Sevillanas Accompaniment Update

So it's been about a month (er . . . and a week or so) since my first sevillanas accompaniment post (on 5th of February) and I suspect it's about time for an update. First, as promised, I have learned some new falsetas and, good sharer that I am, I have posted them on the main Ravenna Flamenco site for your delectation ("plays well with others": check!).

Sheet music aside, I have some "notes from the trenches" for all you out there that might one day like to play for dancers. And if I may digress for a moment before delving into the more trencherly regions of said accompaniment, I don't mind saying that accompaniment can be gratifying in all sorts of ways. Not only do I get to see the music I like playing actually do what it is intended to do (i.e. work as part of an ensemble), but all the dancers I've worked with so far have been really clear about how much they appreciate having live music. I don't know about you, but for me, as a musician, anyway, this is a nice change.

But back to the trenches! Not all primrose and garden paths, this accompaniment business. Thus: item one: one of the most difficult things I've encountered in class: playing certain (i.e. typically fast) falsetas really slow--and I do mean really slow (isn't there some kind of HTML markup for "double italics"? There should be). Intuitively you would think that playing slow would be easy, but such has not been my experience. Particularly for the faster falsetas (i.e. 8th note triplets or 16th notes) the melody seems to originate--for me, at least--more in the fingers than in the brain. The brain starts things off, then other parts take over (alas, as is often the case . . . ).

This arrangement, however, is not as ideal as it would seem: the fingers might be clever, but they're not smart. They don't adapt well. Of course, if you train them to play slow, the feat can be achieved--but be warned: slow isn't as easy to pull off on the fly as one might think. On the bright side, though--and this is, I'm sure, not the first time you've heard this--the slow playing makes the fast playing better: more accurate, stronger, more flexible.

But enough about obstinate body parts and speed. Item two: this class has reinforced the importance of learning to play songs from the middle. Or from anywhere. And that it's even better to learn how to loop those "middle" sections without breaking compás. In my case, once dancers had learned their entrance or the first tercio of a sevillana, they wanted to start with the second or third tercios in isolation to learn those sections. With sevillanas this (and looping) is relatively easy because of the regularly spaced compás (1 2 3 1 2 3. . .), but other forms are not always so forgiving. As with playing slow, starting and stopping at odd times--or starting a piece in the middle--is good practice. My suspicion is that if you have to play every piece you know from the beginning every time, you're going to drive your dance teacher nuts.

Finally, item three: we may all love Paco de Lucia, but playing his stuff in a beginning dance class is like starting beginning acrobats on the high-wire (perhaps without a net). I picked up one of the sevillanas from El Cobre (on the Almoraima album) just for fun--and right about the time I could play it (nearly) competently all the way through, I simultaneously realized that it would be a cruel (and perhaps unusual) thing to inflict on a beginning dancer. So it goes.

On the other hand (and even though I wasn't really intending to turn this blog post into another shameless display of self-promotion), some of easiest to follow (and most fun to play) falsetas I use in class are the Sabicas pieces I've been transcribing and posting on the Ravenna Flamenco tabs page. And speaking of tabs, I believe I mentioned there are some new ones posted. This is true: there are. Check them out. There are also a few more traditional, Sabicas--and, yes, perhaps Paco--pieces in the works, so don't be shy about checking back soon. I've also started posting videos to go with the tabs. (Gasp! Will the shameless self-promotion never end? Quelle audace!) Please do let me know if these are helpful and I'll (perhaps) be more assiduous about getting them up.

Now--as always: Go play!

~A

Juan Cañizares Tells It Like It Is

Despite the little brush I had with the Chair of the Spanish Department over my wine consumption at the reception following Juan del Gastor’s lecture-demo, I nonetheless managed to secure a front-row seat for the Juan Cañizares presentation. And an interesting seat it was: as was fully expected, these two players are about as different from each other as two tocaores flamencos can be. If one can safely say that Juan del Gastor is the quintessential festero and tocaor gitano (and I firmly contend one can), one could just as easily describe Juan Cañizares as the music connoisseur’s guitarist.

I won’t go on and on about how great it was to get to see a virtuoso of this caliber at such close range (did I mention I was in the front row?), but I will share with you some of what I know (or have since learned) about Cañizares’s take on flamenco guitar. Cañizares is currently touring with a small troupe performing his arrangement of Isaac Albéniz’s Iberia suite (which was originally composed for piano). While he didn’t go into it at the UW event, this sort of "extracurricular activity" evidently puts him at odds with some “flamenco purists.”

Cañizares’s response to the claim that classical music (and classical music education) will somehow “taint” flamenco, however, is refreshing (and, particularly for those of us not of Andalusian extraction--i.e. who must approach flamenco from the “outside”--encouraging). Here’s some of what Cañizares had to say on the topic in an interview with esflamenco.com:

The prestige given to ignorance has been very bad for flamenco. Flamenco is a cultured music and it should be seen as such. It can't continue to be associated with nightlife, taverns and partying. It should be taken seriously, professionally. . . . Learning formal music isn't going to make you any less flamenco, to the contrary, it's going to allow you to go further and do things like the Iberia suite. . . . Learning is very important. You can have inspiration but if you are also a professional then you can make more of that inspiration. Doing things without tools is not the same as doing them with tools.

I couldn’t agree more. Since both of these talks, in fact, I’ve been mulling over (and I do mean serious mulling, here) the implications of these two strains of flamenco: the gitano strain of Juan del Gastor and the virtuoso strain of Juan Cañizares. I’m not sure yet what to make of it, but seeing both of these top notch performers in such rapid succession has at least convinced me that these two categories need not be mutually exclusive—that the advent of one does not necessarily portend the demise of the other.

I’m sure there are those out there who will disagree with me—some violently, perhaps. And that’s fine (well, depending on the degree of violence, I suppose), but I like the idea that any form of art needs air—needs to breath—if it’s going to remain vibrant.

But here I am, wandering off on philosophical tangents like some long-haired hippie grad student when I should be sharing music clips! Okay, then—here they are, already. Cañizares’s demo was presented in two sections: the first was a sort of “here are the main palos” presentation. He talked (briefly) about the most common 6/8 forms and played a short demo of each. I’ve included these shorter clips in the first playlist because they give a good impression of Cañizares’s toque:

In the second part of the presentation, Cañizares played three longer pieces with Juan Carlos Pastor (his accompanying guitarist on the Iberia tour). These songs have more of the “modern flamenco” feel for which Cañizares is better known (two, in fact, are off of the Noches de imán y luna album). It is interesting, however (says I), to listen to these in juxtaposition with Caizares’s more traditional toque; even though these clips are in a largely non-traditional style, Cañizares’s “voice,” as with the clips above, is clear throughout:

And there you have it again!

Now back to work!

~A