Paco de Lucia. Photo by Kornell

Paco de Lucia. Photo by Kornell.

Am still read­ing Geniuses Together, and it’s still excel­lent. Aside from the men­tion of bull­fight­ing, another thing made me think about Spain and fla­menco gui­tar music. Gertrude Stein once made the rather idio­syn­cratic obser­va­tion (for the 20s) that America is the old­est coun­try in the world, which is why so many of her best cre­ative minds left for Europe. She said we were down­right geri­atric in our ways. This on the heels of a major study (Civilization in the United States, edited by Harold Stearns in 1921) com­plain­ing about our all too rapid indus­tri­al­iza­tion and urban­iza­tion, which had cost us far too much in cre­ative mat­ters. Stein points out that we got there first, which is why we were so old. They both point out that the goal in the air was busi­ness devel­op­ment, not devel­op­ment of the soul. Harold Loeb added to the angst of that era by say­ing he was afraid that Europe was being Americanized. Which would mean the Old World could soon become geri­atric like the New World.

So the best young minds flocked to Europe in the 20s, iron­i­cally, the far younger artis­tic zone of the moment.

Flamenco gui­tar, for me, is youth writ large, writ pas­sion­ately, vibrantly – enthu­si­as­ti­cally young. But because there is a strong ele­ment of triste, even tragedy in the music, it is a youth­ful­ness with depth and vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Youthfulness with an edge. Music with a tragic sense of life. Cultures with that tragic sense of life at their core tend to cel­e­brate life more dra­mat­i­cally, more intensely, per­haps because they know that life is fleet­ing and can be taken away from us at any sec­ond. So why work qui­etly in a dark­ened cubi­cle for a quiet retire­ment in the dark when there’s danc­ing and song, wine and love to be found?

The music sounds like ath­letes are needed to play it. It sounds like only peo­ple who have lived pas­sion­ately, defi­antly, can or should play it. The riffs, the dra­matic highs and lows, the changes in rhythm and flow, make it baroque even now, even when mod­ern fla­menco greats like Paco de Lucia, Vicente Amigo and Gerardo Nunez play it.

And ath­letes are needed to dance to it.

Flamenco dancer, Belen Maya. Photo by Gilles Larrain

Flamenco dan­ger, Belen Maya. Photo by Gilles Larrain.

Paco de Lucia was born Francisco Sanchez Gomez in 1947. His birth­place is Algeciras, Spain. Many Flamenco afi­ciona­dos believe he’s the great­est liv­ing gui­tarist, and not just among Flamenco play­ers. The great­est gui­tarist, period. Though some fault him at times for mix­ing musi­cal styles and cross­ing over into other forms. For them, he is not “pure” enough, which strikes me as unfair and beside the point. Many of his albums con­tra­dict that assess­ment, as he returns to clas­si­cal themes often through­out the years. With Paco de Lucia, there is plenty of tra­di­tional, clas­si­cal fla­menco in his oeu­vre to enjoy for a life­time, and plenty of fusion with other forms to appeal to those who love a rich mélange.


Federico Garcia Lorca. 1916

Federico Garcia Lorca, cerca 1916.

Federico Garcia Lorca, the great Spanish poet and play­wright, was an afi­cionado of fla­menco, and worked hard dur­ing his all too brief life to col­lect gypsy and fla­menco songs, to pre­serve them and bring them to a wider audi­ence. Flamenco gui­tarists since his time have looked back to Garcia Lorca for inspi­ra­tion, as Paco de Lucia did in 1965, when he recorded his “12 Songs for Guitar by Garcia Lorca.” A great dis­cov­ery for me, while read­ing about Paco. Geniuses Together across time and artis­tic genre.

Spain is still young. Perhaps even younger now than it was in the 1920s. Its music still has the power to trans­form the moment into an explo­sive dance, a height­ened cel­e­bra­tion, a return to life as an explo­ration of pas­sion and the edge. Will America find its own youth again? Its own cre­ative fire? Its own con­nec­tion with its hid­den, miss­ing, imag­i­na­tive soul? Will it stop demand­ing go-​​along patri­o­tism and con­for­mity long enough to really lis­ten, truly lis­ten to its secret deep wells of artis­tic reserves and energies?

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