Flamenco night(s)

I’m in Morocco now, but haven’t finished writing up my experiences in Spain! So let me describe one of my days—the first, when I discovered flamenco.

When we arrived, I still felt…at sea. I had grown accustomed to my regular schedule during the ocean voyage, teaching class every day and eating three times a day in the 5th deck dining area. A reasonably demanding workload, but still pleasant. Suddenly, it became clear that to my students (and to many of my colleagues), the ocean routine was prologue to the main event. Everyone wanted to get the hell off the boat and on to Spain. This was disconcerting. What the hell would I do there?

Cadiz is an old-fashioned city connected to Spain only through a narrow isthmus. It had its more modern parts, which I only passed through on my way to the mainland. We spent all our time in the old city, a narrow, slightly confused passagework of alleys and lanes. On our first visit, we took the girls, which wasn’t easy: steering the weighty double stroller over narrow, bumpy sidewalks was exhausting. Often the narrowness of the sidewalk forced us onto the cobblestone streets, which was in some ways an improvement, but exposed us to the occasional motorbike or car roaring through the crowded streets.
We followed directions to a playground, all the way across town in a seaside park. We were apparently dressed appropriately: numerous signs read “No Talon,” illustrated by a high-heeled shoe with a slash through it. After letting the girls play on the jungle gym and swings, we pushed our way back to the main square for a generic lunch of pizza at the touristic time of 1:00. We left the girls on the ship, and found things much easier. (No wonder our shipboard colleagues looked so ecstatic when we had passed them earlier!) We made our way to a restaurant Nancy had looked up in a guidebook, Le Faro, and managed to talk our way to a table for two at 3:30—ordinary lunch time in Spain. It was a fabulous meal. In Cadiz, they have an excellent variety of fresh fish, as well as time-honored ways of preparing them. It was the kind of meal where a bite of black pasta—not the fish, but its accompaniment—was enough to cause me to stop, stunned, overwhelmed by the taste, unwilling to go on without absorbing every nuance in my memory.

That evening, I took my leave from the family to go off on my flamenco adventure. This was an “FDP” (Faculty Directed Practica) offered by the ship. We took of on a bus for Chiclana, a town that bordered Cadiz on the mainland. I had expected this to be a public event at the bullring, but found us heading into the countryside. Only on disembarking did I realize this event was a private function for SAS. Quaintly dressed waitresses greeted our arrival outside a tiny bullring with small glasses of Spanish sherry (or Coke). For the first course of our entertainment, we were herded inside a tiny bullring, about thirty feet across, barely large enough to hold our two busloads of students and faculty.
The first phase wasn’t promising. Two flamenco ballerinas emerged, to dance in synchronous precision to pre-recorded flamenco soundtracks. They often danced with—or at—a horse, with gestures that combined seduction (bestiality? Really?) with a stern flamenco air of control. An imperious young man dressed comically in traditional Andalusian horse wear kept the horse painfully in check. It wasn’t easy to watch. Bits of foam flying from the beast’s mouth made it clear that these “amusing” movements came from mistreatment. (I could imagine the horse thinking, “What the hell do I have to do to get a lump of sugar?”) The horseman came out by himself on a new steed, forcing it sideways across the ring and contorting it into new dance steps. It was cruel entertainment. It reminded me of a familiar critique of Spanish entertainment—the disdain toward animals, culminating in the ritual slaughter of the bull in the bullring.
In the “cow entertainment” that followed, a young boy came out dressed as a junior matador, facing an undersized two-year-old bull. Highly amusing for the crowd, who saw a harmless reduction of the real thing—especially when the bull, who looked as if he would rather be anywhere else, searched frantically for the exit. Yet it was also serious. The matador carefully worked for his points, trying to get the bull to charge his red cape, sometimes chasing him around the ring. But the bull had his moments as well, roughing up the young boy on several occasions—more with his head than his horns, to be sure, but it looked as though he would go home with large bruises on his thighs. One of my Spanish-speaking colleagues, Dan Duran, found out that that he was fourteen and that he’d been working his way toward matador-hood since he was nine. We were told to acclaim him as “toreador” at the end (just as we were instructed to yell “Ole!”) I felt like saying to the boy, “Yes, you are a man!” It was a crude jolt of testosterone excitement. But I wished him a better life than this.

We were then shepherded across an empty field—and past a water slide!—toward a restaurant, where what was promised as the “real” flamenco would be held. By this time I was confused. I had told my friend, Juan Zaglaz, that he could pick me up from the bullring at Chiclana—not from this out-of-the-way entertainment center, where it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find me. I’d been in touch with him by e-mail, but had made contact by phone just a few minutes before I left on the bus (because I’d forgotten to shift my cell phone from normal to “global”). By this time (c. 9:00,) I felt a painful need to see something different. Fortunately, in the restaurant, I saw the familiar stage set: chairs in a semi-circle—two in the rear (for the musicians), four on the side (for the dancers). Ah, traditional flamenco, I said. But they kept with their touristic entertainment. Again, the dancers (now three) were performing set pieces, matching recorded soundtracks with well-rehearsed movements. The dancing was fully competent, but I was growing angry at the absence of improvisation, wolfing down pieces of tapas (ham, quiche, crackers) in frustration. Finally the musicians arrived: the (male) guitarist and (female) singer, dressed in the casual black attire that seems like a cross between classical dress and Johnny Cash attitude. The pieces were still aimed toward a pop audience—all in 2/4, all featuring well-rehearsed movements, featuring backbeats that struck me as closer to MTV than flamenco. Who wants to see this kind of fake ballet, I thought? Unfortunately, everyone else in the audience. They had the flamenco “look” down pat (that fearsome glare) and were raising a sweat, but toward what end? A male dancer—elegantly tell, shockingly thin—joined the troupe. His dancing had a professional flair, but he seemed to be there as a contrast to the female dancers, dancing with them one on one.

I took off for the hallway, trying once again to get to Juan. He was driving around—getting closer, his friend Teresa said, but still not sure where I was. The restaurant was huge—taking a wrong turn, I found myself I the middle of a Spanish wedding reception. When I returned to the hall, things had suddenly changed. The music shifted to 6/8; the dancers were clapping accompaniment. The male dancer had taken charge. His improvisation—unexpected bursts of sixteenth notes, abrupt movements—had taken things to the next level. Having satisfied the crowd (and thus met the requirements of the gig), the troupe had shifted to the music they liked best. Everyone was listening and reacting and improvising: the guitarist played more experimentally and the singer, previously confined to a stool, now stood up aggressively. It was a splendid twenty-minute set.
Watching the beginning, I feared having to tell my students on the ship something like, “You didn’t see the real flamenco.” Now I saw that they had seen flamenco: they simply saw it from the conventional middle-class position. Flamenco musicians had been doing this kind of gig since the mid nineteenth century—selling it to bourgeois audiences, who loved hearing it in bizarre mixtures like the cafes concertes and opera flamenco. Nothing wrong with that—especially if such gigs helped flamenco musicians survive. This group was certainly doing well. At the end, the singer surprised us all by joining the dancers with superb, expert movements—after all, guitarists are often singers, singers are often dancers, dancers are certainly musicians. Thorough professionals.

As the SAS students moved on to dancing to a kind of flamenco disco, I looked for Juan. I first walked out to the bullring, the place we had initially entered. It was deserted, but under the full moon, the path was mot difficult to find. But the gate was locked. Only on walking back did I discover that the real entrance was in front of the restaurant. By the time I got out on the parking lot, Juan pulled in, and I ducked into his black Citroen. Juan is a young man I’d “met” through the Internet. He’s a graduate student, and guitarist, working on a dissertation dealing (among other things) with “Body and Soul” in the years 1935-1945. He’d interviewed me by e-mail (and I wrote my response carefully, hoping he’d return the favor). He knows my book and seemed tremendously dedicated. He was thrilled to devote his evening to me, taking me wherever I wanted to go. Merely getting to this spot was no easy business: after finding the bullring in Chiclana (and figuring out that nothing was happening), he worked his way to “El Postino” (the name I’d given him) and finally found people at a gas station willing to scrawl a map on the back of a napkin. He took us to Jerez de la Frontera—the birthplace of flamenco, as well as the headquarters of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. He wanted me to meet a friend of his, Salva, a guitarist with deeper connections to flamenco (Juan’s interest is more in fusion). We drove aimlessly around Jerez for a while (Juan had no map) and eventually worked our way downtown, where we had tapas (including Andalusian fried fish—the Brits, I was told, had stolen the idea for “fish and chips” from them). By midnight Salva joined us—a burly, friendly fellow with a thick beard and T-shirt. The conversation was interesting. Salva spoke no English, I no Spanish; both Juan and Teresa were in the middle, occasionally speaking in one or the other language. But we got along famously, absorbing information through body gestures and some inner knowledge of music.

By 1:00, we made our way to the bullring, home to a large flamenco festival—the 42nd Festival de la Bulieras. The sound was excellent: you could hear it from a half mile away. The door to the ring was open, so we could see the music distantly on stage; but hired security people kept us from entering (we hadn’t paid the 15 or so Euros to get in). Hoping for better treatment later, we went to a neighboring peña—empty, of course (everyone was in the bullring). It looked like a former warehouse, with twenty-foot ceilings. We had more Spanish sherry and heard excellent recorded flamenco, punctuated occasionally by expert handclapping by the waiter passing by. Everyone here seemed to know this music.

By 2:00, we went out again. The music was still going on—indeed, this festival, which had started around 10, was packed. People felt free to go back home for refreshments, passing by us to rejoin the entertainment. Teresa (a slender friend of Juan’s from childhood) finally convinced one of the security guards to let us in. It was a huge band—a panoply of flamenco virtuoso all-stars, all apparently from Jerez. From left to right: about three handclappers and a singer, a flutist and violinist, a percussionist playing a flamenco drum set (hand drums, cymbal), two to three guitarists, a bass guitarist. In front (and moving around the stage) was a spectacular male dancer. If the people at Il Postino were thorough professionals, these people were magicians. Everything blended together beautifully. The singer’s voice was always in place, penetrating the texture with his poetic song. The dancer reacted to everything with subtle yet abrupt movements that always climbed to a climax and ended with a spectacularly timed downbeat. The guitarist (and bassist) worked with the drummers to set up an effortless groove. It was effortlessly improvised, yet spiced with bits of complex composed riffs that sounded a good deal like Chick Corea (after all, he had just done a tour with flamenco artists last year!)
The thing that amazed me was how wide the web was that contained this improvisation, and how well all these bits fit together. It attracted a much wider web than jazz. There were many more women there than anyone would have found at any jazz festival, many with their babies, still awake and wide-eyed in their strollers! For those unmoved by the “jazzier” virtuoso playing of the instrumentalists, there was still a lot of singing, the poetry, and dancing. To my ear, it was intensely complicated, some of the deepest musical interaction I’ve seen on stage. Yet its appeal lay far beyond the nerdy musician crowd. Perhaps this large, Andalusian populace heard in it an expression of cultural identity. I can’t say I have the answers. At quarter to three, after hearing a solid set, I had to call it quits. Juan got me back on the ship around four, leaving me just a few hours sleep before the next day’s FDP (a bus tour of the “white towns” to the north). But my mind felt blown open. Somehow, in some way, I had to get back in touch with this music. Thank you, Juan (and Salve and Teresa)!