Aloysius

This journal will explore flamenco.

I’ve been interested in (ok, obsessed with) flamenco for a long time - at first just the guitar side of things but soon after the wider world of flamenco, as I started spending more and more time in Spain learning guitar and accompanying dancers and singers.

Flamenco is traditionally made up of song, dance and guitar, along with percussive elements (including palmas (hand clapping), all types of percussion instruments especially cajón, and jaleo or yelling stuff out). This journal will probably end up being pretty guitar-centric but it should be noted that for most hard-core aficionados the song (known as cante or cante jondo for the most important forms) is the most important part of flamenco with guitar and dance closely following the song forms, either accompanying a singer or describing the song in a more abstract way when a singer isn’t present. Some things I plan to cover:

1. The palos (or forms) of flamenco, such as buleria, solea, tientos, fandangos and so on
2. Regional styles - flamenco that is typical of Jerez, Seville, Madrid, etc
3. Some guitar-centric stuff like keys and modes, different tunings
4. Some album lists (top 10s and the like)

Let me know if there’s anything flamenco-related you would like to see here.

Frownland

I'm a really big Paco de Lucia fan, but that's about where my knowledge of the genre ends. Excited to see what you'll be posting in here.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Chula Vista

Got to see him along with Al DiMeola and John McLaughlin back in Boston. Steve Morse was the opening act. Then the four of them played an encore.

I counted and there were 17,363,454,519 notes played that night.

Seriously though, Paco, using his fingers, stole the show from DiMeola and McLaughlin who were both using picks.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Aloysius

That would have been awesome. Paco picked up a lot of ideas from those guys, especially John McLaughlin, that he wove back in to his flamenco stuff.

grindy

Purists might scoff, but I'd like to rep Uwe Kropinski and Renaud Garcia-Fons.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

Aloysius

Both interesting - I'd never heard Uwe Kropinski before, I can definitely hear his classical and jazz backgrounds here, looks like there is some flamenco influence too. The Renaud Garcia-Fons piece sounds like it has a Cuban 'son' feel in spite of being 5/4.

Aloysius

Palos of flamenco part 1: Bulería

Bulería in its native environment is festive, improvised and spontaneous, and often features a large group of guitarists, dancers and singers taking turns. A bit like this:



That clip is partly staged as it forms part of Carlos Saura’s film Flamenco, but it gives you some idea. At a real juerga a bulería can go for several hours.

For flamenco guitarists bulería is always the go-to form for a jam, and what they will usual play if they want to show they know what they are doing. Every flamenco guitar album will have at least 1 bulería, more often 2.

The rhythm of bulería is tricky to describe - many books will tell you it’s in a cycle 12 beats with the following accents (bolded):

12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

However that is only part of the story - the palmeros (people clapping) tend to mark the following rhythm (slight accent italic, stronger accent bolded, no clap but a foot stamp underlined):

12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

If there is a cajón player they will often accent every 1.5 beats (thus dividing the 12 beat cycle into 8 equal parts). Guitarists will usually mark every second or every third beat, depending on the section of music and also where they are from (players from Jerez will often tap there foot every 2nd beat even if the music has a 3s feel). Another common pattern for guitarists is to tap the following beats (bolded):

12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

All of this, with variations and improvisation, combines to give a bulería its characteristic groove. Here is some buleria with Camarón accompanied by Paco de Lucía back in the early 70s:

Aloysius

Palos of flamenco part 1: Bulería (continued)

Now for some legendary guitar bulerias. First off Moraíto - for many the king of bulería, recently passed away:



Now some Tomatito kick-***ness:



And my current favourite - Moraíto’s son Diego del Morao:

Aloysius

Palos of flamenco part 1: Bulería (continued)

The most common key on the guitar to play bulería, by far, is A Phrygian (also known as ‘por medio’), often capoed at around the second or third fret. (Although this means the effective key is B or C, guitarists will still refer to this as playing in A or ‘por medio’, as the crucial thing is how the chords interact with various open strings rather than the absolute key). Every example so far has been played ‘por medio’. However many other keys are common in bulería - E, B, F#, G#, C# or D# phrygian, and most of the typical (for the guitar) major and minor keys. Singers will often switch to the tonic major or minor, and guitarists are expected to follow and change mode accordingly. Here are a couple of examples of other keys.

Here is singer Montse Cortes accompanied by Diego del Morao in C# Phrygian:


Here is a blistering bulería in D# from Gerardo Nuñez:

Aloysius

Palos of flamenco part 2: Soleá

Often referred to as the mother of flamenco, soleá forms part of cante jondo or deep song, and is slow and introspective. There are dozens of varieties of soleá, often named after where they came from (soleá de Alcalá, soleá de Triana, soleá de Utrera etc). Lyrical themes include death, unrequited love and solitude. It’s also a popular form for solo guitar, and for dance.

Here is Jesús Méndez singing some traditional solea, accompanied by Manuel Valencia. This style of singing probably holds little appeal for the casual music listener, it’s an acquired taste but for an aficionado this is the ****:



Here is a solo guitar soleá by a young Vicente Amigo: