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RE: Guitarists not interested in flamenco singing or dancing?
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RobJe
Posts: 731
Joined: Dec. 16 2006
From: UK
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 RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to Guest)
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We all have our own flamenco journeys influenced by many things. I love cante, toque and baile in that order. Here is my journey.
Time: 1960s - no DVDs, CDs, cassette tapes or Internet. The Ivor Mairants book (with an LP) was the only resource readily available for learning the guitar.
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Place: London – with many Spanish people (including some flamenco artists) escaping from economic woes, post-Civil War tensions, husbands, wives, homophobic relatives etc.
Initial interest: Seeing a flamenco guitarist (in Italy!) and hearing a flamenco singer in Spain. The second of these was what got me hooked on flamenco and started my on a drive to experience and learn more.
Opportunities: I went to Spain by train in search of a guitar. In subsequent visits by car I got better guitars and found the old Zambra club in Madrid where I could listen to many of the great singers. I found a guitar teacher in London and through my guitar playing for dancers finally got to accompany singers – an economic migrant from Linares (I also helped with his tax returns), a singer from Seville who had left his wife, a gay jeweller from Northern Spain and others who are still alive.
Now: I can sit at my computer and access resources unimaginable when I started. I can see many of the world’s greatest flamenco artists in London, Madrid, Seville, Cordoba etc. I can fly to Andalucia, hire a car, rent a house in a small town or village go to the local Pena and enjoy the chance flamenco encounters that come from this.
Rob
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Date Sep. 24 2016 10:15:42
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to RobJe)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RobJe
We all have our own flamenco journeys influenced by many things. I love cante, toque and baile in that order. Here is my journey.
Time: 1960s - no DVDs, CDs, cassette tapes or Internet. The Ivor Mairants book (with an LP) was the only resource readily available for learning the guitar.
<snip>
Rob
...takes me back a bit to Austin, Texas in the late 1950s, early 1960s. But in Austin I was fortmate enough to come across some of Ed Freeman's students.
Getting drafted into the U.S. Army had a couple of effects that I appreciated at the time: being stationed for four months near enough to New York City to go there on weekends, and meeting numerous people in the Army itself that I would not have met otherwise.
In NYC I came across the club Zambra and the number of worthwhile flamenco artists that came through town. I met Sabicas--just a casual acquaintance, not much interaction--but I got to see him up close a number of times. I was privileged to see Carmen Amaya in her last New York performance.
At the time I saw the rest of my experience in the Army as ranging from annoying to catastrophic. More than fifty years later, I realize the significance of Henry Miller's line in "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch" : "Remember, every experience is a blessing."
I don't yet see it yet as literally true in every single instance, but it covers a lot more ground now than it did when I was in my twenties....it's worth thinking about...."what did I learn--or what should I have learned--from that?"
RNJ
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Date Sep. 24 2016 22:49:32
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to at_leo_87)
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When I first began to be interested in flamenco, it was just the guitar. In the late 1950s-early 1960s I bought every Sabicas and Mario Escudero record I came across. But some of the Sabicas records had singers on them. I skipped over those tracks.
I was fortunate enough to see Sabicas occasionally at the after hours juergas at Zambra in New York City. If he came, he usually sat in a chair on stage throughout the juerga, but he didn't dominate the proceedings. He was friendly, encouraging and respectful to the other artists, almost all professional, who shared the stage. There were singers, dancers and other guitarists. Sabicas was always supportive of all the others.
I began to hear that the singers could do things with the palos that the guitar could not, both musically and emotionally. (I grew up with Spanish as a second language, but Andalú was pretty hard for me.) I saw that dancers could do things that neither the guitar nor the singer could do. The one performance I saw by Carmen Amaya was an eye opener. She was one of the greatest artists I have ever seen in any genre.
That was fifty years ago. I still play. But I have gravitated more to listening to cante than to solo guitar. Both have changed--to my ear guitar more than cante. I'm not against the newer guitarists. For me, the "new" started with Paco and Manolo Sanlucar. Much of the newer style of guitar interests and moves me, some does not. Others will no doubt follow a different path, but I have known several non-Spaniards who got into flamenco via the guitar, but ended up listening more to cante.
RNJ
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Date Sep. 26 2016 17:47:54
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at_leo_87
Posts: 3055
Joined: Aug. 30 2008
From: Boston, MA, U.S.A
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to mark indigo)
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quote:
If they listened to flamenco music outside of class it would really help them a lot. Most of them don't, and aren't interested. And after years of classes they wonder why they don't improve more.....
yeah, this is what i meant. i wasn't commenting on them listening to the music while dancing, although that is another issue  , but more about them not listening to music outside of class, watching youtube videos, going to see shows, etc.
of course, i'm generalizing a bit. they're not all like that.
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Date Sep. 26 2016 19:50:40
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Njål Bendixen
Posts: 65
Joined: Aug. 25 2016
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to Piwin)
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This reminds me of tango, Argentine tango. I am a violin and guitar maker, but also a professional Argentine tango dancer and dj.
Very often people are attracted to Argentine tango because of the public image of Argentine tango (Strictly come dancing, Valentino etc.). They have no idea what Argentine tango is and when they come to the first class they discover that the music is really weird. They do not understand the music. They like the dance for the emotional/erotic connection with their partner, but they don't like the music. So they want to dance to all kinds of other music (Leonhard Cohen, Elvis Presley, what ever). They call it neo-tango.
Most poeple like that give up. A few of them grow up. By that I mean that they learn to love the music, and they discover that the music draws them into another world where they experience the connection to their partner much, much more.
Very, very few become die-hard neo-tango fanatics. They hate the Argentine tango community, and the Argentine tango community hate them!
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Date Sep. 26 2016 20:25:08
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Mark2
Posts: 1871
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to Njål Bendixen)
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I have seen this-Back in 2001 I had a gig in a high class hotel once a week. Every week a group of older student tango dancers would drive 60 miles to dance to our music. It had absolutely nothing to do with tango. I wondered why they felt comfortable doing their tango steps to our music. Personally I usually don't like flamencos dancing to other music, but there are exceptions. But then I don't really care much for cajons, saxes, flutes, bass players, etc in flamenco either.....I guess my kid is right. I'm kind of a grumpy old man.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Njål Bendixen
This reminds me of tango, Argentine tango. I am a violin and guitar maker, but also a professional Argentine tango dancer and dj.
Very often people are attracted to Argentine tango because of the public image of Argentine tango (Strictly come dancing, Valentino etc.). They have no idea what Argentine tango is and when they come to the first class they discover that the music is really weird. They do not understand the music. They like the dance for the emotional/erotic connection with their partner, but they don't like the music. So they want to dance to all kinds of other music (Leonhard Cohen, Elvis Presley, what ever). They call it neo-tango.
Most poeple like that give up. A few of them grow up. By that I mean that they learn to love the music, and they discover that the music draws them into another world where they experience the connection to their partner much, much more.
Very, very few become die-hard neo-tango fanatics. They hate the Argentine tango community, and the Argentine tango community hate them!
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Date Sep. 26 2016 20:39:11
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to Njål Bendixen)
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What I find interesting is how this seems to be fairly specific to countries other than the country of origin. It seems to be yet another case of what happens when a "grassroots" style is uprooted from its place of origin and achieves some degree of success abroad.
In France, anything tango-related, or even, but probably to a lesser extent, flamenco-related, has become somewhat of a high-brow activity, be it for traditional tango or the more modern forms. And they seem to enjoy looking down on anything slightly different from what they do, so they look down on anything non-tango, or look down on those who are not doing the exact same type of tango as they are, be it traditional, nuevo, neo, or whatever the particular brand might be. I know several dancers who have left tango altogether because after years in the vipers' nest, they decided the benefits just weren't worth the hassle. In flamenco its seems to be slightly different as the old-schoolers somehow seem to have taken the moral high-ground and those into more modern forms of flamenco seem to just sigh and accept that.
In the meantime, the people who brought about neotango most likely did not approach the style unawares of the traditional music form, quite simply because they most likely grew up with it. In the very same way that young gitanos are mixing in rap or other styles into flamenco. Some of the traditionalists in Spain very much hate what this younger generation is doing with flamenco, but at the same time many of them really don't hate the people doing it, simply because they can't: it's their sons and daughters that are doing it!
Just last week I was talking about this with a friend at the local pena..the kind of still thinks flamenco would be better off without guitar, so that kind of purists. His grandson is in a local band, rapping his way into flamenco, mixing it up with RnB stuff, etc. My friend just shrugged and said "what you gonna do...".
But I guess this kind of tension exists in any form of music. Another friend, a rather devout Christian from the US, told me that his church was going through a rough patch on what kind of music to sing during their service. Apparently there is some sort of divide between those who prefer traditional hymns and those who prefer more modern ones.
This doesn't take anything away from what you were saying, just perhaps that it might be different in the "country of origin", or at least in those places where the artform is very much part of the social fabric.
Another thing I've noticed, but this brings us well into the field of sociology, is that Argentine tango is much more popular in France than in Spain. I suppose I thought that it would be a bigger deal in Spain given the cultural and linguistic ties between the two countries, but apparently not. Anyways, that's neither here nor there.
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Date Sep. 26 2016 22:31:57
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Guitarists not interested in fla... (in reply to mark indigo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
the "new" started with Paco and Manolo Sanlucar.
I play some early Paco stuff, and get comments like "that's old"
Yes, Paco's technique outstripped Sabicas's a few years before he started to really innovate as a composer. Sanlucar innovated as a composer, but didn't go as far as Paco.
But once they got going as innovative composers, that's where the "new" starts for me.
Dazzling technique alone doesn't do it for me like it did when I was in my twenties. If it's cleanly played, interesting musically, and conveys emotion, that's good for me. If the technique is dazzling on top of all that, it's a plus. Niño de Pura comes to mind, for example.
RNJ
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Date Sep. 26 2016 23:00:58
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