September 24, 2006 4:09pm
It's 10:09am on Monday as I type these words. Good morning! So I had a pretty satisfying weekend. It wasn't wild in the sense of going out every night, in fact I didn't even go out at all, well OK I did hang out with my dancers on Friday and Saturday nights for a little while after the gigs but that's about it.
Yesterday (Sunday), I was invited to play for a flamenco workshop taught by dancer Juan del Valle. It took place at Cindy's house where she has a beautiful dance studio, as you can see in da pics, plus she has a professional quality sound system that I of course happily used to the delight of myself and the dance students.
So what did we work on? Take a guess!
September 24, 2006 4:35pm
We touched on everything including technique and choreography but the focus was on flamenco structure and communication. The thing is that no matter who you study with, eventually you have to learn about the different sections of a letra and the different sections of the baile and how each of those sections function and how it's all put together.
It's a lot of information to digest and I imagine that most flamenco teachers all over the world probably just gloss over structure in the beginning stages for practical and economic reasons. Unless you grew up listening to cante, it's usually difficult to understand the different sections. And spending a class session talking about cante would probably scare away most dance students who, let's face it, are there to learn some cool moves and choreography.
Most dance students will not become performers anyway and that's OK. So the idea of learning about cante doesn't interest most of them. It's too bad though cuz while it does take a major effort to learn it, in the end a deeper more thorough knowledge of flamenco makes you appreciate the experience a whole lot more.
It's like the difference between looking at Van Gogh's Starry Night and simply saying "Oh look, how pretty!" versus being able to appreciate how his broad quickly applied impasto brush strokes, although washing out visual details in the representational sense, still captures all the emotional essence. Well, OK, I might still say "Oh look, how pretty!" but I'll have an idea about why it is visually appealing because I have a deeper understanding.
Acquiring this knowledge about cante is not for the sake of being an intellectual snob. Far from it. Thing is that people who were born and raised in the flamenco culture understand all this instinctively and therefore don't have to think about it. We outsiders have to make up for not growing up around flamenco by immersing ourselves in it as much as our busy lives will allow. So we listen CD's all the time, go to every flamenco show and party we can make it to, visit Spain etc. And if we're really fortunate, we go take workshops and learn about structure whenever they're offered.
September 24, 2006 5:18pm
But it's like music theory. Yeah it can be very very boring at times to learn theory but it gives you a deeper understanding and appreciation. And once you've internalized it, it becomes instinctive and you don't have to think about it, although subconsciously you still are!
Think about it. There are lots of very talented musicians out there who can't read a single note of music but the truth is that they have a deep understanding of music. They may not be able to verbally describe the difference between an Italian augmented sixth chord and the garden variety first inversion dominant, but they instinctively know because they can hear it. It's because they not only know have an understanding of music but more importantly, they can apply this instinctive knowledge to making music.
TIP: look through your collection of flamenco CD's (what, you don't have any? tsk tsk tsk) and find one that has a booklet with the letras. Play the CD and follow along with the words in the letra and take notice of several things:
1. How many lines are in the letra?
2. Which lines, if any, are typically repeated?
3. How many compases does it take to sing each line?
4. Also carefully listen to music of the guitar that accompanies each line. Do you notice that it's basically the same for each letra with occasional variations?
This'll take some work but if you do this exercise a couple of days a week (or everday if you're serious), soon you'll start to notice recurring patterns and that's a sign that you're starting to hear the structure. Then you'll go to class one day and your teacher will decide to play a cante CD for the class and at one point will point out, "Everyone listen. This is the first line of the letra and this is the respiro," and you'll quietly smile to yourself cuz something just clicked in your mind cuz you now "get" what your teacher is trying so hard to make the students understand.
OK, end of lecture. Whew! Oh yeah, getting back to talking about yesterday's workshop...it was very very good. I like Juan as a teacher because he strives to provide a friendly learning environment.
At one point, some of the less accomplished students quietly excused themselves from the class when they couldn't keep up. But Juan encouraged them to come back and suggested that they focus on what they could pick up. For example if they were still struggling with the "mechanics" of flamenco technique, they could focus on one particular movement or two instead of wracking their brains trying to simultaneously memorize and execute a complicated routine.
What I especially liked was Juan's way of presenting the concepts of flamenco structure. Truth is that the ideas of the traditional structure are the same no matter who you learn it from--the modern and more advanced variations can be learned later, but it's like a journey in that you have to know where you starting from (i.e. traditional structure) before you can take off to a new destination (modern and advanced variations).
The important thing for the teacher to do is to present it in a way that the students can easily and quickly grasp the ideas of flamenco structure and Juan does this rather well. Well, OK, this is the only Juan del Valle workshop I've been to, but so far I was impressed. He knows his stuff and knows how to teach.
I'm not guaranteeing it'll happen every time, but by the end of the workshop some of the students were already able to hear the cues in the music. They also learned about giving cues to the singer and guitarist and it's just a matter of practice and internalization before they can confidently apply it in a performance situation. That's where I came in. Of course, having live music in the workshop allowed Juan to explain and demonstrate concepts about communicating with guitarists. So the dancers also developed a deeper appreciation for live guitar too. Thank you Juan!
Anywayz, all this blogging has made me work up an appetite. :-) Let's get some food, shall we? After the workshop, Cindy and family served us a smorgasbord of delicious home cooked food, yum!
September 24, 2006 6:30pm
As for tonight, I'll be at Cafe Citron as usual. See you there!
P.S. in case you're wondering, I didn't announce this workshop on my website cuz it was a private workshop. If you want to arrange a private lesson or a group workshop, contact Juan del Valle yourself.
Just realized that today is the 
