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

Up Close & Personal with Juan del Gastor

Imagine, if you can, the unbridled joy felt in the hearts of Seattle flamenco stalwarts at the announcement that the UW would be hosting consecutive “lecture-demos” by Juan del Gastor and, a scant four days later, Juan Cañizares! Hooray for higher education! For all you poor souls out there who were unable to attend, here’s my little narrative—and some audio clips—of the event. And undoubtedly some commentary, but hey—it’s my blog. A second post on Cañizares will be soon to follow.

By any fair account, Juan del Gastor is flamenco gitano. To say that he merely “plays” gypsy style flamenco guitar is, I think, to understate the case. He is the nephew of Diego del Gastor, the famed 60’s icon of Morón de la Frontera and, as far as flamenco gitano is concerned, is a (if not the) definitive authority. The Morón style of flamenco (of which Diego was the de facto patriarch) is characterized by an almost pathological emphasis on compás. This isn’t to say that it has as better sense of “rhythm” than other styles of flamenco (they’re all pretty much pathological when it comes to “staying in compás”), but the Morón style pays more attention to feeling—and transmitting—the compás itself. A player in this style has little use for churning out bar after bar of 64^th note runs. In fact, here’s Juan himself, speaking about speed as it relates to the style of his uncle (I’m not transcribing this because I think the way he tells it is just too good):

I love the fact that he says “no!” six times—and really, how would I even convey in words that other thing he does? (The translator here, by the way, is Juan’s wife, Lucy Edwards—who is, by the looks of it, the model of patience). Anyway, Juan goes on to say that he has nothing against speed in guitar playing, but simply that it’s not what flamenco gitano is about. For those of you into categorizing, you might think of flamenco gitano as a counterpart to the virtuoso strain of flamenco started by Ramon Montoya and Niño Ricardo—and continued by, among others, Juan Cañizares (and of course by the names you already know so well: Paco de Lucia, Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, etc.)

But enough of my idle chatter! Let’s have some clips! Juan played six songs altogether. He’s doing both the playing and the singing here—and if you think that’s easy, I encourage you to try it! The songs speak for themselves, of course, but I should explain that in the last number, the buleria, the guitar stops because Juan, at this point, could no longer stay in his seat: he puts the guitar down, stands up, and starts dancing and doing palmas. He eventually comes down off the stage and, bringing Lucy down with him to dance, finishes the song in the aisle:

And there you have it!

Now go play!

~A

Some Ruminations on Playing with Other Musicians

More and more these days I've been sitting in on dance classes accompanied by my colleague Markus Kolb--and it reminds me of the importance of really listening to the people you play with (and sometimes--if they don't mind--even recording them). Even if you think you're "better" than them (which is certainly not the case between Markus and me!) it still pays to keep an ear tuned in others' direction: you may or may not learn anything new about technical prowess, but this is just one small (and notoriously overrated) facet of good flamenco playing. Discovering something insightful in the way a person interprets a palo or a piece is always possible--in any case, a closed mind (and ears) could well lead you to miss a lot of prime learning opportunities.

I think this hit home for me while I was noodling around with a friend of mine, JP Shields, who is an accomplished classical guitarist (and, on an unrelated note, has a dazzling collection of functional and stylish footwear). We had just finished an interview (soon to be appearing on the main Ravenna Flamenco site) and, as one is wont to do, had picked up some guitars for a bit of music. We traded songs for a while and I finally played him a snippet of a Sabicas piece I had been working on. He was immediately curious about my tremolo. It wasn't the basic time difference between classical and flamenco tremolos (i.e. 4 stroke versus 5 stroke), however, but rather the spacing of my notes that intrigued him. We scrutinized the passage a bit and found, finally, that what I had been doing, if one were to transcribe it, would look more like pick-up notes before the bass tone instead of an even distribution of five equally spaced notes. Instead of cruising along at a steady pace, my tremolo notes tumble into the base, then pause just a hair before starting up again. I can, of course, play the notes evenly, but I don't: it doesn't sound right--it doesn't fit the piece. Yet I was oblivious to the fact until JP pointed it out.

Now JP is far and away the superior guitarist between the two of us--and there's no false modesty here; this is a simple fact. But he didn't approach his listening (to my playing) as if he already knew what I was going to do. Granted, an experienced teacher may well be able to describe the particular difference we finally figured out, but my point is that sometimes the things that "sound right" are things we do without thinking, are a matter not of "right or wrong," but of interpretation. And that's where listening comes in--good listening may be the only way to pick those things up.

The point of all of this, I suppose, is that I'm coming to appreciate a new way of approaching listening and emulation. I'm pretty shameless these days about trying to duplicate just about anything that sounds interesting that comes from the fingerboards of my colleagues. The way I look at it, if something catches my ear, there is undoubtedly a learning opportunity. Granted, I will eventually look for a way to incorporate whatever it is I've picked up into my own "aire," but as I'm still very much figuring out what that aire is, this still leaves all sorts of open doors. In any case, being sensitive to these sorts of subtleties--no matter what one's playing situation is--strikes me as a fine way to build a richer, more varied musical archive.

Now if only I could figure out where JP gets his shoes.

~A.