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Thoughts About Cante Flamenco

77K views 216 replies 15 participants last post by  SanAntone 
#1 · (Edited)
One of my loves is traditional cante flamenco, usually a singer and a guitarist sitting closely together, perhaps a small coterie of friends and relations together around a table, able to offer encouragement, rhythmic clapping, palmas, as seems best, and to express their appreciation of particularly moving expression on the part of the singer. The idea is to convey emotion, or the simulacrum of emotion, from singer to the small world immediately around her or him. The guitarist, or tocaor, provides a constant sympathetic and complementary accompaniment to the cantaor/cantaora, often looking closely into the singer's face to ensure that the rapport is tightly maintained-- it's a remarkable pairing. The guitarists, who are seemingly numberless throughout flamenco Spain, are almost stupefyingly skilled at the technical aspects of guitar play, yet this amazing virtuosity is, in the best accompanists, kept in tight check to better "romance the stone" of the singer's utterances. The singers themselves most often do not have, and are not judged upon, the quality of their voices--by the standards of Western art song or popular song, their voices, and appearances, are rough, "untrained", ragged--but rather upon their knowledge of the various forms or palos of flamenco, their mastery of many of them, and their ability to move their audience to empathy and/or admiration.

Sung flamenco, authentic cante, is an acquired taste. When I would play my flamenco albums in my room, my mother would ask when the chicken-strangling would be over. Yet the stories that revolve around the greatest singers of yesteryear--people like Manuel Torres, for example-- tell of people rending their clothing, crying uncontrollably, actually leaping through windows, while under the spell of his singing (such behavior often fueled by alcohol, to be sure). Anyway, what draws me into this world of cante flamenco is this experience of raw emotion, or often also of exquisite performance of the classical palos by both singer and guitarist, even in those cases where the emotional component is subdued, and the goal is to render a piece in a more detached manner. I just love it, and have since about the age of 15.

I have relocated this post here from another part of the Forum (some will recognize having seen it before), as it serves reasonably well as an introduction to why I have long cherished traditional cante flamenco, and it will serve as an excuse for me to post some observations about flamenco and some examples of flamenco song, and to welcome others to comment as they choose. More to come, as time and circumstances permit.
 
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#125 · (Edited)
Flavius, welcome to our small but growing band of aficionados! Delighted to have you aboard. Please feel free to add whatever you choose to the thread. I also am a great admirer of el Niño de Almaden, one of the great payo cantaores. We are fortunate that so much great classic cante flamenco is available on YouTube, so even though it may continue to die away, it still lives on.

Here is a bit of García Lorca that I first heard on the first flamenco album I bought. This copla still sticks in my mind:

"Cuando fuiste novio mío
Por la primavera blanca,
los cascos de tu caballo
cuatro sollozos de plata"
 
#126 ·
Thank you for your welcome, Strange Magic.

I have always been interested in serious music developed from popular, folk, or traditional sources. Have you heard Ohana's 'Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias'? It is based on the Lorca lament, and has a profound, cante hondo feeling. Argenta recorded the work with the Orchestra des Cento Soli (Accord). You probably already know the work. If not, you might find it worth hearing.
 
#129 ·
Thank you for your welcome, Strange Magic.

I have always been interested in serious music developed from popular, folk, or traditional sources. Have you heard Ohana's 'Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias'? It is based on the Lorca lament, and has a profound, cante hondo feeling. Argenta recorded the work with the Orchestra des Cento Soli (Accord). You probably already know the work. If not, you might find it worth hearing.
Flavius, the poem I remember I heard recited in English on TV many decades ago, back when commercial network television offered far more literate and culturally rich material, and the "Five in the afternoon" refrain still is with me, along with "The room was iridescent with agony". In Paco Sevilla's remarkable bio of Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies, probably the very best history of flamenco in the first half of the 20th Century, there is much material on Ignacio Sánchez Mejias. He was closely linked to Manuel Torre, the greatest of all gitano cantaores, to the bailaora La Argentinita, to García Lorca, to De Falla, and to a whole host of others involved one way or another in flamenco. If you wish to dig deeper into all the connections, Paco Sevilla's book is a must-have. But I consider it a must-have anyway, along with Donn Pohren's The Art of Flamenco.
 
#128 · (Edited)
Pilar Bogado Sings Saeta

Even those unfamiliar with or disinterested in cante flamenco might be impressed by the vocal gift of then 11-year old phenom Pilar Bogado. Born in Huelva in 2000, Pilar sings quite traditional cante, and here sings one of my very favorite palos, a Saeta, the "arrow of song" that is sung accompanied only by muffled drums during Holy Week in Andalusia. Though the setting here is a TV variety show, young Pilar really delivers the goods vocally. A remarkable performance.
 
#130 · (Edited)
Pepe el de la Matrona, A Payo Master

Pepe el de la Matrona, "he of the midwife" (his mother's occupation), was born in 1887 in the barrio of Triana, Sevilla to a non-gypsy family. José Núñez Meléndez, as a payo, had a difficult time convincing his family that a career in flamenco was what he was destined for, but destined he was. He began singing professionally in his early teens and slowly began his rise to pre-eminence in cante, one of the handful of payo cantaores who have reached the absolute pinnacle of his art (Aurelio de Cádiz, born the same year, was another such). Pepe was fortunate enough to be in Madrid when Perico el del Lunar put together the group of singers who would record the classic Antología del Cante Flamenco, and Pepe contributed several classic performances to that effort. His career spanned almost all of the years I regard as a Golden Age of flamenco, as he died in 1983. His voice and delivery are instantly recognizable, as the previous posts highlighting his Serrana and Polo have shown. Here are three more selections:

First, Soleares:


Next, Tientos:


Finally, Siguiriyas:
 
#131 · (Edited)
It's too bad there are no translations of these songs. But even without them, it's obvious the performers feel passionate about whatever they are singing. There's also a virility here that I consider hard, if not possible to find in other cultures, other than with some of the Russian voices that are simply indescribable singing Mussorgsky or sacred works. The Pepe el de la Matrona-Tientos 1965 is incredible. Here is the strummed intensity of the guitar as a great instrument of accompaniment rather than as a solo instrument. What I enjoy about such uncompromising masculine voices is that it reminds me of the women who loved them!
 
#132 · (Edited)
Jarrito

One of the truly fine cantaores asked by Perico el del Lunar to sing for the groundbreaking Antología del Cante Flamenco was Roque Montoya, "Jarrito". Jarrito got his nickname for having knocked over a jar in his youth, and the name stuck. Born a gitano in Algeciras in 1928, Jarrito possessed a strong, clear voice and also became a master of almost all of the palos of flamenco, both gitano and andaluz. We have previously posted his cante andaluz Fandangos de Huelva and amazing, powerful Saetas; now we'll hear some of his gitano palos. The guitarist for these selections is not indicated, but the faint background humming that accompanies the Soleares, plus the excellence of all the accompaniment indicate that the guitarist is the legendary Manuel Serrapi, "El Niño Ricardo". Niño Ricardo was known, like Glenn Gould, for humming along as he played. He and Ramón Montoya were regarded as the strongest influences upon the following generations of flamenco guitarists, such as Sabicas, Mario Escudero, and Paco de Lucía.

First we have Jarrito singing Bulerias:


Then we hear Tientos y Tangos:


Next, La Caña:


And finally Soleares:
 
#133 ·
Flamenco Goes to Hollywood

Time to stroll again down Memory Lane. It's 1957 and we see the film about Spain and the Napoleonic Wars, The Pride and the Passion, and a bit of Hollywood flamenco. Sophia Loren is clearly not much of a dancer--though we hear the tapping of heels, we do not see her contacting the ground. The singer is another story, however. The voice is oddly familiar and distinctive: it may be that of Eduardo Lozano Pérez, "El Carbonero", whom Alan Lomax had recorded in Sevilla just a few years previously, and who had a reputation as a saetero, a specialist in singing Saetas during Holy Week. Those who have been attending to differentiating among the various palos of cante flamenco will hear first a bit of Tientos and then a bit of Fandangos de Huelva. This is all Flamenco Lite, but it served to introduce some few of us to the Real Thing. Harsh critics of Andre Rieu, take note.

 
#134 ·
Flamenco Goes to Hollywood, Part II

It's a year or two earlier than The Pride and the Passion, this time it's Ship of Fools. José Greco and his troupe of that time are on board the ship heading for Germany as the menace of Hitlerism begins to unfold in the prewar years. We do get a rare chance to briefly hear the magnificent cantaora Manolita de Jerez sing a bit of Bulerias as Greco & Company dance standard-fare traveling troupe baile. It is a shame that Greco was so sparing in his autobiography of mention of the members of his group other than the women with whom he was having an affair. But back in the 1950s, long before the idea of YouTube was even imaginable, this something was far better than nothing. And there were the records.....

 
#135 ·
Ravel Experiences Flamenco

First, a correction: I obviously transposed digits when I saw Ship of Fools' date as 1956 when even I should have remembered it from 1965. I read the book and saw the film--liked them both!

Here we have José Greco and Company on The Tube way back when, dancing to Ravel's Boléro. Not flamenco puro perhaps, but actually not bad. Here we have a meeting of Classical and Flamenco, for good or ill....

 
#136 · (Edited)
Brook Zern Closes Down His Website

I see that flamenco aficionado and authority Brook Zern has closed down FlamencoExperience.com, his most excellent blog/website. Zern has been recognized by the Spanish government as himself a treasure, due to both his intimate knowledge of flamenco and to his untiring effort to see that the landmark 1970s Rito y Geografía series of profiles of the great flamenco artists of the twentieth century were preserved on DVD (and then YouTube) for the world to enjoy far into the future. Two Americans, the late Donn Pohren and Brook Zern, are remarkably responsible for guiding both the Spanish and the Andalusian authorities to the realization that the flamenco of Andalusia was a national--and world--cultural treasure. In recognition of Zern's contributions to the study of flamenco, I offer several of his shorter essays here. The first is his appreciation of the great and influential guitarist of Morón de la Frontera, Diego del Gastor, who became the central figure of authentic flamenco for a whole generation of expat Americans who flocked to Morón to study flamenco at his feet:

http://www.flamencoproject.com/delusion.html

And here is Zern's essay on the place guitarist Carlos Montoya occupies in the history of flamenco:

https://www.deflamenco.com/revista/...rook-zern-on-the-guitarists-centennial-1.html
 
#140 · (Edited)
Jay "Jacinto" Kantor and the Flamenco of Morón de la Frontera

Some years ago I befriended another flamenco aficionado on a now-long-dead flamenco forum website. His name was Jay "Jacinto" Kantor and he was a professor of ethics at New York University. Like many Internet forums, flamenco forums could be snakepits. Jay was a respected regular on the site due to his encyclopedic knowledge of flamenco, coupled with the fact that he was one of that generation of Americans who had made the pilgrimage to Morón de la Frontera and learned from Diego del Gastor. Jay took me under his wing on that forum; we began to exchange emails and he sent me several CDs of Diego playing and Fernanda and Perrate singing and also of a rare recording of Don Antonio Chacón, a legend of early cante. We exchanged thoughts on topics other than flamenco, and also interacted for years on several other flamenco forums where he posted much wonderful material, especially on Morón flamenco and on Diego del Gastor--all of it now lost as those forums disappeared. Jacinto Kantor died suddenly of a heart attack in 2011, a loss regretted by his many friends. But he did leave an excellent long essay on flamenco, his introduction to it, Morón flamenco, and much else about this wonderful music, and I provide a link here....

http://www.flamencoproject.com/j_kantor_moron.html
 
#141 ·
Some Personal Favorites

In the preceding posts, I have highlighted quite a few singers from the period--roughly 1950 through the 1980s--when the cantaores/cantaoras were still generally singing traditional flamenco, and were also being cleanly recorded. I appreciate all these folks, but I do have my favorites: certain singers singing certain palos, accompanied by certain tocaores. Here are some personal choice pairings and a few other observations; perhaps these can be regarded as my Desert Island selections:

A favorite cantaor is the young José de la Tomasa, accompanied by Ricardo Miño, Paco del Gastor, or Juan Habichuela. José excelled at both Cante Gitano and Cante Andaluz palos, singing with conviction and clarity. Best Malagueñas ever and wonderful Siguiriyas and Soleares. And his guitarists provided near-perfect complementary accompaniment.

Another favorite is the idiosyncratic coupling of Perrate de Utrera and legendary guitarist Diego del Gastor in the singer's home, amid his family. There, the pair recorded unique Bulerias, Soleares, and Siguiriyas, with the pronounced compás that marked much of their work together.

The superb father/son guitarists Perico el del Lunar viejo and hijo are associated with a group of singers with whom they were linked for decades: Rafael Romero, Pepe el de la Matrona, Jarrito, Pepe el Culata. Both father and son accompanists exhibited a unique, understated personal style or propio sello that is unmistakeably theirs alone and immediately recognizable, bringing out a real sense of earnestness and authenticity in their singers.

Another mighty pairing is Terremoto and his longtime partner Manuel Moreno "Morao". While I am not a great admirer of Morao's playing, he was mostly well-matched with Terremoto, and it would be difficult to imagine Terremoto singing without Morao at his side. Terremoto always gave all he had and was the quintessential gitano cantaor.

Among cantaoras, Manolita de Jerez stands out. Her singing on the 1950s José Greco LP Danzas Flamencas is unsurpassed, though her accompanist is sadly unknown. Best Fandangos I ever heard. She also sang brilliantly with Paco Aguilera accompanying. Aguilera deserves mention himself as a model accompanist to singers, as he never stove to display any personal virtuosity but only and always worked to complement his singers. Aguilera probably ranks in my top 5 best, most respected tocaores who only accompanied cante.

Another outstanding cantaora is Rosario López, accompanied by Antonio Gómez, another uniquely successful pairing. The two performed my favorite, most earnest Siguiriyas sung by a woman, (Estrella Morente comes second) but López sung everything well, both Gitano and Andaluz palos, especially the mining palos. Gómez's propio sello is quite idiosyncratic--somewhat "modern" compared with my other favorite accompanists, but it works very well with López's art.

So many other great flamenco artists! I could go on with other favorites--if only Pastora Pavón with her electrifying, chill-inducing voice had lived a little later so that we could have had extended, well-recorded audio and video of her unique talent. I've posted about the miracle yet so brief linking of guitar legend Sabicas with the duo of Domingo Alvarado and the suddenly inspired Enrique Montoya to record the amazing Festival Gitana LP. If only Aurelio de Cádiz had had the benefit of recording with a sympathetic, complementary accompanist rather than the unsuitable Morao in his twilight years or his early, too-brief, badly-recorded 1928 efforts with Ramón Montoya.

Maybe I'll take them all to my desert island!
 
#142 ·
Paco Sevilla: Website and Books

Early in this thread I recommended several books by flamenco historian and tocaor Paco Sevilla. Paco has written three superior books on flamenco. They cover its history from the later years of the 19th century--in the biographical novel about Don Antonio Chacón, Seeking Silverio--through the first half of the 20th--in the outstanding biography of Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies, which also is jam-packed with flamenco history of the era I've focused on in this thread--and later in the century with his book on guitar phenom Paco de Lucía, widely held to be the greatest technician ever in flamenco guitar, Paco de Lucía, a New Tradition for the Flamenco Guitar.

Paco has a website up: www.pacosevilla.com. and in a recent exchange of emails has confirmed that these books can now be ordered directly from him. Any individual book is $10 plus $3 for shipping, or all three books as a package for $20 plus $5 for shipping. One can order from Paco Sevilla at P.O. Box 8867, Chula Vista CA 91912. In theory one could order through Paco's website; I have no trouble accessing Paco's website, but Paco is having problems with it himself, so it would be safer to order via the mailing address in case one gets no response through the website. I know Paco from working with him on a project, and can be certain of him as the prime source for his books. I'll be ordering the complete set of three as I do not have his book on Paco de Lucía, and will have extra copies of the other two books to give as presents.
 
#143 ·
Paco Sevilla's Books

I just received, without delay, the well-packaged set of the three books on flamenco by Paco Sevilla that I referenced in the preceding post. Again, I can strongly recommend the purchase of all three for $25 which includes shipping, with the emphasis for those coming fresh to flamenco that they read his Carmen Amaya biography Queen of the Gypsies first. It provides much of both the history and the structural essentials of traditional flamenco such that the material in the other two volumes and whatever other books someone might read later are rendered more familiar.
 
#144 ·
The Books of Donn Pohren

Along with those of Paco Sevilla, I have recommended the essential books of D.E. (Donn) Pohren as guides to traditional flamenco. Amazon offers paperback reprints of The Art of Flamenco, Lives and Legends of Flamenco, and A Way of Life as a package deal for $49. A Way of Life is Pohren's account of his years in Morón de la Frontera running an inn for non-Spaniards interested in experiencing flamenco in its native environs and is very well worth reading. The other two books are key, and a little should be mentioned about their current versions:

The version of The Art of Flamenco being offered by Amazon appears to be the 1984 edition, somehow photocopied using less-than-optimum technology and materials. It bears a resemblance to the 2005 edition which included many updates by Pohren to the text but which was a sea of typographical and wrong font errors--I counted well over 400 such in my copy. Since I regard Pohren's book as timeless, I am happy with my old, battered 1967 hardcover, and the Amazon edition will deliver the same message. However, the error-riddled 2005 edition does contain Pohren's final thoughts on flamenco.

The Amazon-offered edition of Lives and Legends is also photocopied from an earlier edition and bears a similar lack of crispness and quality of materials. But it offers the original text, and it's the text that is important. So I can recommend buying the Amazon 3-book package, though I wish that Donn Pohren's legacy as the leading proponent and explainer of traditional flamenco had been better served by his succession of rather shabby publishers. At least Paco Sevilla had the benefit of overseeing (and financing) the printing of his own excellent books, and they show it.
 
#145 ·
Paco on Paco: Paco Sevilla's Book on Paco de Lucía

I have finished Paco Sevilla's book on flamenco's most celebrated guitarist, Paco de Lucía. I am neither a guitarist nor an aficionado of solo flamenco guitar, but PdL was a key figure in the ongoing evolution of flamenco. His technical mastery of his instrument, his love of traditional flamenco idiosyncratically coexisting with his ongoing investigations and experiments in expanding the borders of flamenco, and his long association with equally influential cantaor Camarón de la Isla, all served to place PdL at a key inflection point in the history of flamenco. Paco Sevilla does his usual excellent job, giving us PdL's origins, background, and growing recognition as both a driver of change in flamenco and its primary beneficiary.

But Sevilla's book also raises the constantly-discussed question of whether flamenco becomes something else when it expands or moves beyond what for a century or so was universally understood to be the heart of the art--a body of vocal art sounding a certain way, usually accompanied by a guitarist, and sometimes by a dancer--the sort of material I have presented in this thread. Sevilla himself is of several minds on this issue, as are most aficionados--there is constant talk of flamenco's "need to evolve", the inevitability of change: new and additional instruments, new modes, new phrasings--when does it become something other than flamenco? There is talk that flamenco must/is/will change, or it will die. And that dying is regarded as a Very Bad Thing by most aficionados writing about it.

My position is different. I feel that once a genre has established its basic identity and has maintained it for a number of decades and been granted a widely-accepted name, it should be understood to have evolved into something else once it loses much of what had previously been its identifying hallmarks. It requires a new name. Consider baroque music. Nobody composes it anymore, yet it is played and enjoyed constantly. It evolved into something else, and so it gained a new name. For me, flamenco is what I have posted in this thread. It will live, captured on CDs, YouTube, old LPs, DVDs, and through the efforts of whatever living artists choose to perform it still, just as baroque music lives on. Paco de Lucía, Camarón de la Isla, and the host of other transitional figures who helped birth new musics out of the womb of flamenco are just that--the midwives of new musics that are of flamenco but are not flamenco.
 
#146 ·
An Example of Contemporary Traditional Flamenco

This video clip was recorded, I believe, around 2014, in a club that presents traditional flamenco to aficionados. The elderly cantaor is Manuel Moneo, of a long-established Jerez flamenco family. To his right (our left) is his son Barullo. The singer to Barullo's right who begins this tasty Bulerias, I do not know. The guitarist is Miguel Salado. Manuel Moneo continued singing traditional flamenco right until his death in 2017, specializing in Siguiriyas and Soleares. His brother, Juan Moneo, "el Torta", was an equally well-known cantaor who did sing often in a more "modern" style. I don't know who the dancer is who joins in the festivities, but it's a nice example of flamencos enjoying themselves sharing this unique art form among themselves and with an appreciative audience.

 
#147 ·
More Manuel Moneo

IN this clip, Barullo sings a brief Malagueña, then he and his father Manuel alternate in a classic Siguiriyas, perfectly accompanied by Miguel Salado.



Desgarradoras translates as "wrenching, heartbreaking", and Barullo appears to be himself somewhat affected by both his father's and his own singing. Flamenco: you either love it or you hate it; hard to be indifferent to it.
 
#149 ·
Juan Moneo: "El Torta"

Manuel Moneo's equally renowned brother Juan, is represented on YouTube mostly by Bulerias, a specialty of his, most often in the somewhat more modern style I call "Brazilian" for want of a better term--both the singing and especially the guitar accompaniment are beginning to wander away from their traditional sound. But El Torta could sing traditionally: here is a fine Solea por Burlerías; he is accompanied by Moraito Chico. The Moreno family is prolific in esteemed guitarists. We have previously heard and seen Manuel Moreno "Morao" with Terremoto; Manuel's brother Juan was an equally fine tocaor known as Moraito, and Juan's son is the Moraito Chico of this video. Moraito Chico unhappily died young--about 55--of cancer in 2011. His son is now a well-known tocaor named Diego del Morao.

 
#150 · (Edited)
Manolita de Jerez

As I've noted previously, one of my absolute favorite cantaoras is Manolita de Jerez. Manuela Cauqui Benítez was for years associated with the flamenco troupe of José Greco, who called her Manuela la de Jerez, "Manuela, she of Jerez", but she is more widely known as Manolita de Jerez. Greco also referred to her as Pastora Pavón La Nueva, the new Pastora Pavón. A non-gypsy, Manolita was, until recently, sparsely represented on YouTube, but more examples have emerged. Here are some. At least three of the selections here have Manolita accompanied by El Niño Ricardo, recognized by his tuneless humming in the background....

First we have Malagueñas:


Next, Bulerias:


Then Soleares:


Finally, Fandangos:
 
#151 · (Edited)
More About Manolita

In browsing about on the Internet, I came across a fairly recent entry by respected flamenco commentator and authority Estela Zatania on Manolita de Jerez. Estela Zatania shares my enthusiasm for Manolita, and provides some confirmation for my suspicion that the tocaor Triguito accompanied Manolita on at least one palo (Fandangos) on the fabulous Danzas Flamencas 1954 Decca LP, as rumor had it that they had performed together, and thus he perhaps was the chief guitarist for that Danzas Flamencas disk, yet Zatania does not appear to know of that great recording.
 
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