Sketch of one of many redesign ideas. August 30, 2007 11:15pm

Long time readers of DCFlamenco know that I used to do a redesign of the website once a year and would unveil the new look on or about the anniversary (January 10th). Nowadays with more than 500 pages in the site, a redesign gets to be a major task. Not that I don't want to do it, but I have to go beyond just adding a few fancy graphics here and there. When I do a redesign that affects my whole site, I have to think it through carefully and balance the considerations between achieving a more modern look and making it easy to navigate and most importantly: making it easy for me to keep up to date. Let's face it, I'm a busy guy and if updating the site is a pain in the butt, I'm going to procrastinate and eventually fall behind on my work and we don't want that!

I'm just thinking out loud here cuz I just want you to understand that this is a major undertaking that will be very exciting as I explore some of the latest web technologies (mostly to help me automate what I used to do manually) and as I experiment with different layouts, color schemes and graphic ideas.

Some of my long time readers are probably wondering, "Why fix something that isn't broke?"

Good question. I'd like to give the site a fresh new look to give a better first impression to entice new visitors to click away and explore the DCFlamenco.com website beyond the home page. Plus the web content trends are constantly changing. For example, over the past year, I've toyed with the idea of including some video and podcast content. And some of my business-minded friends have proposed some ideas to help me make a little more money so that I could at least cover the financial and labor costs of keeping up the website. Content will always be the number one priority, but how the site looks and "feels" matters too!

Here's a useful article titled Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign.

Anywayz, it's 11:54pm on Thursday and yeah, I'm staying in tonight. Why? Well, last night a friend and I caught a late night movie titled Invasion and I ended up going to bed around 4am and got up around 8am to meet a friend for breakfast and haven't had a good chunk of time to rest since then! Part of the reason for that is that I had a rehearsal this past afternoon and I know that if I did lay down, I probably would've seriously dozed off to the point that I wouldn't wake up in time to make it to the dance studio. Thank God for energy drinks to keep me awake and mentally alert. At this point, I can't put off sleeping any longer. Not complaining though. Cuz I know I'll get a good night's rest tonight. Buenas noches!

Posted by Miguelito at 11:25 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Miguelito practicing guitar in his "home office." August 30, 2007 12:01pm

The past week or so, I've been practicing guitar twice as much as usual. Even to the point of squeezing in a few technical exercises as I wait for webpages to load.

I could go into the reasons why I'm especially inspired, but you've probably heard it all before. Doesn't really help to analyze how I got here to this state of inspiration. Just gotta focus on taking advantage of it while it lasts. It might even come as a surprise to you that I'm listening to trance in 4/4 and superimposing a buleriáas compás on top of it just to challenge myself. I do that sometimes when I'm warming up at Cafe Citron on Mondays right before my show. I can't help it since the DJ's music is playing so damn loud! But I gotta remember that I'm playing in a place that's well known for being a dance club. No use in trying to fight it---hence I use the dance music as a metronome as I practice bulerías.

So it takes three measures of 4/4 to cycle through one compás of bulerías. Simple concept to understand but it's quite another thing to feel it physically. It's just a matter of slow repetition to internalize the combination of the 4/4 beat pattern of trance (or salsa, reggaeton, merengue or whatever) against the 12 beat pattern of bulerías. One exercise to ease your way into this is to verbally count to 12 along with the music in 4/4 while emphasizing the accents. Then you can try it out on your instrument or if you're a dancer, you can try out a marking pattern.

You can apply this idea to other palos. For example, I can remember quite a few times, dancing the first copla of Sevillanas with my dancer friends at clubs while the DJ played salsa music. It's a musical challenge but if you can pull it off and keep it flowing smoothly, noone will realize you're dancing something else.

There actually have been studies on the relationship of flamenco to mathematics. Google it and see for yourself.

As for today (Thursday), I have a rehearsal at 3:00pm so I better sign off and get ready. Ciao for now!

Posted by Miguelito at 12:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

DigiTech Jamman is part of my stage setup at Las Tapas. August 21, 2007

It's 2:56am on Wednesday as I type these words. After my usual Tuesday night gig at Las Tapas, I headed over to an acoustic rock open mike in Arlington to support a fellow guitarist as he played his set around 11:30pm.

Got home around 12:30am, changed into some comfortable clothes and practiced guitar for about two hours until I heard a vigorous knock on my door. Who could that be at 2:30am? I quickly opened the door and it turned to be, I assume, one of my next door neighbors. He looked like he dragged himself out of bed and put on whatever clothes he could grab in a hurry...

"Are you playing some music?"

In the background was blaring the sounds of bulerías Sólo Compás playing really really loud---probably annoyingly loud for someone who doesn't know what flamenco is.

"Um, yeah. I'll try to keep it down."

Instinctively I shut the door before my neighbor could squeeze in another word. Oops! It's not that I'm intentionally rude to my neighbors. But before I was interrupted by the knock on the door, I totally was "in the zone," really getting into the groove jamming away on the guitar with the Sólo Compás track.

Thing is that I treasure those fleetingly precious moments when I'm "at one" with my guitar whether I'm onstage or practicing at home. And now my neighbor without realizing it totally killed the mood. Ugh. So yeah, I was kind of annoyed and although I didn't express it verbally, I'm sure my neighbor could pick up on it my body language.

So what do I do when this happens? It varies, but this time I just chilled for a while watching guitar-related videos on YouTube. I'll pick up the guitar in a little while although this time I'll keep the volume level of the stereo down. I'm pretty sure it was the Sólo Compás that my neighbor heard. Can't be sure though.

When I first moved to the DC area 16 years ago and got my first apartment, I didn't have much furniture for the first few days: just a mattress, a TV, my clothes and guitar. I had just graduated from college and pretty much stuck to my college practice routine which basically meant I practiced from midnight until I fell asleep which was usually 3 or 4am. What was cool about an almost empty apartment with bare wood floors was that the acoustics were awesome. My guitar sounded big and loud!

Surprisingly, I never got a single complaint for the 8 years that I lived in that first apartment. But I did get to meet my next door neighbors although it was NOT through a late night knock on the door. When I arrived home as the same time as my neighbors they'd see me unlocking my door and say something like: "So you're the one playing guitar late at night."

I'd say, "Yeah, sorry about that. Too loud?"

They'd say something along the lines of, "No not at all. Actually it's very soothing. Please feel free to play guitar anytime!"

Cool!

Anywayz, the pic above was taken onstage at Las Tapas. It's my loop machine which I've had for a little more than a year now but haven't really started incorporating in to my live shows until now. It's a very cool piece of 21st-century technology that lets me create multiple layers of music that I record on the spot onstage! In fact one of my dancers at last night's gig at Las Tapas asked me if I played some new musical material, which I did. Yay! Somebody was paying attention! That made my night.

Posted by Miguelito at 2:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Uncredited dancer performing a piece titled Bendição. August 26, 2007 7:07pm

It's 11:46pm on Sunday as I type these words. Got home a short while ago. One of my flamenco friends, who also does belly dance with a company called U Street Caravan, performed at Joy of Motion's Jack Guidone Theatre. It was a sold out concert and she was kind enough to reserve a ticket for me! Thank you K!

It's always challenging taking dance performance photos when the lighting is very dim, which it was for most of the concert. Don't get me wrong. The dim lighting suited the mood of the dances very well--it just didn't make it any easier for me to get some good photos. Out of 160 pics I took, only a handful were usable and I only chose to publish three.

I've been making an effort to bring my camera everywhere I go with the intent of getting lots of practice taking photos especially at performances. Sometimes I get plenty of good shots and other days I only get a few. But each time I learn something new. For example, I just gotta use at least an ISO (digital film sensitivity) of 400 and even then I still get some graininess in the resulting photo but at least it's fast enough to somewhat freeze the motion of the dancers. I still haven't found the perfect combination of aperture and shutter speed that I could apply in every situation. Most of the time, the first few shots at a performance are trial and error.

I'm very proud of the pics I took of Edwin's concert a little more than a month ago. So I tried to use the same camera settings that I used that night for this past evening's belly dance performance, but they didn't quite work. Oh well, it's a challenge, which I love, but I'm confident that it's just a matter of more practice and experience before I'm able to get more consistent higher quality pics.

So I suppose now you're wondering why I'm publishing belly dance pics in a blog about flamenco?

My friend performing in an ensemble piece titled Tabla. August 26, 2007 7:29pm

I have profiles on many social network services including MySpace, Friendster etc. And last year, when I setup an account on Tribe.net and searched for people with an interest in flamenco, surprisingly the search results included more belly dancers than flamencos. I suppose for belly dancers, part of the attraction is that flamenco has a very strong Middle Eastern influence. I remember last year, this belly dancer named Najmah totally felt comfortable getting up and dancing onstage when I accompanied my singer Gerard Moreno in a tangos one night at Cafe Citron.

Plus of course, being a flamenco guitarist, I've seen a lot of flamenco dance and I noticed its influence in the movements of the belly dancers in this evening's performance. Hold on. Actually, I'm not a dance historian so I can't really say for sure if belly dance influenced flamenco or if flamenco influenced belly dance or if they both just evolved separately drawing upon a third party source.

What I do know from seeing belly dance performances accompanied by live musicians is that there is a rhythmic "conversation" between the dancer and the drummer, very much like the interaction between a dancer and guitarist in flamenco.

Anywayz, the recorded music used in each of the 14 dance numbers ranged from Beyoncé's Get Me Bodied to Ishtar's Alabina to the downtempo Facing East by the Thievery Corporation to the Turkish sound of Tarkan's Bounce. Variety is good. Not that it wouldn't have been interesting if they only used "traditional" belly dance music the whole time.

August 26, 2007 7:30pm

OK, so they didn't use live music, but the important thing was that they connected with the music in another way. The dance movements weren't a separate entity. What do I know? Then again I spend way more time hanging around dancers than your average person, so I probably know quite a bit about how dancers think. Thing is that most of the time the dance movements and emotional energy reflected the feeling of the music. There was a connection, not quite on the same level as interacting with live musicians, but still a very strong connection nevertheless. Kudos to the choreographers and to the dancers and of course to the recording artists!

I didn't really come up with an original idea about the connection between flamenco and belly dance. So sue me! But I just wanted to get the "conversation" started. So if you have some of your own ideas, feel free to use the comment form below.

It's 2:14am right now and although I'm not going to bed yet (I'm a vampire remember?), I'm going to say "Ciao for now." As for tonight (Monday), I'll be at Cafe Citron performing with singer Gerard Moreno and dancer Sara Jerez. See you there. Oh...there's a possibility my belly dancer friend may stop by and join us for some Sevillanas. Interesting thing is that when I met her here at Citron 3 years ago, I promised her I'd get her dancing on my stage and now it's becoming a reality!

Posted by Miguelito at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Manuel and Isabelita Otero dancing Sevillanas at Taste of Jerusalem. August 23, 2007 8:22pm

It's not too often that I get out to see tablao shows in the DC area, cuz hello? usually I'm the one who's performing in them.

So when I heard that guitarist Torcuato Zamora was starting up a new weekly tablao show, I was determined to clear my schedule and show up and give my moral support. Turned out to be on a Thursday which worked out perfectly. As expected Torcuato's loyal fans and friends packed the place. Naturally, as the self-appointed official photographer and historian for the DC flamenco community, I brought my camera and took lots of pics. Here's a small random selection for your enjoyment.

Manuel and Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:22pm

Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:22pm

Actually her name is Isabel, but I call her Isabelita to differentiate her from her mom who also dances flamenco and who has the same name.

Manuel and Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:23pm

Manuel and Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:24pm

Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:57pm

Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:57pm

Isabelita. August 23, 2007 8:59pm

Fellow flamenco dance student, Salem. August 23, 2007 9:01pm

Isabelita. August 23, 2007 9:03pm

Isabelita with her parents and cousins. August 23, 2007 9:11pm

Isabelita and Torcuato Zamora. August 23, 2007 9:12pm

Isabel, owner Kamal Hawa and friend of the family, Allie. August 23, 2007 9:13pm

Isabelita with her dancer friends Daniela and Adriana. August 23, 2007 9:50pm

The flamenco shows at Taste of Jerusalem are on Thursday nights around 7:30pm and 8:30pm (subject to change so call ahead). Taste of Jerusalem is located at 8123 Georgia Ave in Silver Spring, Maryland. Call 301-594-3067 for more info and to make your reservation.

Thanks to my friend Daniela for kindly giving me a ride to the restaurant and inviting me to join her table. Thanks Dani!

Anywayz, it's 10:44am and I think I'm going to go back to bed and get some more sleep on account of the fact that a friend and I caught a midnight movie (Superbad) last night after the show at Cabanas and got home pretty late. As for tonight (Saturday), I'll be performing at Tapeo with dancers Ginette Perea and Claudia. See you there!

In other news...my guitarist friends Michael Bard and Amilcar Cruz were mentioned in yesterday's Weekend Section with regards to their latin jazz group Trio Caliente. Congrats guys!

Posted by Miguelito at 10:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The "work" area in my beautiful comfortable apartment. August 23, 2007 12:47am

It's 1:34am on Thursday as I type these words. Actually I got home sometime around 7:00pm after spending the afternoon rehearsing with a dancer and getting a late lunch/early dinner afterwards--I had a small sirloin steak and crabcake, yum! Sorry no food pics.

Anywayz, since I got full eight hours of sleep the night before, I was able to stay more mentally focused during the rehearsal so we got a lot done, yay! Plus I was especially inspired. You know how it is with inspiration: it comes and goes without warning. So when it does come, you gotta take advantage of it while it lasts.

So I decided to spend this particular Wednesday night in practicing my guitar...

That's me (Miguelito) playing the guitar. August 23, 2007 12:49am

For the first hour, I worked on scale patterns from the Scale Pattern Studies For Guitar by Aaron Shearer--something I used from when I studied classical guitar in college. Just for fun, I worked through some of the patterns from Steve Vai's 10 Hour Guitar Workout which was republished in the October 2007 issue of Guitar World. Then I played through some of my falsetas that include lots of picado, trying to keep my hands relaxed and aiming for a consistent tonal quality.

The second hour or so, I worked on arpeggios by turning some of Moraíto's arpeggio-centric falsetas into exercises.

The book on top is the one by Aaron Shearer. The other book is the collection of Moraíto transcriptions by Alain Faucher. August 23, 2007 12:51am

The third hour, I worked on just marking patterns for various palos from bulerías to soleá to alegrías to tangos etc. The other day I was watching a 7-part video of a Steve Vai master class on YouTube. Anywayz, one of the exercises he recommended I adapted for practicing in flamenco: I put on some rock music---it could be any music, just anything in 4/4. Then I played a 12-beat pattern against it. The challenge here is for me, as the guitarist, to not be distracted by the accents in the rock music as I play bulerías compás. It's kinda like playing for dancer who might be trying out alternative accent patterns whilst depending on the guitarist to keep the basic compás. Then the next challenge is to "lock" into the groove and keep going as long as you can without getting lost. I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but ask me about it the next time you see me in person because it's easier for me to demonstrate.

The fourth hour, I just jammed along with a bulerías Solo Compás CD working on everything from just basic marking patterns to falsetas.

Then I took a break for about an hour and laid down on the couch while listening to some music on Last FM. This nifty little widget gets updated every minute, so it'll tell you what I've been listening to!

What's cool about Last FM is that you enter the name of the artist you like and it automatically chooses similar artists at random. While I wrote this blog entry, I was listening to music that Last FM calculated I would enjoy based on the artist name I typed in: Vicente Amigo.

This is where I worked on this blog. August 23, 2007 1:01am

It's 2:43am and I'm going to sign off and try to get some sleep. As for tonight (Thursday) I'll be going to Taste of Jerusalem in Silver Spring (301-495-3067) to catch the opening night of flamenco featuring dancer Isabelita Otero and guitarist Torcuato Zamora. See you there!

Posted by Miguelito at 12:39 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Cesar Oretea at Ozio. August 20, 2007 11:18pm

It's 8:46am on Tuesday and I'm actually up at this early hour. Truth is that I didn't go to bed last night cuz my body clock is back to "vampire" time. Thankfully I don't have any morning appointments requiring me to be fully awake and mentally alert. So I'm just going with it and making myself productive here and recounting last night's events to help you pass the time in your cubicle at work today. Hehe

Got home via taxi sometime after 2:00am. In case you're curious, the fare was $11.45 and I'm estimating the trip was a little more than 5 minutes from the Dupont Circle neighborhood--I'm loving living here in Rosslyn cuz it's so close to Georgetown, Dupont Circle and more! Anywayz, overall it was a typically fun Monday night--nothing over the top but just entertaining enough to make me glad I stayed out late instead of going straight home. Started off with my usual flamenco gig at Cafe Citron. Performing with me were singer/guitarist Gerard Moreno and dancer Mariya. Also joining us were Jason Vera y Aragón on cajón and saxophonist Montreaux (not sure about the spelling).

The saxophone was a spontaneous addition to our group for the rumba. Gerard ran through the song with Montreaux for a few minutes in the rehearsal space downstairs. We had no idea how it would turn out but that's the way it is in flamenco. So we just relaxed and went with the flow. It was refreshing to hear a different instrument in our show and I think that the next time it will just get better and better as Montreaux gets the feel of rumba in general and Gerard's compositional style.

Although the party vibe seemed to picking up as I packed up my sound system, Jason and I decided to head over to Ozio to enjoy the music of Duende Camarón...

José Oretea. August 20, 2007 11:19pm

Along the way, we stopped by Julia's to get an empanada. I wasn't that hungry, but besides the Corona or two I get at Ozio, usually someone offers to buy me a drink or two. It's just better to have some food in my tummy, y'know what I mean?

Didn't see the usual familiar faces sitting and the bar at Ozio. But that's cool. It was a slow night, so there were plenty of comfortable seats to choose from. Jason's sister Roxy stopped by which I was kinda hoping for. She's leaving the DC area to go to grad school in Texas so this turned out to be a chance to say goodbye one last time in a relaxed and festive ambience.

She's a cool friend--one of those friends that I feel comfortable talking with just about anything. And although I gave her a hug and said goodbye like any other night where I'd expect to run into her again soon, the reality will hit me a few days later and I'll realize, wow, I'm not going to be seeing her for at least a couple of months.

So here's to you Roxy! [raises glass in a toast] we all wish you the very best in Texas.

José. August 20, 2007 11:19pm

Roxy and Jason. August 20, 2007 11:19pm

José. August 20, 2007 11:41pm

I just put my camera on slow-sync mode to capture more of the ambience. Slow sync is a feature on the camera where the flash goes off immediately freezing the action and making brighter and clearer whatever is closest to the camera and afterwards the shutter remains open to allow the colors of the background elements to reach the camera. If the camera moves slightly from the natural unsteadiness of the hand, the background gets slightly blurred which is fine in a way, cuz it brings more attention to the main subject which is more in focus.

José. August 20, 2007 11:42pm

"Mystery Girl" dancing. ;-) August 21, 2007 12:20am

This mystery girl noticed I was taking pictures and at the end of the night she approached me and asked if I was publishing them on a website, so I said yeah.

"You know you should ask permission first."

So we looked at the pics and it turned out that her pics were either blurred (artistically) or it just so happened that her hair covered her face enough to make her almost unidentifiable.

I didn't get a straight answer from her but after seeing the pics she seemed more relaxed and I took that as a yes. So I gave her my website address and hopefully she'll learn more about the flamenco scene and the next time I see her, I'll get her name!

Erica dancing. August 21, 2007 12:27am

José. August 21, 2007 12:37am

Roxy. August 21, 2007 12:44am

Roxy. August 21, 2007 12:49am

Roxy and Jos´. August 21, 2007 1:36am

It's a little after 10:00am. And no, I wasn't writing this blog the whole time. I was chatting online with a close friend who just so happens to be a enthusiastic regular reader of my blog. I like to call her Lunch Girl--it's an inside joke. But she's the one who helps me get motivated on those days when I just don't feel like blogging. So thank you Lunch Girl, this blog is for you!

Posted by Miguelito at 8:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Claudia dancing Sevillanas at Tapeo. August 18, 2007 7:47pm (photo by Milvia)

It's around 4:00am on Saturday as I type these words. I got home a while ago--obviously I decided not to go out despite the gorgeous summer evening weather. Just not in the mood plus the thing is that I have a couple of important meetings on Sunday and I need to get a decent night's rest for change--and ironically, here I am blogging in the middle of the night.

I'm just going to publish a few pics from my gig at Tapeo from Saturday night, but I'm going to talk about what's on my mind.

One of my guitar students just got back in town after studying flamenco intensively in Spain for part of the summer. And he was so excited about getting back into his weekly lessons with me on Sundays at noon. I'm pretty excited too because his enthusiasm and dedication reminds me of myself when I first got into flamenco many years ago. So I need to make sure I'm well-rested and mentally alert so I can give him my best. Then afterwards I have tentative plans to meet up with a very cool close friend of mine who I met just a couple of months ago who unfortunately for me will be moving away from the Washington DC area (if not for good, at least for a while).

Last week I thought I was getting back into my usual blogging groove and in fact I did write several consecutive entries. Then I fell back into a rut and let a whole week go by with no writing whatsoever. It's not like I really have to do this blog thing. By the same token, I guess I don't really have to do this whole flamenco website thing either. Trust me, I will continue to publish this blog and website as I have for the past 11 years. I just gotta work some problems out.

Ginette Perea dancing alegrías. August 18, 2007 7:52pm (photo by Milvia)

I'll get into the problems in another post, but I'd thought I'd give you a little history about the website so you know where I'm coming from...

Last year, I turned 40 and it was really wasn't a big deal for me. I don't feel 40 and I certainly don't look it and it's just a number. Still, I can't help but stop and think about what I have accomplished in my life thus far. I won't bore you with my whole life story, but I'll just touch upon the part that relates to this blog and the website.

August 18, 2007 7:52pm (photo by Milvia)

It's not like I sat down in front of my computer 11 years ago, and said to myself: "I will create a website that will be the center of information for the Washington DC flamenco community." That's truly what it is today and I'm very proud of it, but that's not at all what was going through my mind at the time of its creation. It was more like: "I got this brand new AOL account, so I'll just play around with all the features. Cool, what's this thing called Personal Publisher?" Bear in mind that this was in 1996. At the time, if you typed in the search term "flamenco" you pretty much got the same 10-15 websites in the results and that was it. And getting my flamenco website listed in Yahoo took only one day. Boy have things changed!

The original website was a boring (by today's standards) one page template. But it was cool, because I could personalize it any way I wanted and it was out there, live on the World Wide Web (who actually says World Wide Web these days?) for all the world to see. Eventually, I checked out every HTML book at the local library where I worked at the time and learned about web publishing the old school way: by writing the code by hand. While there was HTML editing software at the time, there was no getting around it, you still had to know HTML syntax. Shortly after that Microsoft Front Page came out and nowadays Dreamweaver is what everyone uses to create and edit websites, in some cases, without ever seeing a line of code. Nothing wrong with that mind you. I just take pride in being able to create a webpage from scratch with nothing more than a text editor like NotePad. While I have used Dreamweaver, believe it or not, I still do my minor cosmetic touch-ups and frequent text updates using nothing more than NotePad!

Claudia dancing tientos. August 18, 2007 8:02pm (photo by Milvia)

At first my website was just a listing of all the flamenco shows I was doing. At the time, I was the busiest flamenco guitarist in DC (actually come to think of it, I still am) but I was mostly playing for dance classes several nights a week and doing the occasional theater show with the Spanish Dance Society, the first dance company I worked with here in DC (I actually got my start with a flamenco academy in Los Angeles, but that's another story).

Eventually I started playing for a number of other companies including Joana del Río's Danza del Río, Ziva's Spanish Dance Ensemble, Natalia Monteleón's Arte Flamenco and with Ana Martinez's group and a couple of other groups that were formed by students of various dance schools. So since I played for all these various people and had all the insider information, every dance company would come to me to find out what the others were doing. I knew about all the upcoming shows and we all know how notoriously bad we flamencos are at promoting ourselves--I think the mindset is that "We are artists not businesspeople." Not that I am a master of promotion and publicity, but I was (and still am) a central source of info, so I took it upon myself to promote all the dance companies I played for by publishing the info on my tiny humble website on AOL. A local flamenco scoffed at my idea of a flamenco website for the DC flamenco scene. "Flamenco scene in DC? What flamenco scene?" I guess neither one of us really knew how much the scene would grow 11 years later.

Ginette dancing bulerías. August 18, 2007 8:09pm (photo by Milvia)

With the more expanded flamenco scene coverage and the fact that my website was listed on the first page of results (nowadays I have a very respectable page two listing on Google) for the search term "flamenco," one of the most popular questions I got was "Where can I take flamenco dance classes?" When I kept getting the same question again and again, it finally came to me that I should just publish the contact info for the teachers. Easier said than done. Not all the teachers were familiar with the Web at the time or trusted me enough to publish their contact info. For many of the teachers, their only contact info was their home number. And to them, the idea of publishing that number for all the world to see was pretty scary. Needless to say, it was a long process acquiring all the contact information because I had to convince each teacher about the advantages of having this info published on my website and had to then get their permission. Nowadays things are much different. My website is well-known and the teachers come to me to ask me to publish their info.

August 18, 2007 8:12pm (photo by Milvia)

But nowadays my website is so huge (consisting of several hundred pages with thousands of photos) that keeping every little detail up-to-date can be very overwhelming. Recently, a personal friend of mine asked me a huge favor that I'm still working on. She wanted me to remove all mentions of her name from my website. Nowadays you just do a "Global Search and Replace" and you're done usually in a matter of minutes depending on how many webpages make up your website. But there are a couple of technical hurdles I have to conquer before I can get this done. I won't get into the boring technical details, but just wanted to make you aware that I have a long list of things I'd like to update, delete or completely overhaul from my website in general.

OK, well I try to explain a little bit of what's going on. Over the past 11 years, I've changed webhosts quite a few times and each time I had a different format for the HTML. In fact I still have some of my old webpages hosted on some of the old webhosts. I'm getting a headache just thinking about having to transfer them all to my current webhost, not to mention having to change file paths and reformat to fit into the overall look and feel of my current website. Ugh.

For the first few years, I used to give my website a makeover on the anniversary (January 10th), but that was before it grew to consist of several hundred webpages! Another very close friend of mine, convinced me that it's about time for me to do another makeover. Yeah it's going to be a lot of work, but it's something I got to do. I mean I do have a lot of frequently updated content to keep my regular readers coming back, but it's still important to have that cutting edge look to impress first-time visitors.

Milvia, Claudia, Ginette and Evangelina. August 18, 2007 8:18pm (photo by Miguelito)

But I didn't spend all my time behind the computer all these years. I was out there doing shows, playing for dance classes and schmoozing at flamenco events telling people to come to my website for more info. This is not to mention the website promo flyers (I'm guessing a few thousand) that I've personally printed and cut during many late nights at Kinko's. There were quite a few times when I'd leave them on cars outside flamenco events for the audience members to see when they returned to their vehicles at the end of the night. One year, I forked out the cash to purchase 5000 promo postcards which eventually I distributed at every Tower Records (remember that store?) in the DC area, plus I regularly stopped by a number of private dance studios and college dance departments and posted my postcard on their bulletin boards.

Miguelito. August 18, 2007 8:55pm (photo by Matt)

Nowadays it's so easy to start a website. You can get some very professional results with the web design software that's available today. The real challenge in web publishing is keeping the information interesting and up-to-date. If I may so, I've done a pretty good job thus far, but I'm starting to reach that point where I can barely keep up.

Thank God many local artists, dance schools and companies have created their own websites so I can usually get away with simply mentioning their URL's instead of actually announcing their news and events on my website. Am I being lazy? Nah, not in the least. Hello? The underlying principle of the Web is having links to other website that contain more information about the word or phrase that is underlined. I still keep up with things although I try to find ways to be more efficient in my work. But ideally I'd still like to mention all the details of news and events in full.

Miguelito and Ginette. August 18, 2007 9:10pm (photo by Matt)

I've had some of my colleagues suggest, "Hey Miguelito, you should charge for advertising." And actually I have been doing that for the past few years and generated a nice little extra income, thank you very much! But regardless of how much money I take in, the workload is the still the same and growing. Perhaps I should hire a few technologically literate assistants to handle my website updates while I continue to work on the blog and major articles. Hmm...that thought just came to me right now. I'll have to look into that. Don't really have much money to offer as compensation, but perhaps I can find some volunteers willing to put in some work for the good of the local flamenco community.

Ginette. August 18, 2007 9:20pm (photo by Matt)

I guess my current frustration here aside from not being able to keep up with the workload is that it's a pretty lonely job. Not that I don't have friends. C'mon of course I have quite a few. But I don't know too many people that do what I do: promote a local arts community in general. There a lots of people who promote themselves as individual artists or companies or dance schools. But there are very few that promote a whole local community like I do. It's not easy if you've been involved in the local flamenco community as long as I have, because no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you still end up getting involved in the politics. There's always that one person who will accuse me of promoting this person more than that other person etc. What can I do? I truly want to promote everyone and I have published at least a few in-depth interviews with local artists. But trust me, it's a lot of work arranging a meeting, recording the interview and later transcribing it and editing the text for publication. My inner voice is telling me, "Excuses! Excuses!"

James, Claudia, Matt, Ginette, Chris and his girlfriend. August 18, 2007 9:27pm (photo by Miguelito)

Don't get me wrong. I get compliments for my website and I truly appreciate all of them. I just don't think that most people truly understand the breadth and depth of all my work over the years. So yeah, it's lonely job. And c'mon, performing flamenco onstage is a lot of fun. The website certainly helps all of us local artists get more gigs so that certainly motivates me for the most part, but it would be cool if I could easily do what most people do in other professions when they're having the occasional bad week: call up a colleague, get a cup of coffee or a beer and just rant for bit and have him/her truthfully reply, "Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about!" In the meantime, I guess I'll settle for someone who's just willing to listen.

OK, I have a guitar student coming at noon, so I should go to bed. Ciao for now!

Posted by Miguelito at 4:13 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

August 12, 2007 1:34am

It's 12:12pm on Sunday as I type these words. Went to bed around 6:00am cuz my friend and I ended up crashing a party after Frascati. Got up around 11:00am today (Sunday) with just enough time to crank out a quick blog and meet up with a friend to catch a movie, so I'll keep the commentary brief.

Last night (Saturday) after finishing up our gig at Tapeo (which went especially well thanks to an especially inspired Ginette and Claudia and also to Mother Nature for giving us an unbelievably gorgeous summer night), I rode up with Ginette to checkout the debut by the group Zhandalo at Frascati in Bethesda. The show was already well under way when we arrived sometime a little after 11:00pm. The restaurant was packed and the audience was very lively as singer/percussionists Esteban Falcón and Alexis Fleites and guitarists Tito Dorante and Armin Gajardo performed everything from rumbas to tangos and Sevillanas.

Anywayz, I'm already late as it is, so I'll just leave it to you my readers to add your own commentary. Enjoy the pics...

Many of the dancers that happened to attend this show are students of Carmen de Vicente. Did you know that Ginette started out with Carmen more than 7 years ago? I know because I was there performing as a soloist in Carmen's show in 2000.

Esteban Falcón, Alexis Fleites and Tito Dorante. August 11, 2007 11:46pm

I should mention that in the middle of one of the sets, Esteban not only acknowledged me and gave me my 5 minutes of fame but he also took the time to promote my website which he visits everyday--I know this because he occasionally posts comments in this blog. Thanks Esteban!

Esteban is a salsa singer that performs with Orquesta Sin Miedo at Cecilia's. The performance schedule is on his website.

Esteban. August 11, 2007 11:48pm

August 11, 2007 11:48pm

August 11, 2007 11:48pm

August 11, 2007 11:57pm

August 11, 2007 11:58pm

August 12, 2007 12:39am

Esteban's daughters dancing Sevillanas. August 12, 2007 12:45am

August 12, 2007 12:44am

August 12, 2007 12:45am

Artistic director Pilar informs me that she is definitely considering presenting flamenco shows here at Frascati in the near future. I'll give you more details as they are confirmed. OK, turn off your computer and get of the house now. It's a beautiful day. Ciao!

Posted by Miguelito at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ginette and Emily Mazzotti at Cabanas. August 10, 2007 10:37pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

It's 1:50am on Saturday as I type these words. It was "Peruvian Night" here at Cabanas in the sense that both of this particular evening's dancers, Ginette and Emily Mazzotti are both from that country. Also it just happened that I also played my cajón, a musical instrument that originated in Perú. Anywayz, I had just enough energy to edit and upload these photos and type this one paragraph. Time for me to catch up on sleep. Enjoy the pics!

August 10, 2007 10:37pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

August 10, 2007 10:38pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

August 10, 2007 10:39pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

August 10, 2007 10:40pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

August 10, 2007 10:46pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

Emily, Miguelito and Ginette. August 10, 2007 11:15pm (photo by Karen Rodas)

My thanks to Karen Rodas (yet another beautiful peruana) for volunteering to take pics for me. As for tonight (Saturday), I'll be performing at Tapeo with dancers Ginette and Claudia. And afterwards maybe I'll go checkout the debut of the rumba group Zhandalo at Frascati in Bethesda. See you there!

Posted by Miguelito at 1:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Bard, Deborah Benner and Amilcar Cruz at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage. August 8, 2007 6:11pm

It's 12:17pm on Thursday as I type these words. Yesterday I met up with a recently-arrived flamenco dancer, Emily Mazzotti, who'll be performing with Ginette and I this Friday at Cabanas. Rehearsal went well--in fact we didn't even need to use up the whole hour of reserved studio time. Since we finished up early, I enlisted Emily's expertise in helping me select a pair of castanets at the Guitar Gallery which was just a few metro stops away. So far so good, 'cept when we left the Guitar Gallery and tried to get on the Cleveland Park metro afterwards, it was closed for security reasons and we ended up deciding to take a taxi to the next available metro station.

I know what you're thinking: we should've taken one of the free shuttle buses. But trust me on this. It was chaotic and it was hot and humid. Despite the 100-plus degree weather, people were frantically running for the buses and senselessly overcrowding them. I decided that we weren't about to become sardines on a bus with a bunch of sweaty frustrated people. No way! It was worth the extra cost to take a taxi. Believe me!

Anywayz, I got a pair of professional quality castanets. Mission accomplished! I escorted Emily to the metro to make sure she caught the right train home (she's new to the DC area) and I went back up to the street level to find a place to grab a bite before heading over to the Kennedy Center to support my fellow guitarristas: Michael Bard and Amilcar Cruz.

Michael. August 8, 2007 6:24pm

Why did I title today's blog entry "Bambule school of rumba?" Well first of all, if you're not familiar with Bambule, it's a restaurant in Friendship Heights that's known for its live guitar music on the weekends. I don't remember the exact year it started but it was the late 90's or 2000. Guitarists Richard Marlow and Kivanc Oner started it all performing there for a few years and us flamencos went there all the time to chill out and enjoy the mostly Gipsy Kings repertoire.

Michael and Amilcar. August 8, 2007 6:25pm

Of course, all of us musicians take on outside gigs from time to time, and it turns out that pretty much every flamenco or rumba guitarist in DC has probably subbed here at least a few times when Richard and Kivanc went out of town. Eventually some of us ended up regularly playing at Bambule. Yours truly even played here for a few years with Richard Marlow. My colleagues Michael Bard and Amilcar Cruz were subbing here a lot and quite a few times ended up playing together. Over time they developed their owned repertoire, got booked here at Bambule for Thursdays nights and together with Michael's wife and singer, Deborah, formed the group Trio Caliente.

Amilcar. August 8, 2007 6:31pm

Trio Caliente performed last night (Wednesday) at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage and if you missed it, no problem. You can watch the video.

Michael, Deborah and Amilcar. August 8, 2007 6:57pm

Speaking of rumba, there's a new group in town, Grupo Zhandalo, making its debut this Saturday at Frascati Restaurant in Bethesda. One of the guitarists in the group is my friend Tito Dorante. And in this show, which starts at 11:00pm, they will also have flamenco dancers. Call 301-652-9514 to make your reservations. If you recall, Ginette, Pam and I performed at Frascati back in June.

As for tonight (Thursday), I don't have any gigs, but I might go to Las Tapas to see dancer Anna Menendez perform. Who wants to go?

Posted by Miguelito at 12:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Miguelito, Anna Menendez and Edwin Aparicio at Las Tapas. August 7, 2007 10:46pm

It's 10:46am on Wednesday as I type these words. Last night (Tuesday) I had the pleasure of performing with two of the DC area's best flamenco dancers: Edwin Aparicio and Anna Menendez. As you know, I've worked with both of them regularly for a long time although in the past year or so, they've taken on outside projects that kept them so busy or out of town so often they've frequently had to send substitute dancers in their place here at Las Tapas. It was a nice change for everyone. Edwin and Anna got to stretch themselves creatively by dancing in other venues with other artists and I had the privilege of assisting a number of up-and-coming dancers make the transition to tablao performing.

Last night was the first time in a long time that Anna, Edwin and myself performed together here at Las Tapas on a Tuesday night. And it also turned out that this will be the last week (at least for the year 2007) that Anna will be dancing here (or anywhere). Why you ask?

August 7, 2007 10:47pm

Well, if you haven't figured it out already, Anna will very soon be a mother. And while she may be taking a break from dancing onstage for the rest of 2007, she will still be teaching at the American Dance Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

If you're not doing anything this Thursday, go to Las Tapas to catch Anna in performance and wish her well on her journey to motherhood.

Posted by Miguelito at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Roxy, Roxana and Indira at Ozio. August 7, 2007 1:11am

It's 2:45am on Tuesday morning. Got home about an hour ago and the funny thing is that when I left my gig at Cafe Citron around 10:30pm, my intent was just to stop by for five minutes and say hello to my fellow musician friends at Ozio--I needed to go straight home and catch up on sleep. But of course, 5 minutes turned into half an hour, and half an hour turned into three hours. As it turned out, my friend Roxy was celebrating her birthday too. Happy birthday Roxy!

The other night I was talking with the owner of one of the restaurants where I have a flamenco gig. Unfortunately, the one night he decided to drop in and check on business was a night when things were slow. Could've been the oppressively humid weather that discouraged customers from coming. Who knows? But he mentioned to me that I should do something to help get out the word out about the show. Obviously he was unaware of my website. I was about to tell him about all the publicity that I do and have been doing for a long time. But given the slow business that particular night, I didn't have much tangible proof of the effectiveness of my publicity. Oh well.

Occasionally we do have those nights where we literally pack the place. I notice some of our regulars and I can probably assume that a good number of the others I see filling up the place very likely heard about the show via my website.

Anywayz, earlier this evening at Ozio, I was talking to my fellow musician friend José and he was telling me that if it wasn't for our flamenco friends coming out to the show, the place would be dead. He also mentioned that my website does a lot to get the word out. (Thanks José!) Well, OK, Ozio is a small space at least where the band Duende Camarón performs. But when us flamencos show up and do our contratiempo palmas, jaleos and get up and dance, we add a lot to the ambience--and people walking by see the party going on and come into the bar and increase the business. Of course, before all this can happen you gotta have high quality entertainment. And Duende Camarón does an outstanding job at that!

Members of our family: Roxana, Armand, Indira, Valerie, Roxy, José, Gerard and César. August 7, 2007 1:13am

As full-time performing artists, we do want to attract lots of customers and generate lots of business so we can keep our jobs---and our jobs, if you want to call them that, are a lot of fun. We have our occasional bad days like in any other profession, but the rest of the time we're having a blast. And when our friends show up we have even more fun.

It's like 3:29am right now as I type these words, and I'm a little delirious from sleep deprivation since I should've been in bed more than an hour ago. The point I'm trying to make here is that is that if you do go to a lot of local flamenco shows on a regular basis, thank you thank you! You're doing a lot to support flamenco in the community and having a good time doing it. If you're quite busy as it is and can only go from time to time, thanks for coming out whenever you can. If you're just so overwhelmed that you can't go out at all, at least encourage your friends to go check out the local shows.

Through my website, I can only do so much with getting the word out and us local artists could always use a little help. Business generally is good in the summertime, but things typically slow down little by little as we get closer to Winter, and I just want to encourage you and the rest of the local community to help get the momentum going now to ensure business is good through the colder months. I've blabbed enough. You get the point. Thanks for listening!

Posted by Miguelito at 2:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Ginette dancing at Tapeo. August 4, 2007 9:52pm

Just a quick blog before heading out. Last Saturday I did my usual gig at Tapeo with dancers Ginette and Claudia. Despite the humidity we performed on the outdoor stage. Once the show got started more and more people filled-up the patio seating--not quite full but a decent-size crowd.

Great night overall. Each of us had our special moments of inspiration, especially in the second set when we warmed-up and the humidity and heat went down a bit. But we had the added treat of a guest in the audience: a flamenco dancer originally from Perú named Emily Mazzotti. I first met her and her husband Chris last Monday at Cafe Citron and asked her to join us onstage for Sevillanas. It was just for fun of course--Citron has the festive kind of ambience that you don't find at the other tablaos so before each set, I'm always going around the room asking strangers if they dance flamenco. But when Sara Jerez (the dancer that night) and I could see that she could really dance, our eyes lit up and we didn't waste any time in getting her contact info afterwards. hehe

I jokingly said to Sara, "So she passed the audition, huh?" The audition being the Sevillanas.

So you can expect to see Emily in upcoming tablao and Sevillanas gigs in the coming weeks. Checkout her website to learn more about her.

Here are a few more pics from Saturday's show at Tapeo...

August 4, 2007 9:55pm

Miguelito playing the cajón. August 4, 2007 9:56pm

Emily Mazzotti dancing bulerías. August 4, 2007 10:07pm

People, if you like the show enough to watch, you should at least buy a drink or a tapa. Ugh. August 4, 2007 10:09pm

Ginette and Emily. August 4, 2007 10:09pm

Yeah, last week I finally did get around to buying a new external hard drive to free up space on my computer for new photos. That's why I was able to publish a new photo diary entry today. I'm going to start migrating all my photos etc to this new hard drive which will make the transition to a Mac a lot easier. Yeah I'm going to buy a Mac later this year---it's about time, no?

As for tonight, I'll be performing at Cafe Citron with singer Gerard Moreno and dancer Mariya. See you there!

Posted by Miguelito at 12:45 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)