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An interview with...

Marija Temo title image
image of Marija Temo Marija is a multi-talented flamenco artist who not only plays guitar, she also sings and dances!

Her unique perspective in this art form and her desire to teach has helped many dance, guitar and cante students get past the common miscommunication problems so they can focus on the art of flamenco. Her Flamenco Communication workshop has been featured at the University of New Mexico International Flamenco Festival and around the USA.

Let's take a peek into Marija's mind, shall we?

What general advice would you give to guitarists playing for beginning dancers?

When accompanying a beginning dance class, play very straightforward compás. Beginning dance students are thinking about many things at the same time. They’re learning arm movements and how to coordinate them with footwork. Some of them will even tune you out. Be very patient. You’ll have a chance to try the fancy stuff later once the dancers have learned the basics.

OK...how about some general advice for beginning dancers.

  • Listen to the flamenco guitar as much as possible in dance class and outside of class.
  • Understand on what beat the chord changes occur in the compás, so you can learn to hear the compás without counting.
  • As soon as you can, start learning your steps with live guitar accompaniment.
I started with dance then guitar and then singing. As a dance student, I learned what I needed to hear from the guitarist's accompaniment and vice-versa. Until you have seen it from both perspectives, you don’t realize what the other needs in order to accompany and complement one another effectively.

The guitarists are intently watching the dancers' arm movements and listening to the rhythm of their footwork.

  • They are looking for cues that indicate how that certain movement or rhythm corresponds with their accompaniment and how they can appropriately complement it with their playing.
  • Dancers on the other hand should be able to stress the primary accents clearly within their footwork patterns so that the guitarist will be able to clearly hear and complement the pulse that is being executed within the steps.
Most of the time as dance teachers are presenting a routine to their students, they are singing the cante melody in their head. Frequently, students are completely unaware of this and just blindly learn the steps. Furthermore, they leave the class emoting the steps, not realizing the function of the steps and that it is a response to what is going on in the cante.

It’s beyond just emoting steps, we need to know how to communicate and improvise and inspire one another because of what we do, where we put it and WHY. We’re taking people on a musical and emotional journey in flamenco.

What’s the first thing a guitarist should learn to accompany singers?

  • Start by listening to the most traditional basic cante recordings.
  • Learn the melody and be able to hum it.
  • Then learn the basic chord structure for that particular cante.
An excellent practice is to make a tape of just one type of flamenco cante. Say, a tape of just bulerías. Then play the tape and just listen and listen and listen. You’ll eventually notice certain chord progressions that are used over and over as accompaniment to certain melodies in the cante.

You can’t do enough listening. The more you know about the structure of the cante, the more you can see how it all fits together.

When you are accompanying the singer, do not change the chord just because it’s the next one in the usual progression. Change the chord because you hear the cante melody RESOLVING to that chord.

For any given reason, patterns can and do change. For example a singer may take artistic license and surprise the listener by not giving what he is expecting to hear—-in effect taking the listener on a musical "detour."

Editor's note: Want more? Stay tuned. In the future, I'll be publishing more excerpts from this interview. For now, visit her website at http://marijatemo.com/ If you would like write to Marija, her email is marijatemo@juno.com
(Photo by Ken Ross. Permission to republish here courtesy of Marija Temo)
© 2000 by Michael Pérez