoy/play the new music if it had some other name than "flamenco". The point is that perhaps, at the rate that "flamenco" is changing, and is cross-pollinating with other musics, and is using alien instruments and modalities such that Manuel Torres (or Agujetas) no longer can recognize it, it may no longer be useful or accurate to use the same term--flamenco--that has been identified with a certain kind of music for probably at least a century. If it's the music that counts, then let the old fogies have the old name flamenco; why not honor and baptize the new music with a new name or set of names? We can't keep calling everything flamenco, can we? runner
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