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Must know cante
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Ricardo
Posts: 14828
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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 RE: Must know cante (in reply to Leñador)
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Norman's site is a fantastic source....for solea and siguiriya. He spells it out clear, and even though EVERY style is touched on, he points out which are the most common ones sung nowadays.
http://www.canteytoque.es/soleares.htm
For the rest of the song forms, Merengue de Cordoba has a very clear and concise instructional Video on ENCUENTRO series, all the main forms you would ever need to know with only the most common examples. Unfortunately you get only one singer and one guitarist interpreting, but as a reference I think its what every flamenco player needs that is just getting into cante seriously.
THere are two books, one with standard falsetas note for note, and a second book which, if anyone recalls, is like the perfect "Flamenco Real book" as it has the chord charts for all the cantes in a clear concise form....understanding when accompanying the number of measures can change or location of chords can move, etc, as per following a singer. It's just a blue print that functions as a great base.
Ricardo
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Aug. 31 2012 16:15:06
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srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
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RE: Must know cante (in reply to Leñador)
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I’m only starting to get into the thick of this stuff myself, so the advice I have to offer is pretty low-grade, but here goes:
Start small. Just like a lot of beginners make the mistake (guilty as charged) of getting a bunch of method books and grinding their way through them and trying to learn every toque all at once (because there’s so much stuff you have to learn, and you have to learn it all right now!!!) and not really getting anywhere, when they would have been much better off focusing ONLY on, say, solea and tangos and only playing super basic compas and simple falsetas for two months or six months or however long it takes them to really nail some basic stuff down before moving on to the next thing, I think it’s also a recipe for failure when it comes to studying and making sense of cante to try and “learn it all” all at once. Unless you’re a freak who can just soak stuff up like a sponge, you should try to focus on a small handful of things at any one time.
So, there’s important stuff, and less important stuff, but even if you narrow your focus down to the most important stuff, that still a lot of stuff! Too much to take in at once, so I think you have to just pick a spot, almost at random, and pitch your tent there for a while. There are any of a number of campsites to pick:
Like the others have mentioned, Norman’s site is an invaluable resource, particularly because solea and siguiriyas are both really large in scope, with lots of regional styles and personal sub-styles, derivative sub-styles of the substyles, and hair’s-breadth differences between this guy’s and that guy’s version of whatever; it’s a thick forest to hack through.
So, pick a place to start and go. On the solea page Norman has helpfully broken each style down into “Popular” “Known” and “Not Popular” which is nice because then you can skip the weird, obscure stuff for now and just focus on the stuff people actually still sing. And then of course, when you narrow it down to just the “poplular” stuff, it’s still a lot of stuff. Pick a couple. Lately I’ve been focusing on Mellizo’s and Joaquin el de la Paula’s stuff.
For siguiriyas I’ve been working on Molina 1/Torre 1 (two very closely related cantes that are two of the most popular and important styles), and some variants of the style Viejo de la Isla, which has a number of offshoots that have developed from it, Paco La Luz, El Marrurro, Francisco La Perla, etc. So, all that stuff is basic, essential stuff, and as good a place to start as any, but I’m sure there are other equally important places you could start out from.
Another launching pad could be bulerias por solea, which is also broken down on Norman’s site. There are only half a dozen of those cantes: buleria larga, buleria corta, La Moreno, Sordo La Luz, etc. So, that’s a concise, comparatively manageable little chunk of stuff to learn, and for me, once I’ve “mastered” one thing and have it firmly under my belt, it makes learning the next thing that much easier. So if you can learn the melodies and structures of those cantes, you’d have a nice little base of knowledge to build off of. Though, as a word of warning, things could get tricky and confusing there because if you listen to something on a record or watch something on youtube that’s labeled “bulerias por solea” or solea por bulerias or solea al golpe or bulerias para escuchar or whatever, you might get just straight bulerias por solea cantes, but you might also hear the singer mix some other “regular” solea styles in, like solea de Frijones, or you might hear someone sing just straight solea styles at a fast tempo with the same aire as bulerias por solea, but no actual bulerias por solea cantes. Which could freak you out and overwhelm you and make you think you’ll never make any sense of all this stuff, in which case you could just take a deep breath and focus on those clips on Norman’s site (and if you listen to older recordings labeled ‘bulerias or solea’ chances are it’ll actually be just that; I think a lot of the “mixing” came later), and learn those cantes. Then, if you hear something on a recording that you can’t reconcile to an “official” bulerias por solea melody, you might not know what it is, but you know what it ain’t, and can start your search from there. I find myself using that kind of process of elimination a lot “Hmn, it’s not that that. Then what is it? Maybe it’s this….”
You could also pick a single singer and just focus on them for a while, someone you like and preferably someone on the older end of the spectrum. I’d offer up Tomas Pavon as a good choice for a number of reasons:
1. He’s good.
2. He’s an essential reference point in the styles that he sang and recorded and is an important influence on later singers. You can also trace his own influences back to Torre, Mellizo, and big sister Pastora, so he can serve as a nice “ground zero” to work your way backward and forward from.
3. He recorded very little; it all fits on a single cd, about twenty tracks. Which kind of sucks, since it’d be nice if there was more stuff, but for study purposes it’s nice because it makes for an easily digestible portion, half a dozen soleares and siguiriyas, a few bulerias por solea, some granainas and other fandangos and then just a couple saetas and tonas.
So just digging into one guy like Tomas (or some other important singer who you can put into a context of influences) for a while could be a good first brick in the foundation.
You could also just start with what you already know and work from there. That “Triana, triana” tangos was, if we’re thinking of the same cante/melody, recorded by Pastora Pavon as ‘Del Color de Cera Mare’, and other times with other letras, most likely. Most tangos and tientos roads lead back to Pastora, then to Torre, and back to Mellizo and the whole Cadiz and Los Puertos area (and I think the ball might have been passed off to Chacon at some point.) There are other tangos styles like tangos de Extremadura and stuff, but I’m just talking about garden-variety “regular tangos” here.
So, you could dig into Pastora’s tangos (and tientos), of which there are plenty, with lots of hits ‘Al Guguru,’ etc. , and then check out Torre, who recorded just a few, and then look into some singers from Cadiz, Aurelio Selles, La Perla de Cadiz, etc. If you keep listening to tangos and tientos from those guys after a while you’ll find that for the most part you’re just hearing a pretty small handful of melodies over and over, I don’t know how many, maybe fewer than a dozen total? That’s one advantage to focusing on something like tangos; unlike solea and siguiriyas, and fandangos, which can also be a big sprawling monster, stuff like tangos, tientos, alegrias- that stuff is relatively “small” without zillions of variants.
Speaking very generally here, of course. And focusing specifically on the Cadiz/Jerez/Sevilla triangle; as you get farther away from there you pick up more and more stuff and regional styles and it all adds up and gets unwieldy, but just sticking with core stuff from the Cadiz/Jerez epicenter, a lot of stuff ends up boiling down to a relatively small handful of melodies in each style. (I wanna point out that I don’t presume to be dishing out definitive knowledge here. I know a lot of this is above my pay grade, and I don’t pretend that I’ve got it all figured out, or that I even have a fraction of it all figured out. I’m just blabbing about stuff I’ve learned, as I learn it, so take it all with a grain of salt, and if anyone out there finds me dispensing off-base info, please set me straight!)
So, you can take that “Triana, triana” tangos, and trace that back to Pastora, and wind your way to Los Puertos and then learn, as I recently did, that that cante is attributed to a singer named Manuela “La Gitana” from Sanlucar, and along the way you hear a bunch of other stuff and hopefully pick up a few things. Listen to those older Cadiz singers and you’ll hear the same tangos/tientos melodies sung over and over.
There are any of a number of ways to set off learning this stuff. I think you just gotta start poking around, pick a place where the water doesn’t look too deep, and jump in. And this babble is all concerned with learning cante stuff in a general way. If you’re looking to accompany singers in your area you should just hit them up and find out what they sing, which is probably just a small repertoire of stuff they learned from a teacher or cribbed from recordings. No point in wood-shedding a bunch of historically important stuff if you’re just looking to accompany the one and only singer that lives in your town who stares at you blankly when you start talking about Joaquin Lacherna. You could just learn the stuff she sings and then work your way outward from there.
I don’t spend a lot of energy listening to stuff for which I don’t have letras. And it’s also nice to have CDs that clearly and SPECIFICALLY label stuff. Norman’s site is great because it breaks stuff down very specifically- not just “solea de Mellizo” but Mellizo 1, Mellizo 2, etc. Diego Clavel has a handful of encyclopedic double CDs dedicated to solea, siguiriyas, cantes de levante, and fandangos de Huelva where each cante is labeled by authorial style, but you just get “solea de Joaquin el da La Paula” and are left to your own devices to determine which of the four styles attributed to La Paula is being sung at a given moment. The Magna Antologia is a nice ten or twelve disc resource with tons of stuff that’s labeled by author or region. But again, it’s a little less detailed in the labeling. Each track will just be labeled “solea de whoever or wherever” and you’ll have to figure out on your own what each cante is. Which is fine, because you have to do some homework to figure stuff out, but in general I find it very helpful to have as much stuff as possible that’s accurately and specifically labeled to serve as a reference to fall back on. Then you can quiz yourself when hearing stuff that’s generically labeled, compare it to what you know, see what’s what. I like to know WHAT I'm listening to in as much detail as I can find. These days I try to mostly listen to stuff that falls somewhere within the wheelhouse of what I already know, working my way out...
Anyway, that’s a lot of blah blah. Take it for what it’s worth. Bottom line advice is to just pick a few things and focus all your efforts on them. Don’t try to take it all in at once and end up overwhelming yourself; it’ll just lead to frustration and a stilted learning process. Unless your a preternaturally gifted wiz at this stuff. Take it slow, cante by cante.
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Date Aug. 31 2012 23:26:50
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zata
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul. 17 2003
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RE: Must know cante (in reply to Leñador)
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Being a journalist, I get a lot of messages asking for guidance or suggestions. For cante accompaniment I always urge people to hook up with any flamenco singer, it doesn't need to be a professional...just someone who can sing the basic cantes. Then jam with that person on a regular basis, ideally a couple of times a week. Listen to recorded cante together if necessary and learn together.
Another important first step is to separate the immense fandango family from everything else. All fandangos have the same basic structure, and once you peel away the creative harmonies, artistic embellishments and passing chords, the same accompaniment (with only some extremely rare exceptions). Get that out of the way, and half the work is done...fandangos de Huelva, fandangos naturales, malagueñas, cante minero, granaínas, the whole abandolao sub-family....that's a lot of cante that gets "taken care of" once you learn the structure of fandangos which, unlike most other cantes, are extremely predictable.
Always try to pay attention to the verse, even if you don't know Spanish...the repetitions of lines and words are an important clue to where you are in the verse, and many classic verses are permanently linked to specific styles...if a singer por siguiriyas launches into "Eran dos días...", you know exactly what to expect for the next few minutes, and you know it's probably the end of the set, so get ready to unleash the thunder.
I don't recommend Norman's site, which is more for people who already know cante. There are omissions, inclusions and errors that are bound to confuse beginners.
_____________________________
Estela Zatania
www.deflamenco.com
www.expoflamenco.com
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Date Sep. 1 2012 9:12:31
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zata
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul. 17 2003
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RE: Must know cante (in reply to srshea)
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I took a quick look... "Ay mi muchacho", although recorded as "rondeña", is actually the prototype taranto....definitely not a taranta.
Beyond that, the idea is interesting...but it looks like one of these things that by the time you absorb it, it would have been easier to go directly to any recording.
For one thing, singers have been making a big effort for the last couple of decades to avoid classic verses and record only new ones. Personally I much prefer about two-thirds classic verses and no more than one third original...the classic ones tend to be perfect jewels, while new ones haven't stood the test of time. Nevertheless, any uninitiated person's attempt at identifying cante via the verse, is bound to lead to confusion and frustration.
I'd be more inclined to suggest consulting certain anthologies, with the global guideline of:
MAIRENA for soleá-siguiriya-tonás
FOSFORITO for everything else
Between these two, the whole universe of classic cante is neatly laid out.
_____________________________
Estela Zatania
www.deflamenco.com
www.expoflamenco.com
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Date Sep. 1 2012 9:54:26
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srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
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RE: Must know cante (in reply to zata)
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quote:
Beyond that, the idea is interesting...but it looks like one of these things that by the time you absorb it, it would have been easier to go directly to any recording.
Fair ‘nuff. And I do understand and am increasingly coming to accept that learning all this stuff ultimately boils down to a gradual organic absorption, but I also like to come at if from as many angles as I can, and I’m not above cheating my way to a bit of knowledge. Got a lot of catching up to do, and I’ll try anything once!
I’ve picked up a lot from people’s mentions of specific recordings, specific letras here on the Foro, all the little breadcrumb clues scattered throughout the archives. One clue leads me here, one clue leads me there, and sometimes the clues converge and bring me to a lightbulb moment. So, all the little lists and such, it’s all, for me at least, grist for the mill. But thanks for your input!
I scanned over the Fosforito/PdL Seleccion Antologia discs when I was drawing up my list in the other thread, and I know that many of those recordings are considered to be exemplary versions of each cante, but I wasn’t sure which of those letras have “stuck”, so I didn’t include any....
By the way, speaking as a beginner, I find Norman’s site very helpful. It was overwhelming at first, but as I’ve narrowed my focus on its contents and slowly begun to work my way through it, it’s become a lifeline for me. Plenty there for people of all levels to glean.
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Date Sep. 1 2012 15:19:28
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zata
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul. 17 2003
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RE: Must know cante (in reply to srshea)
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quote:
By the way, speaking as a beginner, I find Norman’s site very helpful. It was overwhelming at first, but as I’ve narrowed my focus on its contents and slowly begun to work my way through it, it’s become a lifeline for me. Plenty there for people of all levels to glean.
It’s a wonderful resource, provided you know enough to fill in the blanks and not take it too literally. In no way can it be considered an orientation, nor, I’m sure, was it ever intended to be. It’s far too schematic, giving no hint of the actual leeway singers have regarding repetitions, compás and even melodies. Everything is based on Mairena via Soler, and primarily soleá and siguiriya. There’s a vast world of cante out there, and it only seems logical to become familiar with it before dealing with arcane intricacies in such a limited perspective.
Certain omissions, as I said, will be confusing. Just this morning I noticed the siguiriya of Juanichi is dealt with, but only the Jerez version is presented. At least a footnote is required to point out that the version the vast majority of singers interpret is Fosforito’s which wanders into the major key for what some people called “cabalización”, since it sounds a lot like cabales. This is the version that has prevailed over the years since it’s very powerful.
_____________________________
Estela Zatania
www.deflamenco.com
www.expoflamenco.com
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Date Sep. 1 2012 17:01:00
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). 
) 
. There´s always a catch.. but this is why a guitarist should 
someone comes up and does a little variacion or a different coletilla. Luckely everyone is always very helpfull and explain what the hell happened right there 
