MONUMENT TO CAMARÓN DE LA ISLA (courtesy of Daniel Téllez Sabán)
Yesterday I was sent a link to a very old film of the great Flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla. I am not sure of the precise date of the clip below but Camarón de la Isla (considered one of the all time greats of Flamenco) looks as though he is in his late teens/early twenties – so the clip was probably filmed around 1970, as Camarón de la Isla was born in 1950 (and died in 1992).
A friend of mine who is passionate about Flamenco thought this clip is extraordinary not just for its early showing of Camarón de la Isla but also for its display of sheer passion. This is unarguable not just from the performance of Camarón but also from his clearly ‘moved’ audience.
Camerón de Isla (his real name was José Monje Cruz) was certainly considered special and helped to redefine Flamenco during his relatively short career, in which he was often accompanied by the extraordinarily gifted guitarist Paco de Lucía. Together, Camerón de Isla and Paco de Lucía became a ‘dream team’ for Flamenco and were hugely successful.
Sadly, Camerón died young from a combination of smoking too much and, sadly, drug abuse – perhaps an inevitability from such an intense performer, who you can see from the clip below in his more mature days.
I suppose I have to admit to a certain equivocation about Flamenco – which sounds like heresy from someone living in Spain!
At its best, for short periods, I find Flamenco quite stunning. There is a rawness and passion about it that is undoubtedly special which, when matched with fine dancers in fabulously flamboyant dresses, is fantastically striking and unique. Indeed, few actions seem to encapsulate a certain ‘Spanishness’ than the aggressive haughtiness of female Flamenco dancers combined with the harshness of a single skillfully played guitarist.
However, for longer than a few minutes I admit to finding Flamenco too brutal for pleasure – although it is quite possible that I simply do not ‘get it’. Certainly, Flamenco is undeniably a part of the culture of Spain although it is often mistaken for representing the whole of the country. This is very far from true and would horrify most Spaniards.
Flamenco is an Andalusian art form with its roots in the gypsy back streets of Seville. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Valencia, Catalonia, the Basque country or Madrid where the regional cultures (from music to traditional dress) are totally different.
Certainly, the traditional dress of the Valencian region, for example, as you can see below, bears no resemblance to Flamenco and, indeed, the music has no trace of Flamenco at all. It is harmonious and (to my untutored ear) quite wonderful with the vaguest trace of something Moorish.
FALLERAS WEARING VALENCIAN TRADITIONAL DRESS
So, to believe that Flamenco represents the purity of the culture of Spain would be an error although one that is made by anyone who knows little of Spain (and its wonderful complexity).
Incidentally, if any of you are devotees of Flamenco then I should welcome an article about Flamenco that may enable me (and probably thousands of others) to ‘get it’! So, do get in touch – if you can explain Flamenco’s subtleties and persuade me to love it…
Nick Snelling – Culture Spain
Hello Nick
there’s no explaining how an art form ‘works’. Art and music and literary critics may huff and puff – maybe even have many interesting things to say but neither they nor anybody else can state what it is about any piece of art that does what a genuine work of art does, which is to touch a person in an ineffable way.
It is the relationship between the art work and the person that is experiencing the work that cannot be described, in the same way that it is, at bottom, impossible to say what it is between two people that creates that third entity, ‘us’.
A musician friend of mine, a very talented jazz/fusion composer and arranger, regularly says, “What IS this thing, music?” After 40 years, even he doesn’t know how what he writes actually does the business.
I am at two with opera. I agree with my friend when we say it is great music spoiled by silly singing. This is, of course, heresy to many people who find opera very moving. But it doesn’t move me.
On the other hand, I love the blues. As one of our contemporary masters of the guitar says, “It’s such simple music. How come they all sound so different?” At school, I was banned from playing an album of Sonny Boy Williamson II. I love that music but nobody else ‘got it’ to the extent that they wouldn’t let me play it!
Flamenco, like Delta Blues, is a folk music. It has a very particular structure and musical references. As one of my blues guitar tutorial DVDs has it, you have to ‘live in that country a while’ to begin to understand it. Of course, he doesn’t mean living in a place in space but a place in sound – a place in feeling engendered by the sound.
I spent a couple of years, one evening class a week, trying to learn flamenco guitar for dance accompaniment. I enjoyed it immensely, especially when our class went in to the dance class for the last ten minutes and 10 or 12 of us would thrash away whilst the girls whirled and stamped. Awful racket but magic!
I would say that Flamenco, like other intimate and apparently simple music, is not for listening to off disc. It is to be participated in. The audience at a performance of genuine flamenco are not mere spectators. The interaction between performer and audience is necessary to create the magic – the duende. The same is true at any performance in any art.
I love flamenco but I could not offer to explain why anybody else should, not in a million years. As they say in the West Indies, “M’ blood take. M’ pores rise.”
Two albums I can recommend to those who find out-and-out pure flamenco difficult to take – and it can be. “Missa Flamenca” is a mass written by Paco Pena for flamenco singers and choir. I’ve seen it twice live and the disc is one of my favourites. It is absolutely beautiful. The liturgy of the mass seems to fit sublimely with the flamenco voice. The choral sections, by the chorus of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, are wonderful. To get the best out of this music, play it LOUD. I’d be amazed if y’blood don’ take.
The other album is a recording in concert of Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al di Meola. The last two are jazz guitarists but complete masters of the instrument and steeped in flamenco. The flamenco and flamenco-influenced numbers – with a humorous diversion by McLaughlin and di Meola into a 12-bar blues that seques into the theme from The Pink Panther, has the house roaring. They got it, all right…
ADDENDUM
There is another source of the ‘duende’ of flamenco without listening to the Andalucian original. On the album ‘Kind of Blue’ by The Miles Davis sextet – the great one featuring John Coltrane – there are two tracks [if you get the latest remastered edition] called ‘Flamenco Sketches’.
Miles* also recorded an arrangement, by Gil Evans, of the 2nd movement of Rodrigo’s ‘Concerto de Aranjuez’. This, along with other flamenco-influenced tracks including “Will o’ the Wisp”, from the ballet El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla, is on Miles’s wonderful album ‘Sketches of Spain’.
Gil Evans and Miles Davis unquestionably bring this music out of the very depths of the flamenco soul. I have always thought that these pieces are so imbued with the heat and dust and fragrance of southern Spain that if you said to the proverbial visiting Martian, “these sounds are a region called Andalucia in a country called Spain” he would understand what that place was like.
* Pablo Picasso is Picasso, Ludvig von Beethoven is Beethoven, John Coltrane is Coltrane. Unlike almost any other artist, Miles Davis is universally known as Miles.
As they say there is no accounting for taste. I am totally amored by Flamenco. I find that I am inclined to enjoy most ethnic music. Perhaps for the technicalities that make it sound and appear so basic and simple. Flamenco, even the hand clapping is exact and takes soul, plus a good ear and training. A simple box, the percussion matching and blending perfectly to the dancer. Coordination coming from separate and unalike musicians, combining to one heart reaching consistency. It hits close to your heart beat as successful percussion art does. Flamenco guitar was a much later and relativily new addition to this story in song. It is always about feelings.. I find great pleasure in the nature of things that do not change or change so very little, or are not influenced by modernation or western culture. If one watches and listens as the Flamenco “ballet” performs like acts in a play, perhaps an appreciation can be gained. The purity of Flamenco, like most ethnic music, i.e., Cajun, without the spoils of materialism and the motivation for “gold” records and the top of the Billboard charts, remains as it has always been. It is produced from and for the heart and their own pleasure and for the gathering of like souls. Remember when jazz was pure musicians’ enjoying it for their own pleasure, entertaining their own? Well, Flamenco stayed that pure. For those that enjoy it, there is a movie on the life of “Camaron”. I saw it in, of all places, China. Peking Opera is where I draw the line at enjoying ethnic music, but they play to a full house, so as I said, there is just no accounting…….
An excellent contribution to the debate and greatly welcomed – thank you!