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RE: What is flamenco today?
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to DavRom)
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quote:
to rephrase the original question of this thread...is flamenco today defined more by guitar or cante? regardless of which has historically defined the genre. which one will carry flamenco into the future and determine its evolution?
To those who really understand and appreciate flamenco, I don't think it is defined more by one than the other today. I think most understand that cante is the core and the guitar equally worthy as accompaniment. Regarding the future, who can say? I think that the guitar will always have a wider audience than cante for reasons that have been discussed many times on this forum. For many, cante is too obscure, exotic, and even for Spanish speakers sometimes nearly unintelligible; while the guitar can be appreciated by nearly everyone. At any rate, that's my take on it.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Sep. 28 2015 0:12:06
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I think it is a little too much to say that flamenco is cante, period. And that without cante there is no flamenco. I understand what is meant by it, that cante is the origin, the core, and the soul of flamenco. I agree with that. But to listen to a guitarist playing a beautiful solea' in compas with wonderful falsetas, rasqueados, and tremolo is to listen to flamenco every bit as much as listening to Santiago Donday or La Nina de los Peines. It is no less flamenco for lacking a cantaor, in my opinion.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Sep. 28 2015 4:33:49
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Anders Eliasson
Posts: 5780
Joined: Oct. 18 2006
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to DavRom)
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quote:
to rephrase the original question of this thread...
is flamenco today defined more by guitar or cante? regardless of which has historically defined the genre
which one will carry flamenco into the future and determine its evolution?
It depends on how you look and focus you have.
But as other have said, dont exclude baile. It is very important to most. I cant seperate any of the 3. They go together.
Even here in Andalucia, many persons dislike flamenco and the huge majority of people is not interested at all in it. Cante is what they dislike the most.
On the other hand, amongst the people that like flamenco, cante is what they respect the most. Its the center of the 3.
Cante is different wheater its solo cante con acompañamiento (palante) or its with dance (patras). Very seldom you see top level singers doing patras. there you have those specialized in that.
The same for groups where the guitar is the most important, then you see patras singers. and sometimes a dancer doing a few thignies in the corner but without the presence they have in a dance performance.
You also have guitarists specialized in acompañamiento of cante or dance. And some of them are IMHO amongst the best and most important. Even when it comes to Paco, I prefer the way he played with Camaron than the way he played solo.
When flamenco music is made into pop music, there´s a tendency to focus more on guitar than on cante and baile. Guitar is easyer to digest.
When Spain is sold to tourists (and its always on sale), flamenco is used a lot, but there it is mainly dance that is in focus. Tourists want dance, some rasgueados, a bit of Ay and Óle..... So thats what they get. Spaniards are very intelligent when it comes to tourism. They dont give tourist authentical stuff but what the tourists like. Authentical Spain is scary and uncivilized and not only when it comes to flamenco.
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Date Sep. 28 2015 7:30:01
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JohnWalshGuitar
Posts: 517
Joined: Aug. 10 2009
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Anders Eliasson)
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The whole issue of Flamenco is Cante....
I understand that for a lot of people that is true and I understand the historical and cultural arguments for it. I've listened to so much of the argument in Spain over the last few years.
While I was in Algeciras at the Paco festival in July I had a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of different people, singers, guitarists etc.
After one epic long instance, the general consensus was reached that if singers want to maintain their hallowed position, then they should put the same amount of work in as the guitarists and/or dancers.
It is all to easy to say that flamenco is cante but i think cante is cante, guitar is guitar, dance is dance etc and flamenco is more than just one or the other. For instance, where is the innovation in cante these days?
Is it supposed to stay static? We wouldn't have all these different styles of Solea or Fandangos if it wasn't for the innovations and personal styles of the past singers. When are we going to accept a Malagueña de Archangel for example?
Guitarists should have some degree of self-respect and pride in what they do, and not be told from on high that what they do is not flamenco at all and that only cante is important.
This type of thought process goes on all the time in traditional Irish music in my country. The traditionalists argue and argue that Trad is this or Trad is that....Meanwhile the people with real interest in working and practicing make their own music and keep the thing alive. Friends of mine are in a very modern Trad band. They get slated for it 'not being Trad' all the time(mostly by people who cannot play music to save their lives), but they don't care and why should they...
Music is not a static thing, it evolves.. And something like Flamenco most of all; a mongrel music that has influences from all over the place. Of all musics, it should be willing to accept evolution, given it's roots
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Date Sep. 28 2015 10:23:45
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to DavRom)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DavRom
to rephrase the original question of this thread...
is flamenco today defined more by guitar or cante? regardless of which has historically defined the genre
which one will carry flamenco into the future and determine its evolution?
Flamenco is defined no more or less today than it was in the past. There is cante, there is guitar, there is dance. Since the begining, if it was known at all outside of spain, it would be as others say, Dance troupe superficially, Guitar solo a little more specifically, and cante deeply. It always will be like that.
Now if you are asking what is the STATE flamenco today interms of the 3 elements...well, if you care about singing at all it is obvious that the cante has died a slow death and the guitar and dance have been taken to new "heights" interms of expression and creativity. Why is that? I say because since Spain has become more open, the younger generations no longer feel a need to precribe to the homegrown singing thing. There will always be aficianados and amatures at high level. But in the public light, the great professional singers are almost all gone because their art was cultivated from birth. Perhaps the next generations will revive the cante but as young adults (the age they probably would really identify with their family legacy or whatever) you won't possess the skills required to be like the old greats.
What we are left with for a long time now interms of good singers of flamenco, are the Camaroneros. Watch Flamenco by Saura, then put on Flamenco Flamenco to see how fast the cante died out vs Dance and guitar getting sophisticated.
Ricardo
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Date Sep. 28 2015 14:44:37
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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It always seemed to me that cante was a little like classical music. You learn to sing these letra, this way. At its heart, it's profound, wonderful. But, also like classical music, it's basically a dead form, a museum. It's charming to sing about chickens and las minas, but a little weird if you have a smart phone in your pocket. Kind of the same reason I got tired of singing about waiting for the train in the blues , uh, never mind.
The further flamenco gets from one guitar beating on simple, but weird chords and one singer, the more effort it takes to listen to. I don't listen to solo guitar albums much unless I am consciously trying to learn/steal something.
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Date Sep. 28 2015 15:36:14
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payaso
Posts: 85
Joined: Dec. 7 2014
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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A challenge facing the flamenco guitar, I believe, is to evolve musically, beyond the introduction of strange chords and superfast techniques. I may be quite wrong on this because I do not listen to many contemporary solo guitar records, but from what I have heard most guitar solos now consist of a miscellany of short bits of music, perhaps introduced by a freeform intro with weird chording, then a mixed bag of falsetas, an almost perfunctory use of rhythm compases (or parts of compases) and no discernible overall form or development. – and certainly no memorable melodic theme.
This bittiness presumably reflects the origins of the guitar falseta as an interlude between verses of the cante, and players feel free to use bits from many different sources, some copied from other players, others modified from those copies, and others more their own creation. It would be strange indeed to see a classical player performing a few bars of Bach, then switching to Mozart then to Stravinsky. And the bits are so short in many flamenco guitar solos that one has hardly taken in one falseta before the next one is played.
Comparing this approach to other forms of western music, there seems to be a striking lack of repetition (which greatly aids memorization – consider, for example, Irish or Scottish folk music, or pop) ), recurring melody, variation or thematic development. Of course there are exceptions such as, notably, the Gypsy Kings, who have used a flamenco idiom, albeit nearly all in rumbas, to achieve enormous world-wide popularity. Entre Dos Aguas is another exception and others can be cited, particularly the great maestros such as Sabicas or (mainly earlier?) PdL .
What I am suggesting here is that technical development and the desire to introduce new harmonies may have outstripped musicality in the guitar, and that players are not learning to create the sort of music that people who are not guitarists or specialized aficionados of the guitar enjoy listening to very much.
I think it would be good if the melodic essence of the cante, particulary if it is eclipsed in popularity and innovation at the present time, could become more of a guiding inspiration for guitarists.
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Date Sep. 28 2015 16:11:14
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to Morante)
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quote:
quote:
At its heart, it's profound, wonderful. But, also like classical music, it's basically a dead form, a museum.
If you had ever had the chance to play for a great cantaor, who never sings the same way twice, such as Rancapino or Juan Villar, you would not write this nonsense.
Or even listened to a good singer in person more than twice.
_
Many of my older buddies that went to Spain in the early 1960's always say things back then were more oppressive governmentally, there was a lot less money, and at times food was scarce for gitanos.
They said all this meant that people had to entertain themselves, not turn on the TV or computer. They always say that these conditions made the cante' tradition strong. Good singers could rise up out of abject poverty, or make more money on the side by singing.
Now there are more 'Shrimpclones' and regional styles of cante' have not been passed on as much because of a homogenization of language better roads and connections between cities. The national radio and news broadcasts, ( in most countries today) have contributed to a flattening out of regional dialects and idioms, which has some effect on listeners.
Anyway I know people their 60's and 70 today who were in Spain back then and they say odd things like "In some ways Franco was good for flamenco because he had a lock down on the country and all you could do was find some place to sing to pass the time."
Funny stuff.
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Date Sep. 29 2015 1:41:03
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: What is flamenco today? (in reply to DavRom)
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quote:
one thing i can certainly add is that classical music is NOT a dead art form
You are correct, of course. This has all been covered recently in the thread entitled, "Do the Classics Suppress Creative Works of Music? Art? Literature?." There are those who think that, to quote one contributor to this thread, "...the heydays of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are long gone." To call them "museum pieces" is a bit absurd, given that they continue to be performed regularly to appreciative audiences and, as Anders pointed out, are constantly being interpreted and reinterpreted, i.e., they are alive. It is ironic that one can call them "museum pieces," yet argue that they have suppressed (presumably via intimidation) modern classical (serious) music. That is a position that appears to want it both ways.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Sep. 29 2015 2:17:00
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However "weird chords in flamenco" is RIGHT on topic IMO. 
