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The Last Station
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Jim Opfer
Posts: 1876
Joined: Jul. 19 2003
From: Glasgow, Scotland.
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 RE: The Last Station (in reply to Escribano)
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Yes Simon, the golpe's the thing!
I've got an old pal who's always got a new guitar, anyway I went over to see him and he produced this Ramirez De Camra guitar in a case from under his bed. I think that's what it was called? one of those with the double top and a pearl button on the head. Jeez! this thing weighed a ton and played like a big grand piano, impossible to hold upright in flamenco position, so apart from my instant dislike, I just couldn't think of anything to play on it, everything I do's got golpe, he kept on saying, "PLAY SOMETHING JIM!!"... but no way.
Then I noticed the dribbled scrambled egg stains run down the back of the guitar and it made me laugh! here's this 5-6k guitar and a classical player, pausing to read a few line ahead and taking a bite from his egg sandwich and it all comes 'skooshin oot tha back'
LOL!
cheers
Jim.
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Date Dec. 14 2003 10:27:20
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Pedoviejo
Posts: 59
Joined: Dec. 12 2003
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Jim Opfer)
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I just stumbled on this site when I was "googling" Ian Davies. Strange things happend when you pass the half century mark - you wonder "where's so and so" and "whatever happened to...." So I did find info on Ian here (notes from October about his death - more on that later) and more poor, lost flamenco addicts struggling away. I first picked up a guitar at age 13 when I was a fat kid who was just discovering girls and thought rock 'n roll would be my salvation - you know, the girls screamed for all these incredibly ugly guys just because they were on stage playing rock "mak'n me feel that way..." Well, my mother was some distressed, especially since she saw how persistent I was in learning to play - I wouldn't put the damn thing down - so she brought home a pile of records one day: Andres Segovia, Julian Bream on guitar and lute, Carlos Montoya and Manitas de Plata (she didn't know any better) and Sabicas. That was 1966, the end of my career in rock and the beginning of my life long passion for flamenco. I've progressed from that Sears "Goldtone" POS to my present ax, a 1990 Arcangel Fernandez negra (palo santo, french polish) which rests in its stand in a corner of my office. Blows every other guitar I've ever had away, but it was made especially for me by Arcangel, who for some reason befriended me when I first lived in Madrid in 1972.
That was a progression from San Francisco to New York to Madrid, back and forth, and now coming more or less to rest in, of all places, New Orleans. I played professionally for many years before switching careers (money, of course, amongst other things too numerous to write in this space) - gutiarist for Jose Greco & Nana Lorca, hanging out at Amor de Dios, etc. Juan Maya was my mentor in Madrid at that time, as I was good friends with his other foreign student and friend, Bill Glidden a/k/a Guillermo Rios. The crazy Aussie, Robert Fletcher, and Ian Davies were "Serranitoistas", Robert even going so far as to say that Victor was a better guitarist than Paco de Lucia. That was over thirty years ago, and of course history has shown otherwise. Very funny to hear these years later that Rober and Ian became buds with Juan Maya. Actually, Robert was schilling for Juan, pumping up the reputation of guitars Juan had to sell to unwitting foreigners then getting a piece of the price. But I digress again.
You are very correct that non-native guitarists never, to my knowledge, move away from flamenco once they've really started to master it. It's no coincidence that the only guitarists who can do "fusion" with any degree of success between jazz and flamenco start out as flamencos, and not vice versa (but there is one notable exception - more later). Flamenco requires everything you've got to master, and the only way to really get close to that goal is to live in Spain for extended periods and hang out with the flamencos. And there's the "secret" it took me over thirty years to discover: The natives learn flamenco first, before they move on to mastery of one or more of its forms of expression - singing, playing, dancing, etc. As Paco said in one of his many interviews, "I knew flamenco before I ever touched my first guitar." Like me, I've seen uncountable non-Spaniards struggling to learn, say, a soleares, its compas and aire, its unlimited possible variations, while at the same time trying to master a tricky dance step or an arpeggio, a picado run, a rasqueado variation. It's incredibly difficult. Too difficult, and in fact you're harming the learning process because of the mental and emotional overload. Look for the CD by the daughter of Agujetas, not for what's on it but for the photo on the cover. It's a perfect example of what I'm saying: There's this Gypsy girl, mouth contorted with the cante, right hand knuckles tapping out the compas on the table top - and there's her baby nursing one of her breasts. What is that baby learning? Aire, compas, aire, compas, aire, compas. By the time that child is 5 it can clap syncopated bulerias that will blow you away. THAT'S THE SECRET. You can do it, but you will do it so much faster if you follow that baby's example (and I'm not talking about sucking on a Gypsy breast, even if the idea.... well, never mind).
And there's the other aspect of flamenco: It and jazz are the only two native art forms that can express the gamut of human emotion. For many reasons, jazz is the much more universal expression, which accounts for its broad popularity way beyond flamenco. Flamenco remains an indiginous art form rooted to its place of origin. And it continues to become ever more complex. It does indeed take a lifetime to master - if one can in fact master it. But the broader point is that you must approach flamenco as a whole: It's not just guitar, or dance, or singing, or cajon. It's all of the above. There has NEVER been one flamenco guitarist who could solo worth a damn who had not first been an accompanist. So many times I've been at parties where the guitarists get together exchanging falsetas while the dancers (and on rare occassions, singers) are ignored. They're not getting it. Ditto for dance classes where I tried to get the wanna be dancers to understand that they needed to study what the guitar and singer does. "I just want to dance!" is the stock answer, and they're not getting it. Flamenco has always been a team sport, and while you might really love playing one position, you've have to understand all the others for the team to score.
Recuerdos y suerte
Pedoviejo
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Date Dec. 14 2003 15:30:13
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Pedoviejo
Posts: 59
Joined: Dec. 12 2003
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Escribano)
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Thanks, Simon. And how did you know.... Oh, never mind. I'm having a surrealistic experience this Sunday morning anyway (pm for you, I know) "They caught Sadam! They caught Sadam!" So now that international embarassment we call a president here can pat himself on the back again. Never mind that it took nine months for the most advanced military machine in human history to find one aging, post-psychotic dictator hiding out in a farmhouse. Not a famhouse in some far away, exotic location, mind you where it would be hard to look; no, a farmhouse in this guy's home town. As my seven year old daughter might say, "Duh!!"
What's that got to do with flamenco? Nothing, actually. Except that it does involve an Arabic speaking, Muslim country, and one of our "allies" is Spain through its president, Jose Maria Aznar - appropriately, an accountant. Well, I guess the latter kills any flamenco connection.
In a strange way I like the image of prying a guitar from your dead fingers. I like it because here in the good ole USA we have the National Rifle Association constantly quoting Roy Rogers, who said that whoever wanted t o confiscate his guns would have to pry them "from my cold, dead fingers." Actually, our police do quite a lot of prying guns from cold, dead fingers, and they're not anything like Roy Rogers or his TV image. Guitars would be so much more civilized.
Speaking of regaling with stories.... I have a scar on my chin from doing too much regaling. I think it was the extra bottle of port that did it. That's the only thing I can think of that made my elbow slip off the mantle piece, leaving my chin in direct line with the beautifully carved mahogany. You of course have heard the expression "bite your tongue"? I'll say no more.
Would you like to hear the story about how Serranito, Ian Davies, his ex girlfriend, his ex girlfriend's new 6' 3" totally-bald-from-worry Aussie boy friend and Robert Fletcher's wife were arrested on Christmas day by the Guardia Civil on suspicion of running a Cathouse in Lavapies and were brought to the police station through the middle of a Sunday Rastro in three police cars with sirens blazing and how Serranito finally blew his cork and went running at the gathered and staring crowd with Guardia trying to restrain him as he yelled "I killed ten people with a knife!" waving a make-believe knife in the air as women screamed? Nah, too boring.
Anyway, if you want to be a flamenco you MUST keep a good sense of humor. It's the only antidote to the snow-shovel size loads of crap that get thrown your direction. All that talk about suffering and flamenco, especially Gypsy suffering (Mario Maya built all his productions on that theme - rule one in his company: Never, ever smile). Don't believe it. The flamencos are the funnniest people I've ever been around, and Andalusians, Gypsy and non alike, are especially prone to jokes of the practical kind. Like being on stage playing a profound Solea for a great dancer to a crowd of 1,000 while one of the other performers off stage is blowing pica-pica powder your direction. You know, the stuff that makes you sneeze uncontrollably. I remember that sense of humor now that my dad is going into advanced Alzheimers. Not all that bad, actually. You put him in a place with these other aged WWII vets, and since none of them have any short term memory left they get to endlessly tell each other the same WWII stories and no one ever gets bored because the story is fresh and new each time it's heard! It's a kind of old man's paradise. Forget Jean Paul Sartre. Being French he could be surrounded by the best food, wine and women in the world and only think of hell. Last time I was in Paris it was the same: Beautiful young women seated with gaunt young men blowing black tobacco smoke at each other, the guy speaking of his existentialist terror while she has that perfect look of ennui which practically screams, "Well, are you going to talk all night or take me to bed???" And he, of course, talks all night. Youth may be wasted on the young but the best is wasted on the French.
So what's this got to do with flamenco, you ask? Well.... Maybe I was thinking of Camaron's last perforrmances in Paris with Tomatito but a few years before his death. It really hit me hard when I heard of his death in 1992. I had just turned 40 and was having a hard go of it. ("Oh knock it off," my wife said.) For my 40th we went to Houston, Texas where they had a three day festival celebrating the 500th anniversary of Colombus. Vicente Amigo, Paco de Lucia and his brothers and Manolo Soler, Cumbre Flamenca - great stuff every day, and since I knew some of the organizers we got to sit either in the front or even in the speaker towers on stage (when Paco was playing). It overwhelms and you start thinking "so what have I accomplished?" ("Oh knock it off.") Then I heard about Camaron, and all I could think of was a great juerga in Madrid twenty years before. First time I heard Camaron up front and personal. There was one guitar, a Conde negra, that was passed around the room. Juan Carmona Habichuela, Juan Maya Marote, Pepe Carmona Habichuela (with whom I played a tango, me on the left hand he on the right - it was very croweded and there were three people for each two seats). Bambino sang with Juan Maya accompanying. La Chana danced. On and on. Then I heard this voice that was unmistakeable and saw this sandy haired guy about my age, head back singing buleria. And he was accompanying himself on the guitar. "So that's Camaron" I thought to myself at the time because Bill had given me this two record set, a then new recompilation of Camaron and Paco. We were so young, and for him to now ("now" over ten years ago) be dead was incomprehensible. And to go because of so many drugs coupled with smoking like a house on fire. In the old days our mind-altering substances all came in bottles. "Solamente de la uva..." as my friend Carlos Sanchez says.
Now back to that sense of humor. Muy flamenco, muy flamenco, eso. Nunca se olvida.
Cheers
Pedoviejo
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 14 2003 17:41:53
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Pedoviejo
Posts: 59
Joined: Dec. 12 2003
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Miguel de Maria del Web
Hate to disagree with your headmaster, but I can't see flamenco being internationalized in the same way as jazz. Jazz and flamenco to some extent are similar in their origins - oppressed peoples, mixing of cultures, need to party - and in their emotioally dynamic range, but very different otherwise. However, it is interesting to study both since one finds another similarity: Endless theories and controversies about the arts' origins, definitions, etc., without any firm evidence with which to conclusively answer the many questions or resolve the conflicts.
There's many books written on these subjects, so space does not allow exposition. Suffice it to say that one observation I have about jazz versus flamenco is that as near as I can discern, and contrary to many populalry held beliefs (e.g. African slave dances in Congo Square in the heart of New Orleans, etc.), jazz was a music born of profesisonal musicians. From its somewhat obscure origins, jazz was always "studied" even if to a good extent "improvisational." Jazz musicians of old the same as today spoke the language of music theory: I-IV-V progressions, keys, time signatures, etc. This was because when "jazz" first made its initial appearances it was party music for people to dance to (New Orleanians of old had a passion for parties and dancing was one of the most popular entertainments), and it always borrowed from currently popular music. Just about anything could be "jazzed", and these origins and connections are, for me, what made the music "international" in appeal: It is linked to American culture but not exclusively nor inexorably so. And it came from the one place in the U.S. where French, and to some degree Spanish, culture was predominant, mixed and altered by African and Caribean influences. One of the reasons why there's French jazz fanatics. It is everything and nothing, so adaptable to so many different cultures. And additionally, it is a preeminently "modern" form of music.
Flamenco comes from very different sources and flows in very different directions. It was not a music of professional musicians, and its musicians rarely speak the language of music theory. It includes dancing, including couples dances, but one must know quite a bit to dance it at all, and that "bit" is not international in the least. As you know, endless are the controversies over where it's from, Gypsy versus non-Gypsy origins, etc., etc. I think the one firm thing that can be said about its origins is that it is indisputably a creature "del pueblo Andaluz." And despite the incursions from jazz and other sources, you will note that in the end those incursions are strained, drained, simmered and reduced until they become "flamenco." The top performers, always looking for new challenges, have fun with "encounters" with jazz and other forms, but inevitably they remain rooted in and return to flamenco. For these and many other reasons, I cannot see flamenco becoming nearly so internationalized as jazz: You don't have to change your culture or your language to appreciate or even to play or to create jazz. With flamenco, unless you're Spanish and have las ganas flamencas, you do. Flamenco will remain an acquired taste for the relatively few even as numerically its stock of aficionados grows. Instead, what really is growing is pseudoflamenco: The Otmar Lieberts and Willy & Lobos and etc. ad nauseum of the world. A great many people think that what they do is flamenco, and they get away with calling their stuff "new flamenco" when, sadly, relatively few people know that the real "new flamenco" is what is happening in Spain and essentially nowhere else.
One other curious observation: The largest impact that I have seen flamenco has had on non-Spanish music has been in the Muslim countries. If you listen to traditional Arabic/Turkish/Iruni, etc. music, it has essentially remained the same for many more centuries than flamenco has been around. Same tonalities, same rhythms. If you are, say, a young musician in Turkey or Algeria and you're now part of the "new" generation that has grown up radio, TV, tapes, CD's, etc., you've been exposed to music from the rest of the world. Yet you're still rooted in your native music which you still love yet you itch to go in new directions. How can you maintain that tradition and yet become new? Flamenco has seemed to have provided the answer, for reasons both obvious and not so obvious. Flamenco is the bridge between Eastern and Western forms. (As some flamencologists have observed, it was the guitar, with its frets baseed on the whole and half-tone scales of Western music, that Occidentalized the cante.) I've had some friends observe, after listening to some "Arabic" music, state that they can hear some of Flamenco's rhythms there. When I find what they've been listening to, I also find that it is not traditional but "modern" 'Arabic" music - and that the rhythms have been lifted wholesale from Flamenco. Tangos and Rumbas seem to be the favorites for now. And of course, flamenco is much more compatible with Eastern forms than jazz. The flamenco revolution is going on much more in the East than in the West - and the traditional Imams and Mullahs are being assaulted by much more than Western military might.
Saludos
Pedoviejo
P.S. Yes, it means exactly what it says. Un viento que sopla con furia vieja sin decir nada.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 14 2003 19:37:10
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Pedoviejo
Posts: 59
Joined: Dec. 12 2003
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Kate)
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Muy buenas Kate
You are a brave soul operating a music production studio, especially one run out of a poor neighborhood in Granada.
If I may be so presumptuous as to offer a few observations:
It appears to me that if you want to really sell music these days it must be coupled with images. Hardly anyone is taught how to listen to music any more. I mean listen TO the music, not just have it happen to you like caffeine or valium. It is a skill that must be learned. (I could never study with music playing because my mind would invariably focus on the music, except for general pap, which eventually became annoying rather than soothing.) Music played a very important role in peoples’ lives before the advent of the ever-present image, and until then it was taught and learned. Music has always been the most abstract art form (millennia before "abstract" came to describe a type of visual art), whereas images have always been the most immediate, both in terms of attention of and impact upon the viewer. (If you’re an intellectual type, get a copy of "Voltaire’s Bastards" by John Ralston Saul, and in particular read his chapters about visual art and the power of images. It is only one man’s view, but it is a powerful, insightful and brilliant view and critique of the last five centuries of Western civilization.)
This is nothing knew, of course. Studies have shown repeatedly that people will remember about 10% of what you tell them but about 90% of what you show them. However, the historically swift progression from photographs to movies to videos to cable/satellite TV + internet has practically done-in everything else. That's why MTV continues to dominate and be a very powerful force in the music industry in the USA. "You need a video" every musician aspiring to stardom is told. Once the viewers have seen the video, they'll listen to the CD in their cars or while jogging or whatever because that video can now be replayed in their heads. "Oh, it's sooooo coooool! Like, wow, like I'm just seeing this stuff, and the guy on the bass wears the most aaaawesome boots!" That’s also why doing the sound track to a hit movie is always a huge boost for marketing.
It does not speak well of our capacity for imagination – but we do live in the Age of the Idiot-Savant, and why take the effort to learn and create when there’s just so much out there already done and ready to “entertain” you? Just look in the classical section of any music store: When I first came to music in the ‘60’s, you would look under, say, “violin” and find albums with pictures of Isaac Stern or Yehudi Menuhin on the cover. Now you see Anne-Sophie Mutter, André Rieu, the “Eroica Trio,” Lara St. John, etc., etc. In classical guitar we went from jowly Andrés looking stern and dignified to Sharon Isbin seated on horseback breast by thigh. Being a master of your instrument is not enough anymore to get promoted and sold. Ditto for dancers, singers and all others. The image now predominates. I see Niña Pastori’s covers and think Brittany Spears aflamencada.
You have many, many beautiful images there in Granada, and not just the cliché’s, as I’m sure you’re very well aware. And even the cliché’s can be used in ways in which they are no longer cliché’s. You’ve got Gypsy kids, snow-capped mountains, Mohammed ibn al-Ahmar ibn-Nasr’s hilltop redoubt which was swapped in exchange for Córdoba and Sevilla to the king who would later be canonized as San Fernando (for whom a valley in California would later be named which would give us Val Girls and become the largest home of the American porn industry). You’ve got the crypt of Los Católicos and Torquemada’s descendants with pierced navels and more. What an incredible canvas to work with! It used to be “words and music.” Now it’s images and music. Use it, pack it, sell it – and still feel worthwhile because you are, after all, selling something of value, especially when compared with so much of the other crap that’s out there. If you could get some short, downloadable videos of your cute kids out there on the net, all the better.
I wish you luck and success.
Pedoviejo
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 16 2003 15:43:53
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Pedoviejo
Posts: 59
Joined: Dec. 12 2003
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Kate)
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Otra vez, Kate -
Just a note about Juan Maya Marote. Back in 1972 Juan was thinking of doing an album and asked me to transcribe his pieces for copyright purposes. I agreed with great temerity as it would have been a very daunting task. It never happened, of course. I discovered later that most of the falsetas he taught me in my first few months of lessons (and for which I paid) were not his but Paco de Lucia's. (Juan picked up a bunch when doing those "Festival Flamenco Gitano" albums and tours for the German company, when a very young Paco played with the group.)
Marote was never really a soloist, and the reason I sought him out as a mentor was because of the way he sounded accompanying. As a dance accompanist - and I'm talking the Carmen Amaya dance-floor-splinters-in-your-face type of dancing, I don't think there was anyone better. As Liliana Morales said of his playing at the time, "cojones de hierro." Juanico was always a team player. His repetoire of falsetas was thin and narrow, as was his dynamic range. But within those limits, and when he was "on" - WOW! When I think guitar + Gypsy + flamenco, it is Marote who still dominates in my mind. Next to him - but wtih much greater ranges - were and are his fellow "Granainos", Juan & Pepe Carmona "Habichuela". Despite their several albums, they remain principally accompanists, and no shame in that: Wonderful, powerful, full-flavored accompanists. They come the closest to Juanico's crack-the-porcelain-toilet-in-half resgueado. But Juan's 20-inch-artillery-shell thumb? It died with him.
So you were at the end of many decades of talk about recording an album. If Juanico had lived another ten years, I don't think it would have happened. But if you could only have gotten him to accompany some of your kids...... That would have been worthwhile, to say the least
Recuerdos
Pedoviejo
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Dec. 16 2003 16:05:04
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Kate
Posts: 1827
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: Living in Granada, Andalucía
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RE: The Last Station (in reply to Pedoviejo)
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Hola Pedoviejo,
Not sure whether we are brave or stupid but we are doing fine so far, if a bit broke, LOL actually make that very broke. Our first production Cale Calé won the Critics award for best flamenco percussion album 2002 and we have just signed a record contract on another album, though not flamenco, called Apocolypse, spanish rock with the poetry of William Burroughs. In another life my partner was a rock record producer in London and has been recording since the days you had to cut and splice tape with a knife and each reel of tape cost an arm and a leg. Technology has made the recording process much more available to struggling artists. We are well aware that some recordings may never sell more than a few hundred copies but they cost us nothing but time and energy to make, and someone always gets in the beers :)
I totally agree with your comments regarding images and have already ordered that book you mentioned, sounds like my sort of reading. On the US tour we took 20 hours of footage and intend to do a montage of images of the group, alongside the less picturesque but compelling pictures of their neighbourhood, to project at future concerts. At a recent gig of Ojos de Brujo, the images they projected just ended up reminding me of the Gap adverts, pictures of poverty and middle class kids dressed up in hippy Gypsy clothes, all the rage here in Spain.
Talking of cliche images, I cant remember the band but their poster instantly grabbed you, it was one of those tourist flamenco dancer dolls, spinning in a washing machine.
If Simon is there perhaps he can tell me how to upload a picture I have if us with some of the kids from the Taller, where we all look like happy, clean smiley people.
Thanks for writing Pedito I enjoy your posts,
sastipen talí
Kate
_____________________________
Emilio Maya Temple
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Date Dec. 16 2003 20:15:53
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Wanna bet he makes a deal to get himself, Dubya and Tony off the hook? 
