Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
Absolutely great. He is really getting back on top of his game. Unbelievable!! He also did a great version of Almoraima. It's interesting that nowdays he plays so many of Paco's compositions (the person who replaced him as the next great innovator and genius of Flamenco guitar).
EDIT my Spanish is very poor but I think I picked out in the comments that Niño Miguel actually composed the main theme of this Rumba?? and then Paco kind of stole it from him? I wonder if there's any truth to that
.. the comments that Niño Miguel actually composed the main theme of this Rumba?? and then Paco kind of stole it from him? I wonder if there's any truth to that
If you listen it's pretty obvious that Paco de Lucia had a completely linear development....you can hear some of the same roots of ideas he developed at 26 as he had when he was 16 IMO.
El Niño, on the other hand, didn't really have any kind of distinctive style to his playing, but had a tremendous technique.
I would tend not to believe this rumour for the same reason that over the years I've heard things like "Paco basically stole ALL his stuff from El Niño"!
(The same way Elvis couldn't stand the pressure anymore and faked his own death, along with the Princess of Wales and..perhaps Michael Jackson too...)
A lot of the times, things actually just ARE the way they happened, but it's always interesting to speculate IMO.
ORIGINAL: deteresa1 It's interesting that nowdays he plays so many of Paco's compositions (the person who replaced him as the next great innovator and genius of Flamenco guitar).
I didnt know that any guitarist was regarded "ahead" of Paco. Im not sure, but at the time Nino Miguel came up, Paco maybe already had a deep impact. I am with Ron on this, it goes back to when Paco was very young. There are and were many aspirants for the next genius award, but there is and was only one Paco imo. Thx for the video, great find!
Ron.M, but the thing is... Nino Miguel composed his Recuerdo de la Virgen del Rocío around 1974. and Almoraima album of Paco was a 1976 release, so I would like to see, who was there first - I am talking of a remarkable similarity of PDL's Cobre and above mentioned one of Nino Miguel's.
I actually cant hear any similarity?? Is this the correct piece by Nino?
first of all his style is a copy of paco's starting back early 70's. I mean even musical arrangements with strings and such, not just falsetas and compas style and techniques. A big inovation was the Rondena buleria, but Paco had already done Canastera so it is clear where the idea came from. Sevillanas often copy the sung coplas when you play "falsetas" if that is what you want to call them when you do instrumental guitar versions. no doubt you will hear similarities between different players. But in this case, I also don't hear much that is so similiar it is a copy. I will say Sabicas had the idea first to do 4 sevillanas in different keys and change capo position AND tunings, thanks to recording studio technology of cut and past. Paco followed suite but added other instruments and modern voicings. In Nino Miguel's version there is some counter point guitar lines, especially on the bass strings, very similar to what Paco and Modrego did with Garcia lorca's sevillanas back in 1965.
Well who knows, even if some compositions are somewhat similar I wouldn't accuse anyone of "stealing" material...that's what Flamenco's all about
Yes Paco was established by the time that Niño Miguel hit the scene, but I'm not sure he was doing terribly innovative work until Almoraima (Fuente y Caudal somewhat). Nino Miguel was an equally promising player who only got to put out 2 albums before succumbing to mental illness and drug addiction... we'll never know what he would have done with the rest of his career. But if you judged Paco by just his first 2 albums, you would have thought his style was just a copy of Sabicas and Niño Ricardo.
ORIGINAL: deteresa1 Yes Paco was established by the time that Niño Miguel hit the scene, but I'm not sure he was doing terribly innovative work until Almoraima (Fuente y Caudal somewhat).
I just thought, because you said that he "replaced" Nino... that would mean that Nino was before Paco. Escudero, Sabicas and Ricardo played very differently in their own styles, so did Paco, even as a teen imo. Here is an interesting site. There is a nice solea arpeggio http://www.mindspring.com/~lv-flamenco/style.html
Anyways i think it is very speculative and i dont see much sense in debating whether Nino Miguel could have kicked Paco from his thrown. Or who is more original. I like both. I also dont want to give food for those kind of rumors and accusations. Btw Paco to me, is not the end of everything but the beginning. I can easily accept him as god (even if i prefer other players) because he influenced all my favorite guitarists.
Yeah that's a cool site, no one is debating the fact that Paco did his own thing, just saying that Niño Miguel was also a very good player that at one time people thought would be an enduring talent up there with all the other greats of which Paco is one.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Deniz
Anyways i think it is very speculative and i dont see much sense in debating whether Nino Miguel could have kicked Paco from his thrown. Or who is more original. I like both. I also dont want to give food for those kind of rumors and accusations.
Its from la peña El Higueral en Huelva, which is "my" peña. I see Miguel quite often and I always enjoy his playing. Its very chaotic but always full of soul. I like him a lot with a singer. The guitar he´s playing in this video is Javi´s Alhambra F3. It has several cracks in the top and it sounds very bad, but Miguel is used to this level of guitars (or worse) so he doesnt really care.
BTW. I dont really care about who copied who etc. I mean my whole work is based on copying and personalising someones elses work. And so it goes with music. What Miguel plays, he develloped in the 70th and that was the playing style then.
my latest conclusion would be, there is no autor, but there are only influences
MSA,
I would agree very much with this. In fact from time to time you hear lots of guitarists picking up on a particular little falseta ending or rasgueado syncopation all at round about the same time...it's as if it spreads like a virus...soon everybody is doing it and some developing it further. Often it's difficult to place who exactly started it and when!
Also I think guitarists can easily develop a little phrase or something that they think is original, but the idea actually is from a fragment of something they heard months ago and has been echoing around somewhere in their head since.
I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, but I believe I read an interview by Gerardo Nuñez where he said that he has a lot of top guitarists falsetas stored on his hard drive that he sometimes uses to cross-check if a new idea he has come up with isn't an accidental copy of something else!
Its from la peña El Higueral en Huelva, which is "my" peña. I see Miguel quite often and I always enjoy his playing. Its very chaotic but always full of soul. I like him a lot with a singer. The guitar he´s playing in this video is Javi´s Alhambra F3. It has several cracks in the top and it sounds very bad, but Miguel is used to this level of guitars (or worse) so he doesnt really care.
I got the impression from the comments on the video that Miguel has a tendency to trash guitars on occasion.
Also I think guitarists can easily develop a little phrase or something that they think is original, but the idea actually is from a fragment of something they heard months ago and has been echoing around somewhere in their head since.
As I'm trying to compose a bit at the time I think about the same things. I created a Soleá por Bulería falseta which just came into my mind when I was playing along after listening to Diego del Morao's stuff.
When I played it in front of my teacher he said it reminds him of Moraíto Chico's falseta which I had actually never heard before. There was no striking similarity, but when I first listened to Moraítos Soleá por Bulería afterwards I instantly heard which falseta was meant.
For me it just a proof for the fact that Diego del Morao learned from his father.
The possibilities for falsetas are nearly endless, but they are always variations of other similar possibilities you have using a certain tonality and rhythm.
his style is a copy of paco's starting back early 70's
- this is based on what kind of reasoned assumption?
Well my ear. I mean it is my opinion, and it stands out glaringly obvious to me, but I only have my own point of view you know. I disagree that Paco sounded like such a n. ricardo/sabicas copy on his first 2 albums. Even he interprets Ramon Montoya's rondena or Escudero's Impetu with his own easy to recognize style. When it comes to cante, most singers admit full out to be a copy of a certain style. (Caracolero or Camaronero etc) But with guitar everyone seems to think it is so bad, but it is fine too IMO.
PDL took a lot from Paco Cepero who was his friend, and everyone he was hanging with I am sure. I can hear it, it is obvious too. Even Cepero tried out some of PDL's things himself, but doesn't mean you should say Cepero is so heavy influenced by PDL. He just liked to quote and borrow melodies but with his own style. That is how great artists influence each other. I dont' mean to take anything away from N. Miguel, but to my ear he was going full out trying to do the same as Paco, right down to his arrangements with other instruments, not just his falsetas and way to do compas. I dont think it is a bad thing, but to claim Paco was copying him doesnt really make sense to me. Even if there was a specific falseta Paco plays of N. Miguel, overall style wise (Like what I mentioned with Cepero) the heavy influence of PDL on N. Miguel is really obviouse to me, as a fan of both players.
no complicated analysys are necessary to grasp a single and very simple thing.
Ooops sorry man, you asked me though.
quote:
What I was saying, Miguel's "Recuerdo de la Virgen del Rocío" released 1975 and Cobre of PDL released 1976 - a year later - leaves no doubts... but I really don't know how can anybody copy someone else before original has been recorded.
Well, other than that they are both sevillanas, I don't hear the direct connection of the two pieces. They have different tonalities and melodies. Perhaps you could point us to specific passage that is identical of the two, cuz I don't notice any. Stylistically they are similar, but I was pointing out that perhaps you hear the two pieces as being so similar because N. Miguel was already on the PDL path for years. Also, when it comes to flamenco recordings, date of release is not always the best sign of date of authorship. Paco performs a lot of music live that might get recorded later, or perhaps he has recorded and saved it up as happened with Cositas Buenas, or even you might hear things live that have NEVER been recorded.
About there being no true creation, I must say there is a big difference between copying an idea, or borrowing an idea, and being inspired by an idea. Also if two independant sources are inspired by a single thing, say a tuning or special tonality, it is quite possible that the two will "create" something quite similar, coincidentally. This has happened alot with modern flamenco players, but it is still creativity IMO, just the source of inspiration was the same, not that they copied each other.
I would reckon that when somebody produces something like an album (which is a time-stamped record in legal terms) AND produces a phrase or lick or something which is acknowledged by the general listening audience to be something genuinely innovative...then the "copyright" belongs to that person.
A great example is "My Sweet Lord" versus "She's So Fine".
Obviously Harrison gave the thing a whole different treatment, but not enough to call the whole song his own.
I think that's why in Flamenco, it is probably safer putting "Traditional...Arranged by...." unless you are really confident.
Nino was not trying to copy Paco 70´s style. He was trying to overtake him. Like a car race. Of what use would it be just to copy?
If you understand anything about Flamenco guitar playing, you must recognize that there is a remarkable difference in their buleria styles. Always have been. Nino had the gypsy style of his family and Paco of his familiy and his teachers (Nino Ricardo and Sabicas) together. Paco has tendency of making surprising starts and stops, and also applying striking picados that stand out of the rest of the music. Nino has more of a constant, continuous "angry" flow ("without the starts and stops") and makes picados that instead of standing out of the rest, they fill in to the music composition, creating a smoother curve in the audio spectrum of the song.
Forget the strings and arrangements of other instruments. It was a rising trend and they did it a lot in that studio, where both Paco and Nino recorded their albums at the time. Actually it was the same man who made those strings and arrangements for them both: José Torregrosa.
There are rumours that Paco the Lucia stole Almoraina and Entre dos Rios from Nino and renamed them to Almoraima and Entre dos Aguas.
But those are rumours, so better forget about them.
Paco was innovative almost since the beggining. "El Tempul" recorded in 1969 was already innovative. Cepa Andaluza was also very innovative but both conserved some "classic" elements of buleria.
Then came Vinos Y Caballos by Nino Miguel, the first to bring it all together and add a lot on top. An amazingly well played buleria full of innovative chords, harmonies, and synchopation. When it came out it redefined the futurism in Bulerias. Paco obviously liked this song very much and learned from it, like any intelligent flamenco guitarist should do. It is not copying, it is learning the Palo.
Nowadays I still believe Vinos & Caballos is the best and most outstanding buleria ever recorded. Almoraima also stands out, but compared to Vinos Y Caballos, it's a Pop Song. Very catchy, repeating parts, many parts are easy to play.
Has anyone ever seen anyone playing Vinos Y Caballos ? Properly ? I'd love to see that, honestly.
Some people were talking about the Sevillanas? Are you guys crazy? There are no Sevillanas like "Recuerdos de la Virgen del Rocio". Actually if this song is a Sevillanas, than it is the only Sevillana in the World. This song makes all the other Sevillanas sound like primitive music, poorly played. It's ridiculous to listen to another Sevillana after listening Recuerdos de la Virgen del Rocio. It has so much power, emotion and colour that any other Sevillana becomes funeral music.
Well, you this dug up from a few years back. While on one hand I can't change my opinion that he is drawing heavily, both with specific falsetas melodies and rhythms, and the general overall vibe from PDL's Duende and Fuente albums from a few years previous, but I was also quite intrigued about his use of unusual tonalities, which I was not aware of at the time I wrote those comments above.
Except for the buleria in Rondeña (which I said was his main innovation), I was surprised to see his clever use of C# and D# phrygian keys at this early epoc (1975 ish), obviously he had heavy influence on the modern players of the 80's, including paco's work, but more obvious on guys like Tomatito and Nuñez. It at least dispelled the rumor that David Serva had invented the modern tonality of D#phrygian.
Printable Version
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread