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.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Doitsujin)
Saying the unsayable
In no particular order, the problems.
-Weird grimacing from singers and dancers -it IS all in Spanish. International sales will suffer, and possibly isn't cool locally in face of English language pop -Flamenco promoters seem to give about 2 weeks notice max for anything. Then wonder why tickets don't sell. -Sitting down performances and rigid 'shows'/spectacle format. Best recruitment vehicle I've seen is outside the cathedral in Granada - public flamenco busker style, none of the stuffy rules. -Dancing in OTT clothes in general. Yes, some people love it, but it keeps flamenco niche and gimmicky. -OCD killjoy perfectionist guitarists. -Overcomplicating it. -Gypsy snobbery -Mixing in jazz. Jazz is widely hated. -Planes,trains and automobiles. The heartland is mobile.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Doitsujin)
Saying the unbelievable big truth:
Flamenco is like jazz, a niche musical genre that is confined to a style that will always be the same, except that for flamenco it is extended to a SERIES of styles (Bulerías, Solea, etc.) that will always be the same.
You can argue that it is always possible to create something new within that style (which is absolutely true) but only a very few guitarists are able to create something really different (as Paco did at his time).
For me there are just three who can do that currently and I hate saying this because I love him so much but Tomatito is completely losing his soul in merging Flamenco with jazz and even Brasilian classics and so on, evidence that he has kind of visited all the flamenco place.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to mrstwinkle)
quote:
In no particular order, the problems.
-Weird grimacing from singers and dancers -it IS all in Spanish. International sales will suffer, and possibly isn't cool locally in face of English language pop -Flamenco promoters seem to give about 2 weeks notice max for anything. Then wonder why tickets don't sell. -Sitting down performances and rigid 'shows'/spectacle format. Best recruitment vehicle I've seen is outside the cathedral in Granada - public flamenco busker style, none of the stuffy rules. -Dancing in OTT clothes in general. Yes, some people love it, but it keeps flamenco niche and gimmicky. -OCD killjoy perfectionist guitarists. -Overcomplicating it. -Gypsy snobbery -Mixing in jazz. Jazz is widely hated. -Planes,trains and automobiles. The heartland is mobile.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to mrstwinkle)
How does one explain the fact that in ‘classical’ music audiences are delighted to hear works from the past many times, while in flamenco guitar there seems to be a restless desire to innovate and, in some quarters, rejection of what is seen as ‘old-style’ music in favour of imports from other genres? I think flamenco-loving audiences tend to prefer what they can recognize as essential flamenco. This is in no way to deprecate innovation, but in classical music it has a much smaller audience than more familiar compositions. In pop music, too, familiar songs find a ready audience, even among younger listeners.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to payaso)
I take the point, but classical pieces are usually much, much longer and follow traditional music notation.
At the moment I pretty much only like fairly traditional stuff, preferably with Jerez twist. But I've only been listening to flamenco a few years. Will be interesting to see if my tastes change over time.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to payaso)
- Because we're dealing with a fairly young instrument and style of music, we're still in a phase where guitarists are trying to push the technical and melodic limits of their instrument.
- As for songs that are familiar, I don't think "classical music" audiences are any different than flamenco audiences or pop music audiences. There's always a mix between familiarity and suprise, discomfort and comfort, etc. You find this in all levels of music. Even a good impro or solo will throw in (or at least hint at) patterns that can be recognised by the audience. Innovate too much and you lose everyone, don't innovate enough and everyone gets bored. And even in "classical" music, you don't go only to hear a piece you know, you go to hear how a particular person or orchestra or whatever will interpret the piece that you know (so...not 100% familiarity). I really don't see flamenco audiences as being any different. People will enjoy Antonio Rey's noodling around and that'll spark their interest for a while, but they'll forget all about it as soon as El Capullo walks in and sings any of his now classic songs. No noodling in the world will ever catch an audience's attention as much as those seven little words: "porque la culpa no la tuve yo".
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Morante)
The topic of art; so dragged into whateverism and yet so essential in the same time.
Really intelligent classification can be heard on its relevance and bettering to culture, yet simultaneously gratifying awkward dilettantism that suspends the very attributes to a bettering of culture and civilization through skill and effect / message.
All I can say over and over again is: Either art be everyone´s skill in an artisan culture like of American Indians where everyone learns his skills traditionally (as it should optimally be to start with, for clumsiness only coming about where offspring has no practice), and where there does not even exist a specialized term like "art", or if there exists a dedicated term of "art", then it should bear traceable proficiency of artwork and actual effect / message.
Because watering down through whateverism in "art", as chic as it may appear to trendy fools and pseudo intellectuals, leads to the exact counter effect of cognitive and societal bettering. Hence, art experts who praise and release thick glossy twaddle on what they can´t distinguish themselves from ape´s or elephant´s creations, better followed down-to-earth professions that actually fit them.
Right here on the foro, where everyone understands what a difference between the art of flamenco and fakemenco is, let alone amateur´s clumsy wannabe 'flamenco', the principle of immanent quality in art is being clear enough anyway.
Who found it unjust and irrational how a Manitas de Plata sacked in in large halls while hardly recognized flamenco virtuosos had to make due with pocket money in restaurants. Who thought it not only a pity how market share went in support of the pseudo thing while spreading false and less demanding content, should understand just the more what diluting through wannabe artists means, who aren´t / weren´t even remotely close to skills once presented by de Plata.
Unfortunately, the least of bullsh!tters are humble enough to admit that their clients were clueless fools to pay for useless trash, like Joseph Beuys did at least in his last days. Apparently for disconnected fashionable admirers the one and only way to realize the blatantly obvious. -And for gallery owners and agents, living very best especially from mass of baloney, not even then. They rather turn the confession into just another act of art. After all, the emperor´s new clothes are made of blossoming silk and gold thread.
But cultural progress consists of skill and pointing out relevance; not of nill and bubble. Had cavemen randomly thrown colors on rocks, sculptured blobs and made music without rhythm and melody, we´d still be just there, in caves and skins.
What surreal epoch we´ve come to, where basic truism ran over by plain commercialism and hollow reaction, is needing pointers and explication at all.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Dudnote)
Not to be confused with societal buttering, which is the practice of showering butter on entire societies for yet unknow purposes. White or yellowish trails behind planes is a good sign that your society is being buttered.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Ruphus)
quote:
Unfortunately, the least of bullsh!tters are humble enough to admit that their clients were clueless fools to pay for useless trash, like Joseph Beuys did at least in his last days.
One of my sculpture teachers, Jim Blevins, had a residency art grant to live in Scotland in the mid 1970's. He had a studio in the complex shared with a few other artists. Joseph Beuys came to stay for a few weeks as a guest artist and to teach. Beuys had already done most of his famous 'actions' by that time and had become an art star, in as much as one could be an art star in the 70's. His works we're selling in Blue Chip galleries and he was at the height of his fame. Outside the art world he was a nobody really, who knew who Joseph Beuys was? Not very many people.
Jim told me that he and Beuys had a lot of time to spend together when the formal teaching sessions were not happening. One of the most interesting things he told me that Beuys said was that Beuys knew he had become a commodity and that his actions or performances were becoming less about conveying metaphor- transformation of his ideas in a meaningful sense, and more about what the art viewer and market expected he would do. Beuys said he knew he was repeating actions or creating works that were mannerisms or verging on mannerism because he one day caught himself tucking his shirt tails into his pants before he performed an action, in order to make himself look neater and more acceptable. He said that small gesture alerted him to a greater understanding of self awareness of expectations placed upon him by fans and market and that he began to change and turn from actions to teaching.
Beuys work is comprised as much of making objects as it is of teaching. And because he was self aware that he was a commodity, he taught as his sculptural 'work product' because it was more real, more transformational. He considered his teaching a 'social sculpture'. So rather than continue to make a performance that was becoming less about metaphor and direct meaning, he turned from that because he feared with his level of fame and mystique his 'actions' for example 'I like American and America likes me' or 'Explaining pictures to a dead hare' would become mere theatrical pieces instead of timeless actions.
So Beuys began to teach as his main body of work, and teaching meant that he sometimes used objects or drew and wrote on blackboards as a visual aid to his ideas. He allowed the byproducts of his teaching sessions to be sold as works of art, because they represented his teaching. And as a man with a family and bills to pay and children to get through school he knew he had to sell a work product to make a living.
Some teachers write books, others give lectures, but Beuys was not a writer, he was a teacher of sculpture who transcended the traditional meaning of sculpture and wanted to teach the concept of sculpture as a social movement. He taught about how to think about shaping society in whimsical, serious, environmental, feminist, spiritual, metaphorical ways. And where he ended up was leaving the making of a traditional art object, like a sculpture of a cross or a head, or a torso, and on to the making of objects that represented his teaching about social values. He sold the 'evidence' of his teaching sessions. And he knew that the teaching was more important than the object.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Piwin)
quote:
Not to be confused with societal buttering, which is the practice of showering butter on entire societies for yet unknow purposes. White or yellowish trails behind planes is a good sign that your society is being buttered.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Doitsujin)
I read the telling about Beuys with interest, for now assuming that there will be background to the plausible sounding explanation. The more as I am not familiar with the whole of Beuys´ portfolio (remembering some tangible makings, though).
However, in view of his most popular installations, what could have been teaching about them, other than demonstrating the ways modern art market works? ( -A rhetorical question.)
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Doitsujin)
I had to check it out. It had completely faded memory. Definitely a meaningful, useful and avant-garde action. (And -as I just read- he had to bother himself to manage financially. Standing behind it all the way through.)
Interesting to read in Wikipedia how folks in Kassel were merely anticipating "leaves and bird poo" at that time.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Ruphus)
If you want to pick a fight, find somebody else, I'm not in the mood. I made a joke. Like the joke, don't like it. But whatever twisted couch-psychologist sh*t you're trying to pull, you can just drop it. You didn't like the joke and you wrongly thought I was making fun of you. So goes it.
Now, I won't be bothering with this cheap attempt at ressuscitating a necro topic, except to set the record straight and say that I never said anything about anyone being "good people". Nothing pisses me off more than people who use quotation marks without any regard to the words that were actually used or who used them. It took me a sum total of 1min and 4 clics of the mouse to verify what I said...and it ain't what you say I said. geez.
For the rest, the way you portrayed every single one of my opinions is so far from what I actually wrote that there's really nothing else to do except encourage you to go back and read that thread again (and if you want to continue that discussion, post a response on that thread, not on this one. This one is serious. It's about black dildos and it'd be foolish to derail such a deep discussion). I'm not sure what company you think I'm in, but at the very least they're not made of straw and lies.
That's all. I need to go run some errands. I've just realized I'm out of butter.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Ricardo)
Got it.
@Ruphus I don't think I have anything to add on that topic and it died down on the other thread for a reason. But if you feel you still have more to say to me about it, I propose you just PM me so we don't get anything locked because of our shenanigans.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Piwin)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Piwin
If you want to pick a fight, find somebody else, I'm not in the mood. I made a joke. Like the joke, don't like it. But whatever twisted couch-psychologist sh*t you're trying to pull, you can just drop it. You didn't like the joke and you wrongly thought I was making fun of you. So goes it.
Now, I won't be bothering with this cheap attempt at ressuscitating a necro topic, except to set the record straight and say that I never said anything about anyone being "good people". Nothing pisses me off more than people who use quotation marks without any regard to the words that were actually used or who used them. It took me a sum total of 1min and 4 clics of the mouse to verify what I said...and it ain't what you say I said. geez.
For the rest, the way you portrayed every single one of my opinions is so far from what I actually wrote that there's really nothing else to do except encourage you to go back and read that thread again (and if you want to continue that discussion, post a response on that thread, not on this one. This one is serious. It's about black dildos and it'd be foolish to derail such a deep discussion). I'm not sure what company you think I'm in, but at the very least they're not made of straw and lies.
That's all. I need to go run some errands. I've just realized I'm out of butter.
Piwin, calm down buddy, count to 10 slowly, hate to see you have a event, that we all in this forum, would regret. I hope everyone, including myself, in here, feels the same way, life is way too short, to get blood pressure up to the bursting point. I'm only trying to ease your frustration.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to pundi64)
quote:
ORIGINAL: pundi64
Piwin, calm down buddy, count to 10 slowly, hate to see you have a event, that we all in this forum, would regret. I hope everyone, including myself, in here, feels the same way, life is way too short, to get blood pressure up to the bursting point. I'm only trying to ease your frustration.
We PMed and shook hands. :O) I had mistaken / not been meant. ... and been misquoting too. Will delete my text above now.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Piwin)
quote:
If you want to pick a fight, find somebody else, I'm not in the mood. I made a joke. Like the joke, don't like it. But whatever twisted couch-psychologist sh*t you're trying to pull, you can just drop it. You didn't like the joke and you wrongly thought I was making fun of you. So goes it.
Now, I won't be bothering with this cheap attempt at ressuscitating a necro topic, except to set the record straight and say that I never said anything about anyone being "good people". Nothing pisses me off more than people who use quotation marks without any regard to the words that were actually used or who used them. It took me a sum total of 1min and 4 clics of the mouse to verify what I said...and it ain't what you say I said. geez.
For the rest, the way you portrayed every single one of my opinions is so far from what I actually wrote that there's really nothing else to do except encourage you to go back and read that thread again (and if you want to continue that discussion, post a response on that thread, not on this one. This one is serious. It's about black dildos and it'd be foolish to derail such a deep discussion). I'm not sure what company you think I'm in, but at the very least they're not made of straw and lies.
That's all. I need to go run some errands. I've just realized I'm out of butter.
Your massive amount of butthurtness I surmise is a symptom of your pain at withdrawing from the cessation of a very perverse behavior you finally came to grips with. Good for you. I know you have been buttering cats, and it's ok. Many people butter cats and it can be addictive, buttered cats are hell to withdraw from. Once you start buttering cats it's a sure downhill spiral to buttering dogs and porcupines. Some addicts even move on to buttering Rhinos and giraffes. Be glad you've not gone that far down the road.
Get help and stay in your therapy. Quitting cat buttering cold turkey is rough. We understand why you are in a such a mood. We'll get through this together, we support you.
RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to estebanana)
@pundi64 Cheers.
@Ruphus yeah and it's notoriously easy to misinterpret other people's intentions on the internet. If we ever continue this discussion, we should do it around a few cold beers after a flamenco show (though not too many because two drunks talking religion...what could go wrong?! ).
@estebanana This have given me some food for thought. Up until now I thought the anal pain I was experiencing was due to the new black dildo I've been using. It's a little rough on the edges (though admittedly it was foolish to choose a dildo that has edges...) hence I've had to use some of the butter to lubricate it, which means I now have less for the cats. But no I haven't stopped cold turkey. Speaking of which. I've never buttered a live turkey before. Hmmmmm. I'll be back in a jiffy. I just got to, um, got to, ummm, what? oh yeah... I got umm, got some business to take care. Be right back.