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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out. Outlook and suggestion to recover!
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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 RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to mark74)
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I think that article confirms what @edguerin was saying on how the next step for flamenco just might be abroad.
Beyond the amount of people who show up for classes or tablao shows, you also need to look at who's actually showing up.
Penas for instance bring in a whole lot less foreigners than tablaos or schools. Around Madrid they've been closing down at an alarming rate, or to survive they've had to make arrangements, like meeting less often or changing locales. Local festivals are fewer in number because the smaller towns just don't have the money to organise them (as opposed to the bigger cities where the foreign tourists flock).
You basically end up with this situation where flamenco artists can make a living, although just barely, but the local aficionados have less access to it than they use to. And that has consequences on the long run too, because if you can't afford to pay a school to teach your kid, then he won't get the basics to become a flamenco artist, and worse than that, if you can't afford to pay into the pena, you may never get to bring you kid to hear live flamenco and he may never get the inspiration to want to one day become one in the first place.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date May 1 2017 0:55:33
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Arash)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arash
Ok, on a serious note, here is what is really going on.
I believe learning and playing musical instruments is on decline in general.
And its nothing exclusive to flamenco.
Recent musical experiences:
Last Saturday night, concert by the Beijing guitar duo--truly amazing virtuosity and musical sophistication from Meng Su and Yuja Wang, both born in Qingdao. To paraphrase Xuefei Yang, they learned to play the guitar in China and learned music in the USA, studying with Manuel Barrueco, a Cuban immigrant.
The mariachi at the Charreada of the San Antonio Charro Association, Fiesta San Antonio event weekend before last. A really tight band of middle aged musicians, playing great old songs. How long has it been since you have heard "El Gavilan?"
The Texas Cavaliers' San Antonio River Parade. After dark variuos civic arts and school groups float down the river as it flows through dowtown. The river is narrow, the chairs were right on the edge of the paved river bank, and to my consternation, every single boat had a "musical" group on it. The noises they made all shared two characteristcs: they were insanely, painfully, earshatteringly loud, and they were astonishingly incompetent. I'm not talking a little funkiness. The dudes and dudettes just couldn't play their instruments. They didn't play anywhere remotely in tune, they coudn't play together, they couldn't play the right notes. One or two of the drummers could keep a beat, but nobody else could follow it. I was amazed, and appalled.
I used to stick in my ear plugs and go hear The Stones, the Grateful Dead, The Who, Santana, and a very long list of others. I'm not against loud music, by people who can actually make music. But the people on the river were just incredibly incompetent louts. Very loud ones.
Next day as I checked out, the gray haired bell boy asked me about the guitar I had with me, and said he knew Willy Champion "Curro" who used to play flamenco at the hotel restaurant. He also said he was a bass player and was having a blast playing bossa nova at a bar with a kid who was studying classical guitar at a local universty. The river runs right behind the hotel, so I asked him if he watched the parade. He said, "I know it's an old tradition, but it's got where I can't stand the noise."
"So I guess those people are amateurs, members of the various parade groups? "
"No, I hear they get paid."
"But they can'r even play--they can't play at all ! "
"Nope. It's a mystery to me."
So apparently a lot of people who play instruments these days are not interested in learning how.
RNJ
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Date May 2 2017 3:19:24
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Morante
Posts: 2179
Joined: Nov. 21 2010
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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Grisha)
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What is happening is the normal evolution of social change. Andalucía, and all of Spain, was closed to the world during the rule of Franco. When he died, the change was really quick: porno mags on the street, sex clubs in Barcelona and Madrid.
In Madrid, a surge of poor copies of the music of USA and England: so we had Alaska (punk) Loquillo (Elvis) and Pata Negra.
Camaron went to Madrid and discovered this freedom, met Ricardo Pachon , who started to change flamenco to flamenco pop.
Andalucía was hermetica, now it has television and internet. The sons of the great flamencos want to make money. José Luis Figuero, a fine guitarist from the Barrio de Santa María did not like what he was paid and changed into El Barrio, and made millions singing really boring music in football stadiums to people who just want to have a good time and have no interest in music.
Music comes from the society. When the society changes, the music changes.
Cádiz was the cradle of flamenco, because at the critical moment of its creation, it was the richest city in Spain, which patronises the arts. Now there is very little flamenco in Cádiz.
The barrio of Santiago de Jerez is the current centre of flamenco because of the intense convivencia of its families at a critical moment. (Read “Flamencos de Gañanía de Estela Zatania). But the young gitanos prefer flamenquito because it is more commercial.
Hermetic flamenco of the past is doomed. When there is no cante, flamenco will be just another version of World Music.
Enjoy it while you can.
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Date May 2 2017 14:45:47
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Morante)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Morante
What is happening is the normal evolution of social change. Andalucía, and all of Spain, was closed to the world during the rule of Franco. When he died, the change was really quick: porno mags on the street, sex clubs in Barcelona and Madrid.
In Madrid, a surge of poor copies of the music of USA and England: so we had Alaska (punk) Loquillo (Elvis) and Pata Negra.
Camaron went to Madrid and discovered this freedom, met Ricardo Pachon , who started to change flamenco to flamenco pop.
Andalucía was hermetica, now it has television and internet. The sons of the great flamencos want to make money. José Luis Figuero, a fine guitarist from the Barrio de Santa María did not like what he was paid and changed into El Barrio, and made millions singing really boring music in football stadiums to people who just want to have a good time and have no interest in music.
Music comes from the society. When the society changes, the music changes.
Cádiz was the cradle of flamenco, because at the critical moment of its creation, it was the richest city in Spain, which patronises the arts. Now there is very little flamenco in Cádiz.
The barrio of Santiago de Jerez is the current centre of flamenco because of the intense convivencia of its families at a critical moment. (Read “Flamencos de Gañanía de Estela Zatania). But the young gitanos prefer flamenquito because it is more commercial.
Hermetic flamenco of the past is doomed. When there is no cante, flamenco will be just another version of World Music.
Enjoy it while you can.
One of your all time best posts! I think there will always remain the underground interest of course.
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date May 2 2017 16:44:36
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Morante)
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I agree, Morante. I haven't been to Spain in five or six years, but it is a very different country now than it was in 1962, when I used to spend an evenng at Zambra in Madrd listening to Rafael Romero "El Gallina" and Perico El del Lunar. In those days you could see ten- year old kids in the streets of Andalucia, dancing bulerias to the sound of palmas by the other kids.
Now there are good roads, modern trains and airports, a free press, free elections, more liberal social customs, prosperity for a tiny minority, poverty for the rest but not as much actual starvation, very little flamenco, and about the same amount of corruption.
Flamenco and the itinerant toreros living hand to mouth who put on the country corridas were the products of desperate poverty and systematic oppression.
When Enrique El Mellizo rode his donkey from Cadiz to Jerez to sing at a juerga, the greyhounds that tagged along behind weren't just pets. They caught rabbits which they shared with their master around a campfire.
The matador El Cordobes, who died a millionaire, spent years walking from one town to the next, looking for a gig, sneaking into haciendas in the night to cape the bulls by moonlight to learn his trade, stealing fruit from orchards to stave off starvation, sleeping out under the stars. He had spent a young lifetime taking insane risks to escape grinding poverty and oppression before he was finally showered with applause and money in the big city bullrings for the insane risks he took there.
RNJ
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Date May 2 2017 19:01:39
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Forecast: Flamenco is dying out.... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Hermetic flamenco of the past is doomed. When there is no cante, flamenco will be just another version of World Music.
Thanks for your thoughtful insight regarding the eventual demise of flamenco as we have loved it, Morante. As Ricardo wrote, there will always be an underground that will appreciate it, but it will be lost for all practical purposes, relegated to something like the Folger Consort in Washington, DC, which plays medieval and renaissance music on period instruments. There is a sliver of aficionados who appreciate their efforts and enjoy the music, but most people don't even know about it.
First fusion, then, and I hate to think about it, homogenization into a version of "World Music," whatever that is at any given time. People are too busy with "social media" to take the time to really organize their thoughts on the arts, literature, and music. This phenomenon is not just a product of our time. One of the finest Spanish authors was Jose Ortega y Gasset. He was a philosopher, author, and a member of the Republican government in Spain in 1936. In Ortega y Gasset's classic work, "The Revolt of the Masses," he takes on the issue of how "mass man," with his shallow approach to everything, reduces everything to the lowest common denominator, whether it be art, literature, or music.
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 May 2 2017 21:17:29
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