The Northside Grill, A Juried Panel, 50 First Graders, A Bouncy Castle, and Spilled Juice (or) How Do We Get Ourselves Into These Situations, Anyway?

As I've mentioned elsewhere in these posts, the purpose of this blog is to give you, loyal reader, a firsthand account (my firsthand account, as it were) of what it's like to "pursue flamenco" in the Pacific Northwest. I now find myself faced with the daunting task of trying to explain this post's title. Honestly, I'm not sure how it will turn out. I'm pretty sure it won't be short. It might also not be pretty.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Northside: Round 2
This is by far the easiest place to start. It's also, in the sequence of events tackled in this post, the first, so what better place to begin? Those of you who are paying attention already know that Zamani Flamenco played an evening show at the The Northside Grill last month. (Now the rest of you know, too!) This last Thursday was our second night at the Northside (hence “round 2”).

And it went pretty well. There was some minor drama--for instance we forgot the footing for our portable dance floor so the sections kept drifting apart mid-song, and the bottom edge of Zánbaka's skirt started quixotically un-sewing itself mid-alegria--but, unlikely as it sounds, no major catastrophe followed.

Lucky we are; there’s no denying it.

In between braving these near-grisly episodes, at one of the quieter points in the evening, I was asked an interesting question by an audience member: how does it feel to play the same place (i.e. The Northside) again? I think the question was posed, actually, before we had begun, so I was a bit at a loss at the time. Now that it's all over, however, I would dare say that the three of us all felt that our first show at The Northside was the stronger of the two. Why this would be the case is beyond me--it's not like we've been on rehearsal vacation since--but it does make me wonder if we had begun to feel more relaxed (and if this had made us less vigilant) the second night, or if we were holding ourselves to a higher standard the second time around--maybe we felt, in a way, that if the second show weren't better than the first it wasn't as successful.

Or maybe it was a combination of all of that. It’s a curious impression anyway. We played and danced well, I think, but I also think that perhaps the decreased stress made us more aware of what we can improve upon. It will be interesting to see how next month feels. If nothing else, this should all be a good rehearsal motivator.

Personal impressions aside, one definite positive about this second time around was that we had a new batch of collaborators (who were coerced into dancing a sevillanas). We’ve made it a point with these gigs to get our colleagues in classes and in the Peña involved whenever possible. We’re the three of us convinced that flamenco wants to be collaborative and community inclusive; this seems to us like a good way of making that happen.

(No, we’re not heading down the “open mic” road, by the way (this is still a “show,” after all); we’d just like to create a social space where flamencos that are willing to put in a little extra work can come out of the woodwork. )

A Juried Panel
I know a subtitle like this sounds bad, but rest assured, none of us have spent any recent time in the pokey (well, maybe Zánbaka has--she’s been unaccounted for the last night or two . . . ). In fact, this panel was actually an audition for the King County Performing Arts Roster--basically a directory of Northwest musicians and performers who are determined, by said panel, not to be complete hacks. I think this is how it works, anyway.

Our audition was Saturday morning, a fifteen minute slot. We went on right after a woman who was giving a monologue in the character of Rosa Parks (she was in costume, too--it was very good) and right before a flapper-era jazz quartet (complete with ukulele). (No, these kinds of juxtapositions don’t even faze me any more.)

In what turned out to be a nice reversal of the lukewarm feelings we had at The Northside, I don’t think our audition could have gone any better. Which is not to say I think we’re a shoe-in. Honestly, I have no idea how we'll fare. But I am confident that we performed as well as we are able at this point in our careers. Nobody forgot any parts or freaked out in a fit of nerves. We haven’t heard back from the folks at the roster yet, but, having put on as good a show as we are able, I don’t think any of us will be disappointed either way. It’s hard to say exactly what they’re looking for. But it’s a good feeling knowing that, all else being equal, we gave an accurate representation of who we are and what we can do.

50 First Graders, A Bouncy Castle, etc.
And here comes the strange part. Earlier in the month, we had been contacted about playing a “Sangria and Tapas” party. Of course, we said, we’d love to! What could be more appropriate? We were advised that there would be children there (which I suppose meant “no nudity”), but that was fine—they’re people too, I guess. “Children” in this case, however, meant roughly 50 children, all somewhere near first-grade age (whatever age that is).

This was fine, too--we’ve learned nothing by now if not to roll with the punches (even the tiny hyperactive ones). We were scheduled to start at 7:30 so we arrived a bit before 7:00. The idea was for us to play on the back deck, right next to--yes, you guessed it--a giant inflatable bouncy castle. The party’s hosts were very cool and considerate and arranged for the castle to be evacuated and its air compressor turned off before we started. I think initially the children were excited about the prospect of having “flamenco dancers” (whatever those were) at the party, but with the deflation of those bright, primary colored castle walls, so too fell the faces of fifty would-rather-be-bouncing first-graders.

They were troopers through the sevillanas (the first song). I think the frilly dresses and the distraction of the castanets helped buoy those notorious (and epically short) juvenile attention spans. By the time they realized there was to be a second number (our guajira)--during which time the bouncy abode would remain pancake-flat--I could see that we were going to lose them.

The tangos (song three) passed before ever increasingly impatient eyes. For the fourth song, the alegrias, I had the brilliant idea to tell them about jaleo. The net result was that about every fourth compás, one of them would shout “one . . . two . . . three . . .” then about ten of them would shout “olé!” Sure, this sounds kind of cute now, but remember that none of them were listening to the music (i.e. the randomness of olé intervals was the jaleo equivalent of Brownian motion in particle physics).

Luckily, the olé contingent forgot about this game by about the silencio and started running around in frantic screaming circles with too-full and sloshing cups of juice (or was it sangria? I’m no longer sure . . . . ). The girls and I made it through our buleria (and thus our 30 minutes, fulfilling our contract) and brought the bouncy-house moratorium to a none-too-soon end.

And so we wrapped up what was for us our busiest week yet. As we packed up, our hosts were again a paragon of graciousness: perhaps they should have had us start earlier; maybe we can do it again next year. I wouldn't go so far as to say I wouldn’t do an event like this again. I think if nothing else we learned some important programming lessons here (i.e. short songs, lots of props, juice resistant everything). And after all, next year the little bouncers will be in second grade--and that’s a whole different ball game, right?

Now you: go play! (And then go have some "juice"!)

~A

Smoke Farm: The Photographic Evidence!

Here's a short addendum to my last post for any of you skeptics out there who thought perhaps I was joshing about the whole Smoke Farm incident:

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:


Exhibit C:



(Thanks to Tom Wallace for the pics!)

Now go play!

~A

Smoke Farm! (or) Flamenco on a Wobbly Stage in the Dark!

First let me say this: if my previous post suggests that sometimes Zamani Flamenco is "too odd" for a given venue, there can be no question that this was not one of those times. This was an odd gig par excellence. It was also a cool gig, but there's no escaping the oddness. Just can't be done.

I guess the first question to be answered isn't so much "how was it?" but rather "what was it?" Basically, Smoke Farm is a former dairy farm now held in trust and managed by the Rubicon Foundation, which describes itself as "an experiment in community for Seattle artists, educators, performers, philosophers, activists, instigators and agitators."

This particular event, titled (though I'm still not entirely sure why) "Interstitial Heroes," is the Smoke Farm's summer arts festival. (Yes, I know what "interstitial" means--I just don't get what it has to do with acrobats, installation art, a milking parlor, or mock-19th-century snake-oil salesmen.) Anyway, this was, according to two separate (though perhaps not entirely sober) accounts, either the second or the fourth year for the festival. It was, however, the first for the Zamani Flamenco crew. (Some "significant others" were in attendance, though mine feigned death as we were heading out the door and thus was not along.)

(She made a full recovery, in case you were wondering.)

As its website promises, Smoke Farm is about an hour from Seattle, though it feels much farther than that (particularly when your trek involves impromptu tent & pet supply shopping, even thinking for a moment that a biker bar might be a good place to have lunch, and ill fated run-ins with road-raging townies and recalcitrant ATMs). Anyway, once you actually get there, it's clear that whoever masterminded the Smoke Farm layout did a good job of it--cars are parked away from the main area in a field of 1980's slasher film tall grass and are effectively hidden from view unless you go looking for them. It really does feel like the middle of nowhere.

The "farm" itself is a (very) short hike from the parking area. There you find a big field surrounding "the milking parlor" (an unexpectedly large open sided structure filled with mystery outcroppings and enigma areas). By the time we got there, tents already haloed the field and weekend revelers were scattered willy-nilly among them. In the middle of the field was a huge tunnel made of shiny ribbon. Really. A bit further on you had the aerial apparati for the circus performers (something like a 30 foot swing-set, but instead of swings there were several menacing lengths of 2" thick rope), and then, of course, the milking parlor. There were dining tables set to one side, and two performance stages--later to become three with the inclusion of our wobbly one.

My little tour of the grounds (and sundry vinicultural provisionings) completed, I settled in (i.e. found a spot on the grass) for the "Circus Contraption" show. It began with "Dr. Calamari and Acrophilia" (evidently--though I swore at the time it was "Necrophilia" . . . and "Dr. Calamari" did carry Necro/Acrophilia out to "the apparatus" over his shoulder, corpse-like, but whatever) and continued with some high-wire girls that, at least for a few minutes, made the idea of being a menacing length of 2" thick rope look pretty good.

But I digress--Circus Contraption was a treat. And it was followed by dinner--which was MC'd (for lack of a better term) by the faux-19thC-snake-oil salesman alluded to above. In concept I concede that this is a clever idea: here's how we wash our hands in the middle of nowhere (pine needles, water, cedar bark, water, salt, water); here's a really long story the point of which is that you now get soup; here's another long story the point of which you now get salad . . . you get the idea.

The food was excellent. But the getting of it took for ever.

The upshot of this stretch of "ever" is that Zamani Flamenco, instead of going on at "8:30 right after dinner," went on more like "9:45 right after dinner." Which would normally be no big deal. Except for the fact that by now it was dark. Which would also normally not be a big deal. Except that the only lights anywhere within shouting distance were two high power stage lights pointing up at us--from ground level (which is to say, right in our eyes).

Evidently this lighting arrangement made for a really cool effect from the audience's perspective. But it also meant that we couldn't see a thing on stage. For the shorter numbers (like the sevillanas) this wasn't much of a problem, but for longer numbers--or those that have any amount of "push and pull" in the tempo, like soleá--our blindness meant that we had to catch any glitches, irregularities, or just plain mistakes in the dances by ear.

Which also might not even have been a big deal if the stage weren't wobbly (and thus conducive to all sorts of . . . er . . . "irregularities"). In principle, the stage was well built, but somehow in the process of situating it on uneven ground it lost all traces of stability; no amount of "well building" in the world was going to help it where it landed.

Think small craft on choppy water.

Okay, fine: I know it sounds like now I'm just complaining for the fun of it, so I must digress and assure you all that the whole night was very well put together and run by a lot of very friendly and conscientious volunteers. Truth be told, who in their right mind could possibly anticipate the kind of abuse a flamenco dancer inflicts on a floor? We don't call Zánbaka "Ms. Loudfoot" because she treads lightly. (Though she does have a hard time navigating sandwich boards--ask her about it!)

And now that I've painted this moonlight (it was a full moon, of course) scene for you, how, you might ask, did it go? Well, we lived. And no one tumbled off the platform into grassy oblivion. And no flaming missiles of pine needle & cedar bark remnants were hurled in our direction. In fact, I don't even think our moving-platform-induced terror was even noticed; the audience (whom I could only pick out in space by the pulsing glow of what I'm sure were tobacco cigarettes) was enthusiastic and, by all audible accounts, happy to have us there. We did a bit of impromptu re-arranging of our set--the guajira, for instance, no longer seemed a propos--but the work of putting (and keeping) together a solid repertoire of music made it so that we could, in the face of what turned out to be a very unexpected situation, tailor our show to the evening.

I think, however, it was the volunteer that ushered our blind selves off the stage after the set that most aptly summed up how we fit into the whole scheme: "You guys were great! That was the perfect after-dinner show!" Granted, this isn't how I usually think of flamenco (although, now that I really do think about it, it's as often as not the case), but given the context of the evening--and what was to follow--I think it sits about right.

There's no out-odding oddness itself.

And what was it, you might ask, that "followed"? Oh . . . hey, look at that--this post is getting a bit long. Guess I'd better wrap it up! (i.e. you'll have to search out your lurid tales of interstitial infamy elsewhere! Try asking Z--she might prefer it to the sandwich board story.)

Now you: go play!

~A

The Northside Grill and Some Ponderings on Participation

The latest installment in the Zamani Flamenco annals: we've finally found a local spot in our neck of the woods where flamenco actually fits in. For anyone out there who hasn't tried to book an apt venue for a flamenco trio, the elation of this announcement might sound a bit overblown, but believe me: taking a flamenco act to the streets (i.e. beyond festivals and "ethnic nights") is a prickly undertaking.

And in the spirit of Toque (helped along by my sherry-fueled late night writing fits), I intend to share this prickliness with you. But wait, you say, back up a bit: Why is this news? Zamani Flamenco has played a gig or two; there have been venues. It's true. And some of those venues have been great. Okay, fine--and some have been simply odd. But whatever, you take the good with the . . . er . . . odd.

Here's the crux of the issue: in many cases, the oddness cited above isn't so much a question of the establishment that hosts us as it is simply us. Take for example The Wayward Coffee House. How could you possibly bring a flamenco show into a place where 90% of the clientèle is plugged into a laptop? Flamenco dance is not exactly easily tune-outable. And don't even think about traditional music venues: flamenco guitar and dance sandwiched in between a DJ and the latest Radiohead knock-off?

You begin, I hope, to appreciate the difficulty here.

One solution, of course, is to make one's own night. Luckily for us, Imad, the owner of The Northside Grill, was fine with us doing just that. And this isn't the only bonus: The Northside is a Moroccan restaurant, so the space is decidedly Mediterranean--a comfy place to be for flamenco. And it's big enough to hold a respectable audience, but not so big that the family at booth #148 is going to wonder what the ruckus is way over in sector 14.

And how, you might ask, did the evening actually go? In short (a rare occurrence for me, I know), I would call it a success. When I say "success," of course, I don't mean that it was perfect. Frankly, I don't even know if that was the goal. But it was lively: the audience was having fun; we were having fun. And this was the goal.

This also meant, of course, that in the spirit of the evening we encountered some audience participation that was perhaps a bit aberrant: wildly out of compás palmas and jaleo I can't even begin to describe. Even here, though, I've got no room for complaint; what's more, discouraging this kind of spontaneity is the furthest thing from my mind. I've seen flamenco acts that are pretty active in shutting down such audience participation--and if you're aiming for a kind of "virtuoso" show, I can see why you would do that--but I also think there's something cathartic in breaking down the "we are the entertainers you are the audience" divisions.

Don't get me wrong--there's no criticism intended here. It's more a question of performance aesthetics. Although I hesitate to make even the most cursory comparisons between my own efforts and the accomplishments of flamenco giants like these, this issue makes me think of one particularly conspicuous difference between Diego del Gastor and Juan Cañizares (on whom I've blogged before). Both are undisputed icons of flamenco guitar, but while the playing of a Cañizares inspires in the audience (or in me, at least) awe at his skill, ability, and musical taste, a flamenco like del Gastor taps into flamenco as a folk tradition, a collaboration of the multitude over time.

Which is not, of course, to overestimate the degree (if any) to which I, an American pursuing flamenco abroad, am able to tap that tradition. I suppose my preferred method of working through the distances of geography and culture (at least for the moment) is to think of all of this more as a pursuit, however elusive, than as a destination. "Getting at" tradition is less important than "going after" it. In this sense, perhaps, both sides of the aesthetic coin come back into play: making flamenco "work" abroad is not only a pursuit of technical ability, but is also a pursuit of the ability to reconnect music and dance with the sense of community from which it springs. It's surprising to me how easy it is to lose sight of this in day to day practice.

True, Greenwood is not widely know for its perfusion of Andalusia or gitano culture, but when you're trying to tap into a folk tradition in what has become, let's face it, an increasingly less folk and more commercial world, I suppose one has to make one's community where one finds it. Is this "flamenco puro"? Probably not. But is it something more than just one guy with a guitar? I hope so.

Well, I can see that I've done it again: a long (and long-winded) digression, speculative third person, multiple uses of the word "aesthetics." A tangent has been taken. I would apologize, but that would be disingenuous (after all, if I were really sorry I would just hit delete right now, no?), and anyway, if you've read this far you must have had some inkling of interest. Or maybe you've just now discovered that you just need to learn how to skim better . . . in either case, you've learned something.

But what, you might ask, does any of this have to do with The Northside Grill? Just this: that it's a fun show where you can clap along if you like, have a paella and a glass of beer, and, folk tradition deities willing, perhaps find some connection to musical roots you never knew you had.

Hmm. That last bit sounds conspicuously like a plug. Indeed it might be: Zamani Flamenco will be back at the The Northside on the 21st of August, at 8:00.

You should come!

And in the mean time, you should go play!

~A