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Today’s edition of the online version of Spain’s El País newspaper features a podcast about Paco. After the intro, at 1:10, there’s a snippet of a recording of Paco in 1959 that’s going be released. His playing at the time was still basically that of his mentor Niño Ricardo (particularly noticeable in his “abbreviation” of the rasgueado). I wonder if he’d even heard a recording of Sabicas at that point. Paco was 11 years old when he made this recording! The picados are unsurprisingly clean and strong; just listen to the ligados that start each part of the falseta. Eleven years old!!!
Silvia Cruz Lapeña? Que Pena….she talks over the whole damn thing….Twice! Also at 28:34. So annoying. As if we won’t eventually hear the thing on YouTube for free, come on. Just play the track….I don’t care what people think of Paco’s playing anymore. Have somebody listen to the full track and comment.
RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to Ricardo)
Yeah, it's a podcast. I didn't listen past the snippet, and I don't normally bother with any modern media content. Just good music without interruptions.
It's interesting to hear Paco copy him so closely, especially the shortened rasgueado. I guess it makes it a more "faithful" interpretation, but I've never cared for that aspect of Ricardo's playing. Sounds like he's had one coffee too many.
Ricardo was always extremely sloppy compared to other greats. It is like he did not really care. Ramon Montoya was very articulate and clean. I think Paco’s brother Ramon showed young Paco N. Ricardo’s fingerings and intent, because it would have been hard to get at the best ideas through the dirt of the recordings. Even the fast Bulería de Cadiz is out of compás all over the place (the one in FAucher’s book). A student wanted to learn it and I had to doctor it because I couldn’t send a student off with all that non-functional material.
RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to Ricardo)
What I read (and you, too, I’m sure) is that older brother Ramón studied privately with Ricardo and, back home, showed the ideas to Paco, who was just a child but learned them quickly and added his own variations. Ramón supposedly scolded him at first but soon realized Paco had a special gift.
quote:
Ricardo was always extremely sloppy compared to other greats.
Not always. He made a series of recordings with Caracol and Pepe Pinto and later for one of Mairena’s anthologies in which his playing is very tight and precise. The Pinto recordings have all been readily available for a long time on a single album/CD, but the Caracol recordings are harder to round up. Most are on Caracol’s “Cante grande” album released in Spain in 1958 and the rest are on the “Orfeón” anthology, sometimes referred to as the Mexican version of the “Hispavox” anthology. But I agree that there’s sloppiness in most of the rest. I don’t like any of his solo recordings.
quote:
It is like he did not really care.
I think he was conscientious about his playing and accompaniment but was wired to play fast and frantically like that. Also, his fingernails were brittle and grew in an upward curve, which prevented him from getting good tone and making maximum use of some techniques like the thumb-and-index mechanism. In my opinion, because of those two factors and his personal preference, he deliberately played the way he did because he considered it more flamenco than Montoya’s playing, which was highly influenced by classical guitar (especially and unusually so back then; not so unusual from today’s perspective). And let’s not forget Montoya’s tendency to stretch the compás to fit his ideas. The whole medio-compás thing, which I attribute to Montoya and his followers, is just one example. Ricardo rarely strayed from the compás while accompanying. Maybe in some of his bulerías, and of course his solo playing, but those are special cases, in my opinion.
“Deliberately” is a hard word to use here, and I’m not just referring to my speculation. People do what comes easiest to them, even when that means doing things the hard way. So both of them, Montoya and Ricardo, were probably just making natural use of their talents, anatomy and wiring. However, my guess is that Ricardo knew he didn’t have the hands or temperament to duplicate Montoya’s sound, and it made more sense for him to do his own thing (deliberately). Interestingly, he copied Montoya extensively in his malagueñas, granaínas and tarantas: the tremolos and everything.
Having agreed about the sloppiness, I’ll add that his playing has a roughness that sounds more flamenco to my ears than anything that’s been recorded since, with the possible exception of Marote, and excluding Ricardo’s sloppier recordings. As an amateur guitarist and musician, I prefer Montoya, Melchor, Sabicas, Paco and others for their perfect sound. Having perfect fingers, nails and touch is like speaking with minty-fresh breath. Don’t get me wrong: I have no serious complaints about the perfection of modern flamenco guitar, but I would like to hear a bit more roughness in tone and touch. In singing, I feel that flamenco loses a lot when it sounds too pretty, and I don’t see why the same doesn't apply to flamenco guitar. Not sloppiness but roughness. Just to be clear, a cartagenera or a guajira or whatever should sound pretty, and I’m referring to other styles.
Very right about the lack of "roughness" or rather, rawness of what you hear these days. Much of that is down to recording techniques, mixing and mastering that makes the instruments too sterile, and of course click tracks that make everything sound robotic.
RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to xirdneH_imiJ)
Ah, I hadn't considered that. I've just assumed it starts in the guitarist's hands. I appreciate the concern for producing beautiful guitar tone, but some players sound like they're afraid to laugh out loud at a fancy cocktail reception or something.
There's little need for pastel colors in the flamenco palette. At the least, there should be some ugly ochres and browns, especially when the singer's voice is all pastel.
Sadly much of the natural dynamics of the flamenco guitar is lost in recordings these days due to compression etc, but if you listen to them live without amplification, you'll still hear the real thing. But the perfectly even rhythm bothers me even more, the tiny inaccuracies are eliminated completely. It's even worse in rock music (which is basically dead).
RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to xirdneH_imiJ)
I too prefer the roughness left in. For me flamenco is always better live than recorded. In real life the roughness, fragility, beauty as transcendence are more likely to remain.
This reduction of beauty to the smooth is a culture wide phenomenon, and not just in art. Saving Beauty by Byung-Chul Han explores this. Beauty experienced as pointing beyond one’s self to the sublime has been lost. Replaced with aesthetics that are easy to consume without being disturbed. “The alterity or negativity of the other and the alien is eliminated altogether”. Any ‘negativity’ or otherness removed that may have otherwise jarred and pointed one beyond one’s isolated self-centered bubble. “Negativity is the invigorating force of life. It also forms the essence of beauty. Inherent to beauty is a weakness, a fragility, and a brokenness.”
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RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to orsonw)
Of course Ricardo and Melchor are the gold standards for this stuff. From a technical perspective, Niño Ricardo’s action is much lower over the fingerboard compared to the other two, and that adds to the dirty sound. Not sure about nails, because Ricardo has exquisite tremolo and arpegios rip and roll beautifully, and for me anyway those are the things I can’t do with my nails in bad shape. But then he does a single note line with pulgar or picado and the two hands are not synchronizing. That is the thing I hear anyway. Melchor has roller coaster tempo but his dynamics are really extreme and effective IMO.
But in the above examples Montoya blasts through, despite the fidelity of the old recording, like a Mack truck through my living room. Power, swing, clean attack, and you can tell his action is way high. And what a cool expression in those cambios that stands out for me, like the reversed one F-C7 and the other dramatic F chords…I dont’ know why but the whole package hits me harder.
One last thing…Caracol used to be my favorite cantaor, mainly due to his powerful expression. Ironically, now I have been down the cante rabbit hole for years and have evolved a taste for what I would call more “orthodox” cante (a lot having to do recently with my own research into what I believe to be origins of the melody and forms), and aligning my sensibilities with a more “correct” interpretation, Caracol rubs me a little wrong at times. Like that first letra where he is attempting to recreate Tomás Pavón’s version, and it is just a little too much of his own style in there for me now.
RE: "New" recording of Pac... (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Caracol rubs me a little wrong at times.
Yeah, me too, but most of the best cantaores hold him in very high regard, second only to Agujetas. I might understand that opinion better if I were a singer (not unlike appreciating a rock guitarist for attitude as well as musicianship).
I think it was Gaspar de Utrera who had the balls to say in an interview: “I never found him to be a convincing singer” (paraphrasing). Gaspar was one of many who “didn’t work out” at Caracol’s nightclub Los Canasteros, although the story I heard is that he just up and left, instead of waiting to be fired.
About Melchor/Ricardo, I strongly dislike those early recordings of Pastora and her brother with Ricardo. So much better with Melchor! In his defense, I think those recordings were among his first (he was 23).
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And what a cool expression in those cambios that stands out for me, like the reversed one F-C7 and the other dramatic F chords…I dont’ know why but the whole package hits me harder. 
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