PART TWO

FLAMENCO: PART II

THE MODERN ERA
[from: Guitar and Lute, March 1983]

In part one of this article, "Flamenco: The Early Years", we saw how the cafe cantante period (roughly, 1850-1910) produced the foundation of what we know as flamenco. At this time the private and emotional cante gitano was first performed in public. It then mixed with the popular and festive folk music of Andalucia to produce many new song forms and styles. Also, the guitar joined the cante and baile to become an essential component of flamenco. The cafe cantante, a type of nightclub that presented flamenco entertainment, became extremely popular, many of them springing up in the major cities of Andalucia, in Madrid and Barcelona, and in other parts of Spain.

In spite of the impressive growth of the flamenco art, all was not roses during the "Golden Age." The cante gitano had come out of hiding and many of the important cantaores were gypsies, but in order to appeal to a wider audience, most cafes cantantes mixed popular music with flamenco. One that did not was the Cafe Silverio, the first of the cafes cantantes. Because Silverio Franconetti refused to join the commercialization, his business eventually suffered; he died poor and forgotten.

Toward the end of the century, the adulteration of flamenco increased. The fandangos (a large group of non-gypsy flamenco cantes) became ever more popular, especially a style from Malaga called malaguenas. A singer named Juan Breva, a specialist in the malaguenas, transformed the cante from dance music into a profound song for listening. His style created flamaneco's first fad and by the end of the 1800's at least twenty different styles of malaguenas were being sung. After Breva, Antonio Chacon carried the malaguena to even greater heights and, as we shall see, brought about a whole new era in the history of flamenco. Slowly, the gypsy cantaores (Chacon was not a gypsy) began to disappear from the stages; in their place came singers of Andalucian cantes who had smoother voices, sang pretty poetry, used songs to show off virtuosity and appealed more to the general public.

Beginning in the late 1800s, intellectual aficionados began to criticize the cafes cantantes for their loss of purity, for the incursion by popular Andalucian music, and for the commercialism. To the purists, flamenco was in a state of decay, but the cante gitano had had its time in the limelight and came away enriched by the addition of the guitar, the appearance of greater numbers of professional artists, and an expanded repertoire of cantes. The cante andaluz (Andalucian folk music) had definitely been enriched by its contact with the gypsies. Without this natural "adulteration," we would lack half of the flamenco cantes we have today.

The year 1910 is generally given for the end of the "Golden Age of Flamenco" and the cafe cantante, although some cafes survived for a while longer, and at least one, the "Cafe de Chinitas" in Malaga, did not close until 1941. The non-gypsy singer, Antonio Chacon, considered by some to be the greatest flamenco singer of all time, played a large role in the transition to the period of the "theater" or "opera" flamenco which was to last until the 1950s. Chacon, knowledgeable in all areas of flamenco, had a voice unsuited to the cante gitano and, therefore, specialized in the cante andaluz, improving it and creating new styles of granainas, tarantas, malaguenas, and caracoles. He was extremely popular, and his trademark, a flowery, highly ornamented style of singing and a falsetto voice, weas widely imitated and exaggerated. In Buenos Aires, Chacon became the first to take flamenco into the theater starting a new era in which flamenco became a theater art form. Don Antonio Chacon, the "Don" being equivalent to "Sir" and given to him out of respect for his art and his gentlemanly manners, became flamenco's highest paid artist.

While Chacon did not himself corrupt flamenco with his innovations, he opened the door for a rash of imitators who were less concerned with tradition than he. The most significant of these was Pepe Marchena, a virtuoso who used his abilities to mix flamenco with popular music and to introduce commercial theatrics into his performance. He started the revolution known as "Marchenismo" or "Opera Flamenca," in which flamenco was softened, and elaborated with trills to make it prettier. Pepe Marchena was the first to break with tradition and stand while singing, and he was the first to sing with an orchestra.

Antonio Chacon lived to see what he had started and to suffer from it. He had substituted the cartagenera and the malaguena (two forms of fangangos) for the gypsy siguiriya, and now he saw these songs replaced by operatic fandangos and Latin American derived milongas and columbianas. Chacon could not compete and died in poverty in 1929.

With the cafes closing or changing to other kinds of entertainment flamenco artists began to work in theaters and with touring companies or outside of Spain. Paris became an important center of flamenco activity. By 1920, this trend was in full swing. Flamenco appeared in zarzuelas (musical comedies), where it was mixed with operatic arias and often accompanied by piano or orchestra, as well as guitar. Traveling Spanish ballet companies brought flamenco-styled treatments of Spanish classical dances and music to theaters in Spain and around the world. One of the earliest of these companies was that of La Argentina, although Pastora Imperio had danced in a theater in Buenos Aires as early as 1915. Later, there would be Carmen Amaya, Vicente Escudero, La Argentinita and finally Jose Greco. These Companies had a profound effect on Spanish dance. In the search for new material, cantes that had never been danced before were chosen for dance interpretation: La Argentinita first danced la caita in the 1930s, Vicente Escudero the siguiriyas in 1940, to which mode Pilar Lopez was the first to play castanets. The culmination of that trend was the dancing of the chant-like martlnetes (blacksmith's song, sung without musical accompaniment).

Flamenco had been receiving international exposure ever since it had first been presented at the Paris Exposition in 1889. This exposure increased dramatically in the early twentieth century. In 1914, a version of Manuel de Falla's "El Amor Brujo" called "Embrujo de Sevilla" was presented in London and featured important Spanish artists. Later, De Falla would be commissioned by Sergie Diaghilev to create "The Three Cornered Hat" for the Russian Ballet (Picasso would do the sets and costumes). In 1921 a cuadro flamenco performed in Paris in conjunction with the Russian Ballet season. This type of exposure resulted in the incorporation of Spanish and flamenco themes in the music of renowned composers from many different countries. There was, of course, Manuel de Fall from Spain, along with Albeniz, Turina, and Breton, and from France, Bizet, Ravel, and Debussy, while Russia produced Spanish themes from such composers as Glinka and Rimsky-Rorsakov.

Spanish dancers took this "classical" music with Spanish themes and set flamenco-styled choreography to them. Such choreography became the main repertoire of the touring Spanish dance companies along with the original Spanish ballet dances from what is called the escuela bolera (bolero school of dance). Not only did these "classical" and "theater" dances increase the repertoire, but they gave a new dimension and virtuosity to the dance. Castanets, adopted from the escuela bolera. The regional folk dances were developed into concert level performances and were used more and more in the classical interpretations and even in the gypsy dances, something that many artists object to even today. The disciplined, academy-trained dancers refined the techniques of arm work, body carriage and turns, but it was a flamenco dancer named Antonio de Bilbao who dazzled the dance world with the virtuosity of his footwork; Spanish dance was never the same. The gypsy whirlwind, Carmen Amaya, did the same for the feminine dance, and soon women were dressing in pants and pounding their feet furiously. In summation, the Spanish ballet companies refined, stylized, and civilized the flamenco dance.

In 1922, Manuel de Falla and the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, were instrumental in organizing a contest of cante jondo (deep song; the most profound of the cantes) in Granada. With the support of many intellectuals and important artists the contest attempted to revive the disappearing gypsy cante by seeking to find in the small towns non-professional (and therefore, supposedly uncorrupted) performers who still knew the old traditional songs. The contest did not succeed in this goal because the cante gitano is not a music "of the people". Only professionals who dedicate their lives to it are capable of doing justice to this difficult art. However, the event was well publicized and came off with a great deal of ceremony, including guitar recitals by Andres Segovia, who played soleares on one occasion and served as one of the judges in the contest. There were some positive results from the contest: A number of old cantes were recorded and saved for posterity, and a couple of artists, one in his seventies and the other twelve years old, were given a great deal of publicity.

Flamencologists generally paint a picture of the flamenco opera period as a time when all that was heard were the falsetto voices of operatic psuedo-flamenco warblers who elaborately embellished the different forms of fandangos to the accompaniment of orchestra. One important writer (Felix Grande, Memorias del Flamenco, 1979) states, "Everything produced in this period cannot be called nauseating, but a good part of it can." Manuel de Falla, in a pamphlet written in conjunction with the Granada contest, summed up the view of many aficionados: "The majestic canto gravo [cante jondo; profound cante of yesteryear has degenerated into the ridiculous 'flamenquismo' of today. The sober vocal modulation, the natural inflexions of the song that result from the divisions and subdivisions of sound has become an artificial, ornamented trend that is more like the decadence of the worst Italian epoch than like the primitive cantes of the Orient, with which our songs can be compared only when they are pure." Creativity during this period is considered to have been limited in the cante to the operatic fandango, the Latin guajira, columbianas, and milongas, and the orchestral form of the zambra.

But good flamenco was not completely extinct. Many great artists in this "era of the Ninos", as a great cantaor put it (so called for the many artists who put Nino before their names such as Nino Marchena, Nino de Huelva, Nino Sabicas, Nino Ricardo, La Nina de la Puebla, etc.), were able to adapt to the new situation and bridge the gap between the old and the new; some of them became great stars, recorded extensively, and made a great deal of money. Manolo Caracol ( the contest winner) was one of them. Another was the great Pastora Pavon, "la Nina de los Peines" ("Girl of the Combs," named for a verse she made famous), who is considered to be flamenco's greatest female singer in spite of the fact that she was extremely popular and commercially successful throughout the opera period. Pastora gave the public what it wanted, with fandangos and cuples (pop songs) in the rhythm of bulerias, but she almost always included some traditional flamenco on her records - different styles of soleares, siguiriyas, alegrias, bulerias, and tangos. She made a very large number of records between 1910 and 1940 and was accompanied by most of the great guitarists, from Luis Molina at the beginning of her career, through Ramon Montoya and, toward the end of her career Melchor de Marchena.

Another example is Antonio Mairena, recently deceased in his seventies and considered by many to be the greatest cantaor of recent times. Mairena, or Nino Rafael as he was called in his early years, knew a great many of the traditional cantes, but was forced to sing pop music to earn a living. In his book, Las Confesiones de Antonio Mairena, (1976), he describes a typcial situation: Mairena had been offered the chance to make four records in Barcelona and had had prepared a program of flamenco including seguiyiras, soleares, alegrias and tangos. He writes: "But when I arrived in Barcelona and presented my program, the recording company told me not to even mention pure cantes, that I had to record four sides of fandangos and four of cuples por bulerias. That was an ordeal for me because I was not a fandango singer. Besides that, I had to learn the words and melodies of the cuples and, in order to avoid lapses of memory, I had to record with a music stand in front of me, like some musician or I don't know what!"

The guitar blossomed during this time. At the forefront was Ramon Montoya (c. 1880-1949), a gypsy who lived most of his life in Madrid and greatly influenced all guitarists who came after him; both Sabicas and Mario Escudero played a great deal of Montoya's music on their early records. He developed his style while playing for singers in the cafes cantantes. Later he was influenced by the playing of the classical guitarists Francisco Tarrega and Miguel Llobet, he began to incorporate classical techniques into his playing. Montoya is credited with creating the four-fingered tremolo now used in flamenco and with introducing more complex arpeggios and picados (single note passages); he also developed the left hand for playing his many difficult creations. Montoya composed many melodies that are now considered standard or "traditional" and was the creator of a flamenco form, the rondena for guitar, that is now part of the standard repertoire. Montoya alternated between accompanying the great singers in private parties, recording with most of the top artists, and giving solo recitals around the world. He also recorded some guitar duets with Amalio Cuenca, a soloist who had been one of the judges in the Granada contest.

Other guitarists included Nino Ricardo, one of the greatest influences on flamenco guitar between Ramon Montoya and the moderns. Ricardo made a living playing with orchestras and operatic singers, but on the side he created profound flamenco music. There was also Manolo Badajoz, who preferred private parties to theatrical performances. Others include Miguel Borrull, Luis Yance, Luis Marvilla, Esteban Sanlucar, whose flamenco compositions are still played by concert artists. Melchor de Marchena, was quite a virtuoso in his youth, but then became the exemplary subdued and emotional accompanist in his later years from the 1950's into the 1970's.

The great guitarist, Agustin Castellon, "Sabicas", brought the music of Ramon Montoya to the Americas and probably as a result of his long association with the gypsy dancer Carmen Amaya developed a strongly rhythmic style, in contrast to Ramon Montoya's more free and lyrical approach. In the 1940s and 1950s Sabicas added many new forms to the solo guitar repertoire that had previously only been sung or danced, including verdiales, zambra, garrotin, sevillanas, columbianas, milongas and guajiras.

Under the influence of these guitarists, solo flamenco guitar music gradually became more elaborate, lyrical and technical. The trend would reach its peak in the early 1960s, largely outside of Spain, with feeble attempts to play flamenco on classical guitars and to fuse the music with jazz or rock and roll. But in Spain another force had been brewing: Manuel Serrapi ("Nino Ricardo") had a style of playing that was very different from that of Ramon Montoya. The technique was equally developed, but the sound was hard and dissonant. Nino Ricardo's music would influence a generation of guitarists and eventually mold the early playing of a guitarist who was to revolutionize flamenco: Paco de Lucia.

Not all of the great artists were able to make the transition to the new commercial flamenco. As we saw. Antonio Chacon fell victim to the very phenomenon that he helped create. The great, although eccentric, gypsy singer Manuel Torre could not sing unless he was "a gusto" (in the mood) and thus could not sing in scheduled performances. Torre retired to Sevilla with the greyhounds, pocket watches, and fighting cocks he loved so much, earning a meager living from occasional private fiestas. Another who could not perform unless conditions were to his liking was Tomas Pavon, the brother of La Nina de los Peines. Many dance stars of an earlier period also fell on hard times, including La Macarrona, La Malena, and La Gamba. These artists were so poor that they had to rent a dress if they managed to find a job dancing for private fiesta.

Two guitarists who fell into the category of non-theatrical performers were Manolo de Huelva and Javier Molina. Manolo de Huelva was called amazing by those who heard him, but was a mystery to most of the flamenco world because he would not record or teach his music. He was reluctant to play in front of other guitarists. For most of his career Manolo played only for private fiestas and in the latter part of his life became even more secretive and reclusive. Javier Molina was born in 1868 and therefore played at the peak of the cafe cantante period. He was instrumental in the development of modern flamenco, having taught Nino Ricardo, Perico el del Lunar, and he influenced Ramon Montoya, who admired him greatly. Molina continued to perform until 1940 and taught guitar until his death in 1956. He never really participated n the theater flamenco and lived primarily from private fiestas.

The most important means of survival for the gypsy artists and other flamencos who were not temperamentally suited to public performance was the private fiesta or juerga. Juergas ad existed since the early days of the cafe cantante. Most cafes, as well as many bars and inns, had back rooms called eservos that could be used for private parties. A table and a few chairs or benches created the environment for gatherings of four to seldom more than fifteen people. There would be guitarist or two, a couple of cantaores, and a few aficionados, including those who would pay for the artists and supply the drinks. Dancers were seldom involved; the dance, if it occurred, would be spontaneous and non-professional. The juerga would typically begin at two or three o'clock in the morning, after the formal nightclub performances were over, (most flamenco shows in Spain today still begin after 11:00 p.m.) and would continue until the following morning or the next afternoon or go on for several days. Many flamencos were known for their ability to go for days without sleep and to drink almost continuously. The artists, often through drink or exhaustion, would sometimes exceed their normal capacity and reach heights of creativity that drove the onlookers to tears and states of ecstasy. These supreme moments of flamenco when the duende (spirit or "soul") is present and the music cuts straight to the heart, are what aficionados and artists constantly seek and strive for. The juergas were an important source of income for flamenco artists, but also involved exhausting and degrading work, as well as making the artists dependent upon the wealthy senoritos for their existence. In modern times, the juerga has lost its popularity as a way of life.

There were some attempts to revive traditional flamenco in the public eye. Several contests were held prior to the Spanish Civil War that began in 1936. In one contest, the Llave del Oro" (Gold Key) was awarded to the popular singer Manuel Vallejo, and in another the jury included singers Pepe el de la Matrona and Fernando el de Triana, the author of the first collection of flamenco biographies. (Flamenco artists take their names in many ways. Pepe took he name of his mother, Manolita "La Matrona," and Fernando took the name of his home town, Triana.) Prizes went to the traditional cantaor, Perico de Cadiz, and to other singers or fandangos. Whatever their intentions, these contests awarded prizes primarily to commercially successful fandango singers.

Another typical attempt to present the "pure" flamenco was touring company that included La Nina de los Peines, the guitarists Ramon Montoya, Luis Yance, and Nino Ricardo, and the dancers La Macarrona and El Cojo de Malaga (The Lame one from Malaga). However, the show, which was presented in bullrings, was of the "opera" variety.

After the Civil War, the singer Conchita Piquer revived a show called "Las Calles deCadiz" (The Streets of Cadiz) that had first been conceived and performed by La Argentinita in 1933. The show featured old-time performers, some of whom had to come out of retirement, in a re-creation of the streets of the flamenco barrio of Santa Maria in Cadiz at the turn of the century. The revived version included many fine artists: La Nina de los Peines, her husband Pepe Pinto, Pericon de Cadiz, dancers La Malena and La Macarrona (then in their sixties and seventies), and the guitarists Melchor de Marchena and Nino Ricardo. For five years the show toured throughout Spain demonstrating that this type of flamenco still had an audience. But even shows of this type were influenced by the modern style (Pepe Pinto, for example, was a fandango singer), and it was only away from the public limelight that the traditional gypsy cante was preserved - in the bars and taverns and in the family gatherings, baptisms and weddings.

The final force in the internationalization of flamenco was the Civil War, which forced many artists to leave Spain. Carmen Amaya and her family went to South America, where they were a big success. The great guitarist Sabicas joined the Amaya company and did not return to Spain until the1960s He made his home in Mexico and the United States. Carlos Montoya came to America with a dance company and remained in New York. Vicente Escudero was in Paris and then America. Ramon Montoya gave guitar recitals in Paris, London, Switzerland, Brussels, and Buenos Aires. Many dance companies appeared in the year that followed the war, including those of La Argentinita, Pilar Lopez, and Rosario and Antonio. Eventually foreign dancers created their own dance companies and achieved international renown. From Mexico came Luiillo, Roberto Iglesias, and Ximenez-Vargas, and from the United States, Jose Greco. The international popularity of Spanish dance indirectly helped to bring this "theater" epoch to an end.

The decadent "theater-opera" period of flamenco began to lose steam in the late 1940s and gradually came to an end in the 1950s. This decline was due to several factors. The foreign public had responded to the emotional impact of the flamenco dances presented by the Spanish ballet companies and, consequently, the companies began to feature more flamenco. Tourist began to flock to Spain, expecting to see the exciting "Gypsy" dance. In 1950 the first tablao de flamenco, El Cortijo del Guajiro, opened in Sevilla. The tablao was 5imilar to the old cafe cantante in that it presented shows of flamenco dance, song, and guitar. One difference was that the dance was the center of attention. The cante and guitar served primarily to support the baile. In 1954, La Zambra opened in Madrid. The Zambra was a tablao that attempted to present the purest possible forum of flamenco. In that sense, one is reminded of the cafe cantante of Silverio - one of the first to present pure flamenco, but then eventually to close, unable to compete with the more commercial establishments; the Zambra closed in the mid-1970s.

The Zambra and many other tablaos that opened soon after were only one element in a sudden surge of interest in "pure" or "traditional" flamenco. Two contests in Cordoba, one in 1956 and another in 1959, revealed some new and some old cantaores who could majestically perform the traditional cante. Young Fosforito, who would be an important figure for decades to come, showed himself to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the cante, while the gypsies, Juan Talegas and Fernanda de Utrera, revealed the pure cante gitano that had been hidden from public view for so long. These contests showed the way to many others, and eventually to the phenomenon of the festival.

In 1955, a French recording company asked the guitarist at the Zambra, Perico el del Lunar, to help them record an anthology of pure cante flamenco. The resulting collection of nearly forgotten cantes, sung by some of the most knowledgeable cantaores of the day, won the prize for best record in France and sold successfully around the world. The next decade saw the recording of many anthologies, studious collections of cantes on two to seven records, often with one or two whole sides devoted to different styles of a single cante.

An American, Donn Pohren, wrote two books, The Art of Flamenco (1962) and Lives and Legends of Flamenco (1964), that presented a strong case for the traditional or "old- style" flamenco, and when they sold widely outside of Spain, these books helped to feed the fire of "purity". Enthusiasts began to come to Spain looking for "authentic" flamenco.

Traveling dance companies, particularly that of Jose Greco, began to bring high quality noncommercial flamenco artists to the audiences of the world. Thus, a kind of renaissance of flamenco occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. Flamenco was popular around the world, records of traditional cante were available in American supermarkets, and no "coffee house" was complete without a resident flamenco guitarist.

In Spain, at the same time, recordings were preserving many of the old cantes for posterity and intellectual aficionados were writing books that dealt seriously with flamenco, tracing its origins and analyzing its forms. Antonio Mairena, considered by many to be the most important cantaor of our time, and writer Ricardo Molina wrote in their definitive encyclopedic study of flamenco, Mundo y Formas del Flamenco (1964): "The regression of the fandango and the cuple and the growing rise in the traditional flamenco cante is an undeniable fact. Each day, the atmosphere of aficion is better."

When tablaos opened up all over Spain, tourists flocked to them to see the "real" flamenco. In the early 1960s, Donn Pohren opened a ranch near Sevilla where foreigners could go to experience and learn flamenco and to listen to the guitar playing of Diego del Gastor, an eccentric genius with his own style of playing. Diego had been virtually unknown outside of the local area, but soon became probably the most widely recorded flamenco guitarist who has ever lived … although only on the portable tape recorders of the foreigners who went to Moron de la Frontera to hear him, for he would not make records.

During this twenty year renaissance period, the emphasis was on the rediscovery and preservation of the old flamenco that had been in danger of being lost. Flamenco clubs called penas flamencas began to spring up all over Spain. In the penas, the aficionados gathered to listen to cante - live or recorded - and to discuss the relative merits, interpretation or history of each style, or each letra (verse). The 1958 founding of the Catedra de Flamencologia in Jeres de la Frontera established a center for the study, preservation, and promotion of flamenco in its purest form. In addition to maintaining the center and a flamenco museum, the Catedra has each year since sponsored flamenco courses in guitar and dance, presented flamenco recitals and concerts, and awarded national prizes to the top artists and flamenco media (books, records, radio shows).

In spite of this great emphasis on history and tradition, a number of elements were coalescing that would bring about a revolution in flamenco. The tablaos had a profound effect on the art. Many, if not most, of today's top artists started their careers in the tablaos. Because of the emphasis given to the dance, the cante and guitar developed in a manner that was suitable for dance. For the cante, that meant becoming more markedly rhythmical and cuadro. That is, having one line of song to one compas or rhythmic cycle, instead of stretched out over two or more compases as it had been in the old cante. Therefore, the cante was less free and less subtle than in the past. This way of singing has been highly criticized by the older cantaores, but has become the most common and acceptable manner of singing today. There has also been a clarification of cante styles in recent years. (The cante has always been the basis for classifying flamenco forms; the guitar and dance forms are based on the cante.) Names have been standardized, and distinctions between cantes have been made more definite. An example would be the tangos and tientos, which were practically indistinguishable twenty years ago and were called tangos flamencos, tangos gitanos, tangos canasteros, tientos canasteros, tientos antiguos, and tientos por zambra. This clarification was encouraged not only by the tablaos, but also by the tremendous amount of recording that had been done, and by the study and writings of intellectual aficionados.

The guitar also felt the impact of the dance. In order to accompany song and dance in noisy tablaos without amplification, the guitarist developed new, more powerful strumming techniques which emphasized rhythm. A leader in this area was a guitarist out of the caves of Granada, Juan Maya "Marote," who did a great deal to popularize a strongly rhythmical approach to dance accompaniment. However, the guitarist of the 1980s seldom takes the liberties with rhvthm that were the trademarks of great song accompanists of the past like Ramon Montoya or Melchor de Marchena. The result has been a certain loss of expressiveness. This loss was made up in other areas. As dancers searched for ever more complicated steps, guitarists learned from them and vice versa. The result was a mutual exchange in an era of great counter-time complexlty.

A number of important guitrists emerged on the Spanish scene in the 1960s. Sabicas, who had been away from Spain for thirty years, was exposed to Spaniards by American guitarists, through his records, and finally with his triumphant return to his native land in the late 1960s. Victor Monje "Serranito," a musically complex flamenco guitarist, created an awesome, innovative technique (among other things, three-finger picados and plucking with back or up strokes of the thumb - alzapau) and very complex contrapuntal music. (Flamenco is traditionally linear or melodic rather than harmonic.) Even Diego del Gastor made himself felt, in part through his nephew, Paco del Gastor, who took the highly improvisational, flowing style of playing that was characteristic of Diego to Madrid, where it was admired by the younger generation of guitarists. Paco de Lucia had been acquiring a reputation from the time he was twelve years old, and the appearance of his first solo album in the late 1960s marked the real start of the flamenco guitar revolution. We can never be certain where Paco's ideas came from, but this record showed the flamenco world a technique unmatched in the history of the art. He developed a new music that would eventually incorporate new ideas in counterpoint and counter time, lush harmonies and suspended tones, and finally, jazz and Latin melodies, scales, and chord structures. Paco redefined the rhythms of bulerias, tangos, and rumbas in a flurrv of records that followed. He brought flamenco to national attention in Spain with a hit recording of a rumba, "Entre Dos Aguas," and then conquered the whole world through his collaborations with the rock group "Santana," and with Larry Coryell, Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin and Chick Corea. Equally important was Paco de Lucia's collaboration with a young genius of the cante, Camaron de la Isla, who became the most influential singer of the 1970s. Camaron sang like nobody before him, which a great knowledge and incredible sense of rhythm, with charisma and a style that had strong Arabic overtones, a wailing lament, dissonant and sorrowful. Paco and Camaron made a dozen or so records in which Paco de Lucia rewrote the book on flamenco. They became bigger than life "stars," worshipped and imitated by the younger generation.

The three articles are very interesting as a record of the changes the Old School has seen. I just found a theatrical program from the 1950s when Antonio and Rosario came to England, and like Luisillo and Teresa,introduced stage shows which were the nearest to flamenco the English had seen or heard. Luisillo gave a show in Portsmouth in his tour in 1950, with Antonio Mairena singing, accompanied by guitarist Angel Iglesias, who also played solos. He was the first live flamenco guitarist I had ever met backstage, and Mairena later became one of my flamenco idols. Has anyone else heard of Angel Iglesias?
El Niño de B

O Ninho de B wrote:The three articles are very interesting as a record of the changes the Old School has seen. I just found a theatrical program from the 1950s when Antonio and Rosario came to England, and like Luisillo and Teresa,introduced stage shows which were the nearest to flamenco the English had seen or heard. Luisillo gave a show in Portsmouth in his tour in 1950, with Antonio Mairena singing, accompanied by guitarist Angel Iglesias, who also played solos. He was the first live flamenco guitarist I had ever met backstage, and Mairena later became one of my flamenco idols. Has anyone else heard of Angel Iglesias?
El Niño de B

I just found Angel on Youtube..... the world is full of unknown great musicians... I try not to think about it because it really does upset me.
Saludos
Tomás

Ninho,

Angel Iglesias and, interestingly enough, Vicente Gomez studied together with Quintin Esquembre, a former pupil of Francisco Tárrega. Both guitarists where equally adept at playing classical and flamenco and actually performed together.
You can find out more about Angel Iglesias on Matanya Ophee's webite:

www.editionsorphee.com/
click on the guitar and lute issues online magazine link
click on guitar issues link

There seems to be a long history of Spanish guitarists that played both classical and flamenco going all the way back to Julian Arcas who was an excellent guitarists,composer,teacher and major influence on Francisco Tarrega. The division between classical and flamenco guitarists appears to have been created by Andres Segovia.