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You guys don't get it. Jason Mcguire can play because he has adopted the culture as much as he can. Been to Spain. Has access to all the visiting artists that go to California and I am sure if he played a mistake while accompanying he would be the first to go out and try to learn what he might do better as opposed to saying, "I know it all. Anybody can do this. Yada, yada, yada."
I am sure Jason knows what he is capable of but he has a respect for the culture. And if anybody can do it why aren't there more Jasons on the foro. Ricardo, Jason, Grisha 3 great players Hmmmmm Yeah anybody can do it.
By the way, Ricardo is married to a dancer and is a self-professed nerd. Jason is married to a dancer and has certainly adopted the lifestyle playing for such greats as the Malenas. Grisha's life has been the guitar and he is an exception. Not many people can play two styles well.
Get off my thread dammit
No, i think you are the one who dont get it and dont see why we "loosers" complained here.
Who said: "i know it all. Anybody can do it!!!!"??
We all have respect for the culture and want to become "insiders" as much as possible. I saved all my money and went to spain to Granada, Jerez, Cordoba, Sevilla, etc. last year because i wanted to learn more from spaniards and see whats going on there and because of my respect to this culture and the origin of flamenco. I didnt go the beach but to all Tablaos, etc. to see and learn more..
But i cant stand comments like this
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The day I see one single guitarist, singer or dancer from outside the ambiente doing something in flamenco that seems minimally authentic or worthwhile, then I will scratch my head and remember your words.
ofcourse her opinion is valid, and this is some of our reaction to her opinion...why is that not valid ?
I mean you do realise that this is a international forum dont you ? what did you think the reaction was gonna be ? " yes you are right we will always be **** ?"
if we/I am gonna be put down fine, but atlist allow me the luxury of expressing how i feel about it, and i dont care if Zata was married to Camaron or she was FLAMENCO wtf dude..
however, i dont want to destroy your thread....just wanted to mention that the reactions were caused by a specific comment and not by anything else which was said in this thread.
(Everybody need not agree BUT when posting PLEASE move the thread forward not backward or sideways.) This is in contrast to recent posts that move in the direction away from cante.
That is the problem I have. Move the thread forward (Cante) not sideways
u mean kind of like you just did on the post above, u werent focusing on cante but what we said ? you should have just ignored it and stay on your subject..but i guess you were reacting to how our posts made you feel, but thats ok, its ok to sidetrack when you dont agree with whats beeing said.
Is there a "miners song" version of the siguiriyas? If the cantes like cartageneras,tarantas and Mineras etc developed in a certain place why wouldn´t the other cantes like solea, bulerias, siguiriyas picked up influences from that territory?
any siguiryas developed by singers from lets say Almeria and that "mineing" area.
Henrik
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This is hard stuff! Don't give up... And don't make it a race. Enjoy the ray of sunshine that comes with every new step in knowledge.
If I believed for one second that one group of people are more capable than another then sure go ahead and lable me a racist. The fact is it was not I who who made the statement "The only privileged position a Spaniard has is in time: they don't need to spend years forgetting how to count, because they never learned that way in the first place" Nah, I dont think so.
The day I see one single guitarist, singer or dancer from outside the ambiente doing something in flamenco that seems minimally authentic or worthwhile, then I will scratch my head and remember your words.
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If you want to do flamenco, seek out the people who do it the way you like it, and soak it up. There may be short-cuts, but I haven't found any.
The only reason why I'm reading throught this crap is because I'm drunk wide awake unable to play while my wife is already asleep.
All respect for her experience and knowledge but none for her choice of words. You'll learn flamenco nowhere better than in Spain. I think that's what was meant, and it's very true. Anyone pissed at ME now?
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Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things
Chocolate, just before he died, came to sing at our Peña with Antonio Carrión. One of the most notable events of the evening was a long soleá, where he extended the compás at the end of practically every verse, not by half compases or by 3s, but randomly. Carrión followed him faithfully, so we had a soleá, sung by a legend, completely out of compas. He received an ovation from an audience of knowledgeable aficionados..
Playing for singers who go out of compas is an occupational hazard: Pascual de Lorca told me that his secret is to give the tones when the cante asks for them, but when the singer stops for breath, be sure to do a remate in the right place to bring things back into compas.
Carrión is son of a singer, a singer himself, has great compas and is one of the most respected accompanists. But with Chocolate, he simply followed the singer.
It occurs to me that this was a case of respect: in Andalucía, older flamencos who have created a personal legend are greatly respected: perhaps they gained the right to sing as they like?
I shall ask Antonio Carrión about this the next time he comes here, but there is little doubt that flamenco is less cut-and-dried that some people would like.
I suggest we start a new thread in order to carry on with these discussions. I don't really know much about how this is supposed to work, and since Romerito started this thread, I don't know if it'd be rude of me to start a new one, so I'll just answer some questions that have been posed here on this thread. But I'd be happy to let this one go and start a new one called "Cante" or whatever and just talk about cante. In my opinion, it's best not to lay down the law. One of flamenco's greatest virtues is the collective nature of so many of its components. Flamenco's too big for any single person to understand it completely. It's like the old story about the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One of them grabs hold of a tusk, another touches the trunk, another grabs hold of the tail, etc., and they all describe the elephant differently. The best we can do is to try to have less of a hold on the elephant's butt. And if someone doesn't understand anything about flamenco, maybe they'll look at it in a way that nobody else ever thought of. That's why I think it's best to talk about "what's out there" instead of rules.
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the Solea Apola sometimes gets cited as having either been influenced by the polo or being
sung as a remate to the polo. It certainly sounds like it has been influenced somewhat by the
polo. It also is considered to be one of the melody sets under the umbrella of Solea de Triana.
What can you say about the Solea Apola Norman or anybody?
You've pretty much said it all, Romerito. There's a group of Triana soleás that are called apolás. I assume that the name comes from turning the word "polo" into the verb "apolar" (=to make something sound like a polo) and shortening the participle "apolada" to "apolá" (=made to sound like a polo).
Nowadays, you might hear these soleás as part of a series of Triana styles or as conclusions to polos and cañas, as heard in old recordings. They say that cañas and polos were far more popular in the 19th century than they are today, and maybe singers used to sing apolás as the endings to those cantes. In any case, early flamencologists contended that cañas and polos, along with serranas, were relics from the past that should be recovered, and certain texts from the period (liner notes, etc.) associate a singer's knowledge of these styles with his or her pureza, depth of knowledge, etc. But that seems to be the result of a romantic and academic view of flamenco held by writers, possibly resulting from the hype surrounding the 1922 Concurso in Granada, because many singers and aficionados have stated that those styles, along with the serrana, are too long-winded and monotonous. There are also literary references that state that some of the variations you hear in cañas and polos were designed to break up the inherent monotony of those cantes.
Of course, we don't know how people used to sing 150 years ago, but if cañas and polos used to be as tedious as they are today, it would make sense to me that apolás were used to end those cantes in a livelier manner, very similar to the way the siguiriya of María Borrico is used to end serranas.
Musically, most of the apolás seem to be just like other Triana soleás, but four styles (El Fillo 1, Silverio 1, Silverio 2 and Enrique Ortega) share sort of a common melody that might have a few points in common with cañas, polos and serranas. I haven't analyzed the matter thoroughly, but what I've heard amounts to just a few notes here and there that are vaguely similar.
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It is about what cultural significance the music has for the people who had a large part
in it and how to be "authentic."
If we're talking about music, all that should matter is being familiar with certain melodies. If we're talking about hanging out at the bar, all that should matter is that other people enjoy your company. It's a tricky subject because, in general, we're talking about native Spaniards' perception of us and, more specifically, about their reaction to our appropriation of part of their cultural identity. My advice is just do the best you can and don't worry about others.
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Do you think they are going to be PC or extra kind. Do you think that they are going to be
happy about someone from outside th culture earning money while they starve. There are a million
questions aside from just playing that affect playing in one way or another.
I may be misinterpreting you, but it's really not that big a deal. Spaniards are pretty laid-back people.
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Do you read notes. I have the first track and a half transcribed. Not the whole track,
just accompaniment and melody. Want to know what you think if you read notation. For a paper I am doing.
If you want to send it to me, I'll have a look at it, but writing cante in musical notation is no easy task, and verifying its accuracy can be even harder.
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any siguiryas developed by singers from lets say Almeria and that "mineing" area.
Hi Henrik. No, siguiriyas seem to come from Western Spain, which is on the other side of the peninsula. That doesn't mean, though, that singers from Eastern Spain don't add their own personal touches to siguiriyas. It seems that the influence of cantes from Eastern Spain can be found in other styles that are from neighboring areas, like some of the cantes abandolaos that are supposed to come from Córdoba. Norberto Torres wrote an interesting article (in Spanish) on the subject, and I think it's on the Triste y Azul website. Mairena wrote in Mundo y Formas that Levante styles are based on an approach that's completely different from the what flamenco singing used to be. Like a brother-in-law or something.
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there is little doubt that flamenco is less cut-and-dried that some people would like.
Hi Sean. Yeah, I agree entirely. Different things happen for all kinds of reasons. Typically, as humans, our understanding often involves simplifying a problem in order to make it fit a rule. By nature, art is usually too dynamic and heterogeneous for simplification. I'll venture a guess, though, as to Chocolate's erratic performance. As you said, that happened just before he died. I saw him in Madrid not long before that, and he kept forgetting the letras. I've heard similar stories about him from that same time period. I think he wasn't too lucid toward the end of his life.
I suggest we start a new thread in order to carry on with these discussions. I don't really know much about how this is supposed to work, and since Romerito started this thread, I don't know if it'd be rude of me to start a new one, so I'll just answer some questions that have been posed here on this thread. But I'd be happy to let this one go and start a new one called "Cante" or whatever and just talk about cante. In my opinion, it's best not to lay down the law. One of flamenco's greatest virtues is the collective nature of so many of its components. Flamenco's too big for any single person to understand it completely. It's like the old story about the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One of them grabs hold of a tusk, another touches the trunk, another grabs hold of the tail, etc., and they all describe the elephant differently. The best we can do is to try to have less of a hold on the elephant's butt. And if someone doesn't understand anything about flamenco, maybe they'll look at it in a way that nobody else ever thought of. That's why I think it's best to talk about "what's out there" instead of rules.
Kate: The 16-CD anthology. May seem like a lot, but it's well worth it if you're interested in that kind of flamenco. CD 15, in particular, is a good one for learning soleás and siguiriyas.
Does anyone know if this 16 disc antologia is still available? Or what it's full title was? I'm struggling to find out anything about it beyond it came out in 1993.
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And if someone doesn't understand anything about flamenco, maybe they'll look at it in a way that nobody else ever thought of. That's why I think it's best to talk about "what's out there" instead of rules. 
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