Up Close & Personal with Juan del Gastor

Imagine, if you can, the unbridled joy felt in the hearts of Seattle flamenco stalwarts at the announcement that the UW would be hosting consecutive “lecture-demos” by Juan del Gastor and, a scant four days later, Juan Cañizares! Hooray for higher education! For all you poor souls out there who were unable to attend, here’s my little narrative—and some audio clips—of the event. And undoubtedly some commentary, but hey—it’s my blog. A second post on Cañizares will be soon to follow.

By any fair account, Juan del Gastor is flamenco gitano. To say that he merely “plays” gypsy style flamenco guitar is, I think, to understate the case. He is the nephew of Diego del Gastor, the famed 60’s icon of Morón de la Frontera and, as far as flamenco gitano is concerned, is a (if not the) definitive authority. The Morón style of flamenco (of which Diego was the de facto patriarch) is characterized by an almost pathological emphasis on compás. This isn’t to say that it has as better sense of “rhythm” than other styles of flamenco (they’re all pretty much pathological when it comes to “staying in compás”), but the Morón style pays more attention to feeling—and transmitting—the compás itself. A player in this style has little use for churning out bar after bar of 64^th note runs. In fact, here’s Juan himself, speaking about speed as it relates to the style of his uncle (I’m not transcribing this because I think the way he tells it is just too good):

I love the fact that he says “no!” six times—and really, how would I even convey in words that other thing he does? (The translator here, by the way, is Juan’s wife, Lucy Edwards—who is, by the looks of it, the model of patience). Anyway, Juan goes on to say that he has nothing against speed in guitar playing, but simply that it’s not what flamenco gitano is about. For those of you into categorizing, you might think of flamenco gitano as a counterpart to the virtuoso strain of flamenco started by Ramon Montoya and Niño Ricardo—and continued by, among others, Juan Cañizares (and of course by the names you already know so well: Paco de Lucia, Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, etc.)

But enough of my idle chatter! Let’s have some clips! Juan played six songs altogether. He’s doing both the playing and the singing here—and if you think that’s easy, I encourage you to try it! The songs speak for themselves, of course, but I should explain that in the last number, the buleria, the guitar stops because Juan, at this point, could no longer stay in his seat: he puts the guitar down, stands up, and starts dancing and doing palmas. He eventually comes down off the stage and, bringing Lucy down with him to dance, finishes the song in the aisle:

And there you have it!

Now go play!

~A

Some Ruminations on Playing with Other Musicians

More and more these days I've been sitting in on dance classes accompanied by my colleague Markus Kolb--and it reminds me of the importance of really listening to the people you play with (and sometimes--if they don't mind--even recording them). Even if you think you're "better" than them (which is certainly not the case between Markus and me!) it still pays to keep an ear tuned in others' direction: you may or may not learn anything new about technical prowess, but this is just one small (and notoriously overrated) facet of good flamenco playing. Discovering something insightful in the way a person interprets a palo or a piece is always possible--in any case, a closed mind (and ears) could well lead you to miss a lot of prime learning opportunities.

I think this hit home for me while I was noodling around with a friend of mine, JP Shields, who is an accomplished classical guitarist (and, on an unrelated note, has a dazzling collection of functional and stylish footwear). We had just finished an interview (soon to be appearing on the main Ravenna Flamenco site) and, as one is wont to do, had picked up some guitars for a bit of music. We traded songs for a while and I finally played him a snippet of a Sabicas piece I had been working on. He was immediately curious about my tremolo. It wasn't the basic time difference between classical and flamenco tremolos (i.e. 4 stroke versus 5 stroke), however, but rather the spacing of my notes that intrigued him. We scrutinized the passage a bit and found, finally, that what I had been doing, if one were to transcribe it, would look more like pick-up notes before the bass tone instead of an even distribution of five equally spaced notes. Instead of cruising along at a steady pace, my tremolo notes tumble into the base, then pause just a hair before starting up again. I can, of course, play the notes evenly, but I don't: it doesn't sound right--it doesn't fit the piece. Yet I was oblivious to the fact until JP pointed it out.

Now JP is far and away the superior guitarist between the two of us--and there's no false modesty here; this is a simple fact. But he didn't approach his listening (to my playing) as if he already knew what I was going to do. Granted, an experienced teacher may well be able to describe the particular difference we finally figured out, but my point is that sometimes the things that "sound right" are things we do without thinking, are a matter not of "right or wrong," but of interpretation. And that's where listening comes in--good listening may be the only way to pick those things up.

The point of all of this, I suppose, is that I'm coming to appreciate a new way of approaching listening and emulation. I'm pretty shameless these days about trying to duplicate just about anything that sounds interesting that comes from the fingerboards of my colleagues. The way I look at it, if something catches my ear, there is undoubtedly a learning opportunity. Granted, I will eventually look for a way to incorporate whatever it is I've picked up into my own "aire," but as I'm still very much figuring out what that aire is, this still leaves all sorts of open doors. In any case, being sensitive to these sorts of subtleties--no matter what one's playing situation is--strikes me as a fine way to build a richer, more varied musical archive.

Now if only I could figure out where JP gets his shoes.

~A.

Frankenstein's Alegrías and the Wall-to-Wall Misery

Have you ever had one of those evenings where, when all was said and done and you finally connected beleaguered head to fluffy pillow, you said to yourself: Today existed for no other reason than to create an "unclassifiable" blog entry? If so, you already know something about my Friday. Listen:

Zanbaka and I (otherwise known as Zamani Flamenco) had, some weeks ago, agreed to perform a short set at an elementary school benefit in South Seattle. The performance was part of a Hispanic Cultural night: an evening replete with crafts, food, and performance genres from all corners of the world (all Spanish speaking corners, that is). We knew the glamor factor here would be pretty low, but it sounded like a decent thing to do all the same.

We met at our friend Evie's dance studio in West Seattle to put the finishing touches on our alegrías arrangement before heading to the venue. Being the sensible folks we are, we decided to ride over together. We eventually made our way to the school (I'll spare you the details on Z's navigation skills, but let me say that if a sandwich and Z were both lost in a paper bag, I'd put my money on the sandwich finding its way out first) and wandered into the already hopping fiesta.

So far so good, right? We arrive on time, Z heads off to monopolize a stubby gradeschool bathroom stall for dancerly preparation purposes, and I meander around trying to look "flamenco" enough so that our contact will eventually pick me out and give me the rundown. Soon enough I am located by the evening's cheerful organizer. The show is running a bit late, but this is neither a surprise nor a problem. I relax and enjoy the act currently on stage--a phalanx of girls in white dresses that seem to be dancing with candles on their heads. Who knew?

And then I see it. The carpet. All over the stage: wall to wall, footlight to backdrop. For those of you unfamiliar with Flamenco Dance, this might seem to be a minor inconvenience, a slight bother. The initiated, however, will immediately recognize the gravity of this situation. The flamenco dancer, you see, is fond of noise--particularly when he or she is the source. Those pretty shoes they wear? They have metal taps and nails in the soles and heels: they are made to be loud--and that's the way the dancer likes it.

Suffice it to say that Zanbaka is nonplussed at this carpeted catastrophe. Once the murderous twitching stops, we switch into pragmatic mode. What the hell are we going to do? We had already planned on a short set--four Sevillanas and the alegrías. The Sevillanas we'll leave be; they won't be great on carpet, but as there's a lot of full body movement, the dance can be salvaged all the same. The alegrías, however, is a different story: whole stretches of it are made up entirely of footwork. Footwork that wants to be expressive, dynamic--and, above all, loud.

So, pen and paper in hand, we retire to a classroom to do some on-the-fly emergency choreography. I pull up a pint sized chair and Z--miserable--tries in vain to get any expression at all out of industrial-grade berber. (Here, guitarists, is where some knowledge of how a song fits together is vital: Having constructed the arrangement ourselves, we knew how to stitch back together those of our amputated sections that could be saved--a sort of Frankenstein's Alegrías. I can't imagine the sort of musical misery I would have been in if this had been a piece of someone else's that I had simply memorized.)

Luckily--and despite the frequent homicidal tendencies I like to attribute to Zanbaka--we both manage to find a lot to laugh about in the whole situation. We stitch up the last of our ill-fated monster and venture out. It takes us a minute to realize that we are already being announced (all of the announcing is done in Spanish, and, while I won't vouch for Z, I can assure you that my Spanish is a limited collection of flamenco terms and drink orders), but we eventually find our way on stage. I get miked and settled and start the first Sevillana. Z comes out from the wings a few bars in and starts to dance--and it's all I can do to maintain my composure: everything looks right, but it sounds like she's dancing in fuzzy slippers. Instead of the "crack, crack--wham!" I'm used to, all I can hear is "fmph, fmph--whhhm; fmph, fmph."

How sad.

As we finish the fourth Sevillana, I catch Z's eye: "Do you want to do the--" but I don't even get to finish the question: her "no" is of Obamian clarity and unimpeachable finality. And it isn't a bad call: not only is a silent alegrías morally reprehensible (and, I believe, illegal in the State of Utah), but our audience is out, most of them, well past their bedtimes. We take our bow, collect a lovely bouquet of sunflowers (pictured above), and exit like we've done just what we had planned to do all along.

Still chucking, we begin the trip back to Evie's studio. It doesn't take long, however, before we realize that the route we took in won't work the other way: after a series of one-ways, on-ramps and drawbridges, we finally end up in some sort of Grisham-esque industrial area. The road we were on--which I still don't know the name of and couldn't find again if I tried--seemed to be going in roughly the right direction until it stopped at a train: as in, we're driving along and then, out of the dank, as it were, there, in front of us, immobile and perpendicular to our path, is a freight train. So now we're under a bridge, surrounded by dark and warehouses, and we've pulled up at a train. There is a mid-80's sedan next to us--unoccupied, but engine running. Another car materializes and then just as fast disappears down a one-way--going the wrong way.

This situation appears, for all intents and purposes, iffy. Z and I assess our options. The way we came, theoretically, should lead us at least back to the highway, but there were enough turns and one-ways that neither of us particularly relish that option. The one-way seems a poor choice for all the obvious dark-night-in-an-unfamiliar-area reasons. So we choose choice "C": a road that runs parallel to our parked train, in roughly the direction we need to go.

Except that this isn't the "parallel" my high-school geometry teacher ("Dino"--yes, really) taught me: these lines eventually meet. And--of course--just as we realize that we are being surreptitiously wedged between a chain link fence to our left and our immobile train to our right, said train starts moving. Although I'm certain we aren't physically on any tracks ourselves, this is a disconcerting feeling nonetheless. Actual danger notwithstanding, I can attest that in certain situations a shift into reverse and a healthy dose of accelerator occurs on the level of the peripheral nervous system (i.e with no help from any synapses above the shoulders).

A little rattled--but otherwise unpulverized--we eventually make our way back the Evie's. And--as if just to show us that whatever malevolent mastermind engineered this evening also has a sense of humor--wine. Perhaps my favorite part of the whole evening, however, is Z's response to Evie's query about "how it went." Says Z: "It was like a premature ejaculation."

Not exactly one to mince words, that Z.

Speaking of word mincing, Zanbaka's accounts of our carpet and traffic shenanigans can be found here--though no matter what she says, I've still got my money on that sandwich!

~A.

Sevillanas Accompaniment

So the American Dance Institute, where I accompany flamenco dance classes on Monday nights, started a new session tonight--and the palo this time around is Sevillanas. While I've accompanied quite a bit of Sevillanas in the Peña (and in working with individual dancers), this is the first time I've comped it for a beginning class. I'm sure I'll update these goings-on as the session progresses, but for the moment, let me pass on some first impressions:

Let's start with the basics: If you're going to accompany Sevillanas for a beginning class, you are definitely going to want a good (read: wide & varied) collection of falsetas. I know this sounds ridiculously obvious--I figured I knew all about it before ever setting foot in class--but a Sevillana is a short piece--maybe a minute and a half, tops? And you're going to repeat it. A lot. The upshot? Variety is the only thing that will keep you sane.

Personally, I'm comfortable with a half-dozen instrumental Sevillanas and another half-dozen for cante accompaniment. Up until now I've been sort of abstractly satisfied with this spread, but I suspect I'll be learning more before this session is up. Here's why: in one hour, I cycled through all of my instrumental pieces several times. Some of this is to be expected--and I wasn't too batty by the end of it all--but my suspicion is that by about week four, these little tunes are going to get old in something like a paleolithic way. In any case, let me assure you: if I had played the same falseta over and over again, Rubina (as sweet as she is) would have thrown me into traffic. And I don't know that I would have blamed her.

As for Rubina (in a less murderous way, which is her normal modus operandi), I'm sure she will eventually add some singing into the mix, but as her attention is for the most part on what her students' various limbs are doing, I'm not planning on a ton of vocals any time soon. The good news, of course, is that there are absolutely obscene amounts of Sevillanas out there, just waiting to be found and learned. Now it's just a matter of finding and learning them.

In any case, I'll keep you posted. By the way, for the curious/critical among you, (and by way of absolutely shameless self-promotion) I've written a short article on comping Sevillanas on the main Ravenna Flamenco site--you can find it here. Also check out the "Tabs" section for some Sevillanas transcriptions. I've only got a couple up at the moment, but I won't be shy about sharing things once I track them down.

Now go play!

~A.