Flamenco dancer Ginette performing Sevillanas at Cafe Ciron. May 8, 2010 (photo by Jani)

It's almost 2pm on Saturday as I type these words. The weather's sunny and breezy now but I'm indoors at my local Barnes and Noble cranking out a quickie blog. Not to worry, I promise I'll get some fresh air for a bit before getting ready for my flamenco gig tonight at Cafe Citron.

So yeah it's been a while since my dancer friend Ginette has performed at Cafe Citron. As you might imagine the past year or so, she's been busy with work and finishing up college. In fact, by the time you read this she'll have graduated by then...congrats Ginette!

Tonight's show (assuming you're reading this on Saturday) at Cafe Citron will also feature a dancer that hasn't been in my blog for awhile: Sara Candela. She recently moved back to the DC area from Chile and has been getting settled back in to the local flamenco scene again, teaching at Joe's Movement Emporium in Mount Ranier, Maryland and dancing here and there but mostly at El Manantial in Reston, Virginia.

There's a lot of stuff going flamenco-wise this weekend that is of interest to you my readers. But believe it or not, not all of it is here in DC. Read on...

Continue reading "Saturday Night Flamenco at Cafe Citron. May 8, 2010" »

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Guitarist Miguelito and dancer Emily Mazzotti at Cafe Citron. March 20, 2010

It's 3:30pm on Monday as I type these words. It's a rainy day and I'm sitting comfortably at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble sipping coffee and reading up on geeky stuff like location-based social networking, really!

So what's this social networking thing and why I am so interested in it?

Let's go back in time a bit. When I first launched the DCFlamenco.com website 14 years ago, my goal was simply to make it easy for people to find info about the DC flamenco scene in one convenient place. And without a doubt I've achieved that. But just putting up a website doesn't guarantee success. You have to get it listed in all the major search engines. And to get a top listing, you need to do some geeky tweaks and have a constant stream of quality website content. Been there, done that. :-) Nowadays when you search Google for "flamenco," my website consistently shows up in the first or second pages of results—that's a good thing!

Fast forward to current day. Did you read last week's headline in Silicon Valley's Mercury News? Facebook surpasses Google in weekly traffic

Continue reading "Connecting with other flamencos and flamenco lovers" »

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Sara Jerez and Miguelito at Cafe Citron. February 20, 2010 (photo by Jani)

It's almost 6pm on Monday as I type these words. Pretty much spent the whole afternoon in various cafes catching up on email, reading blogs, news etc. Right now I'm at Barnes & Noble in Georgetown cranking out a quick blog with some pics that I meant to publish a month ago.

My friend Jani is a pretty loyal supporter of my flamenco shows. He's been coming around for years and fortunately for me (and you my loyal readers!) he loves to take photos so I gladly hand him my camera whenever he stops by! These pics are from the Saturday night flamenco show that took place on February 20, 2010. Enjoy!

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Dancer Emily Mazzotti and guitarist Miguelito at Cafe Citron. January 23, 2010 (photo by Jani)

It's Sunday around 5-something pm as I type these words. Seems to be my ritual on Sundays now to blog at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble. It has everything I need: free WiFi, delicious coffee and the occasional distraction of interesting books, magazines and pretty girls.

About last night...so far my efforts promoting the Saturday flamenco show at Citron are paying off: besides the announcements in my blog, website and Facebook status updates, I also tweet regularly. Still…other than seeing the end result of filling Citron with customers every Saturday, it's hard to track the success of my online publicity campaign. But guess what? Last week, I did meet two people who told me they heard about my shows via Twitter!

Last night, however, we didn't pack the place until the second show. There are all kinds of factors that come into play: the weather, traffic delays, competing events around the same time, who knows? But it seems that we're always pushing the showtime later as we wait for customers to arrive in time for their table reservations.

Thankfully, it so happened that my dancer for the evening, Emily Mazzotti, was celebrating her birthday so a bunch of flamenco friends showed up—mostly dancers. Cajón player Jason Vera y Aragón even joined us onstage! (Thanks Jason!)

Continue reading "Saturday Night Flamenco at Cafe Citron. January 23, 2010" »

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Sara Jerez and Miguelito. January 16, 2010 (photo by Steve Johnson)

It's 2-something pm on Sunday as I type these words. Apparently, it seems that a LOT of people had the same idea I had on this rainy day: spend the afternoon sipping coffee at the café and do some work on the laptop. Luckily, a table freed up moments after I arrived.

Anywayz, about last night: the attendance was very good! (I know, I know. I'm an artist and my attention should be focused solely on the quality of the show, but as a struggling self-employed musician I can't neglect the business side of making a living in the arts.) You'd think that being that the show is on Saturday, it should be no problem getting people to come out to my show. Thing is that Citron is a very popular club on the weekends but the insanely large crowds don't arrive until 11:00pm-ish. So it's still my job (and the restaurant's) to somehow get the word out and get people to come in at 7:00pm or 8:00pm on a Saturday night in time for the flamenco.

It's still a better night than Mondays, when the flamenco show used to be scheduled. Although I do take pride in saying that my fellow artists (and there have been many!) and I were able to bring in crowds on Mondays from 2001 to 2009 (that's eight years!) which is traditionally a very difficult night to get people come out!

Continue reading "Saturday Night Flamenco at Cafe Citron. January 16, 2010" »

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Miguelito (that's me!) opening Cafe Citron's new Saturday night flamenco show with a guitar solo. January 9, 2010 (photo by Rosie)

It's 3-something pm on Sunday as I type these words. I'm at Barnes and Noble, comfortably seated at the coffee shop area sipping a double espresso and listening to a shuffle mix on my iPod—just my way of gettin' myself in the mood to blog. So it's DC Flamenco's 14th birthday? Big deal. It's more like a personal milestone to be acknowledged for a moment but not really celebrated in a big way (Seriously, how many people do you know who have a website that's been around that long?).

So yeah, my website's been around for so long now, it's considered a normal part of the flamenco scene but that's a good thing. It's not like screaming out to the world, "Hey, there's flamenco in DC!" It's more like, "We know you know there's a flamenco scene in DC, here's more info about it." What's cool is that in conversation, local flamencos say things like, "I read it on DC Flamenco..." and have no need to elaborate what DC Flamenco is!

Honestly though, a little glory would be nice...who doesn't like being showered with praise? But I'm just thrilled enough knowing in my mind that in some small way, my work here has had and continues to have an impact on the ever growing awareness of the DC flamenco scene.

(Anywayz, while you indulge my little online party of self-praise, enjoy these photos from last night's flamenco show at Cafe Citron featuring dancer Emily Mazzotti.)

When the topic of DC Flamenco comes up in conversation, there are two types of people I encounter...

Continue reading "Happy 14th birthday DC Flamenco!" »

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Guitarist/singer José Oretea at Cafe Citron. January 4, 2010

It's 4-something on Tuesday afternoon as I type these words. I'm at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble, yet again. Don't know what it is, but between the crème brûlée latte and being surrounded by others furiously typing away on their laptops, I feel very productive!

In any case, I'm working on my second blog in one week—yeah, one of my new year's resolutions is to publish at least one blog entry every week, so I'm doing good so far. :-)

So yesterday (Monday) as I was mulling over the possibilities of where to hang out on my first free Monday night in years, I got a call around 3:00pm from my fellow musician friend, José Oretea, informing me that his rumba flamenca group Duende Camarón was going to be playing in the Monday night time slot at Cafe Citron starting TONIGHT!

So I did what I do best: spread the word via Facebook, Twitter, texts and my well-known website DCFlamenco.com. I didn't expect much of a turnout for a last-minute announcement especially on such a cold windy night. But even though the attendance last night was kinda sparse, I'm pretty confident that most of the flamenco community now knows that Duende Camarón is playing Mondays at Citron and that attendance will start to grow as word gets around.

If you're one of the few people out there that has never heard of Duende Camarón, checkout some music samples at their website.

Enjoy the pics!

Continue reading "Monday Night Rumba at Cafe Citron. January 4, 2010" »

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Sara Jerez dancing soleá accompanied by Miguelito at Cafe Citron. January 2, 2010 (photo by Jani)

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2010! Remember me? Did you miss my blog posts? Yeah I know...it's like the first time I've posted anything since September last year. To be fair, I have been sort of blogging via Facebook status updates and photo album entries, and while most people I know are on Facebook, I don't want to leave those of you not on Facebook out of the DC flamenco info loop. [If you haven't already, please add me as a friend on Facebook.] So here goes...

It's 6:30pm on a bitterly cold Sunday here in Arlington, Virginia. The temperature is 24°F but with the wind gusts blasting against my face it feels more like 9°F, seriously! In any case, I'm warm and comfortable here at the coffee shop section of the Clarendon Barnes and Noble while I work on this blog and take occasional sips of a tall crème brûlée latte, yum!

So what's new? Hehe...there is an ulterior motive (isn't there always?) for this blog post. Well, after eight years performing every Monday (that's roughly 400 shows!) at Cafe Citron, the management decided to give us the Saturday evening time slot. Hence the title of today's blog post: "Saturday Night Flamenco at Cafe Citron."

What happens whenever there's a change after such a long period of eight years? Well for one thing, there's going to be a short period of confusion amongst the regulars, some of whom will, understandably out of habit, still go to Citron on a Monday and be disappointed not to find any flamenco going on. So I apologize in advance: I'm going to be promoting the Saturday Night Flamenco show ad nauseum!

Why should you come out to my show on a Saturday? Here's a list of reasons...

Continue reading "Saturday Night Flamenco at Cafe Citron. January 2, 2010" »

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Miguelito playing a rumba to open the show. August 10, 2009 8:15pm (photo by Rachel Hart)

Wow...it's been like two months since my last blog entry! What can I say? It's been a slow summer business-wise. Just about all the flamenco shows in the DC area have had to cut back on their budget. For example, at Café Citrón, I had to let go of my singer. The show is still pretty good without cante, but trust me on this: live singing brings the performance to a whole other level!

The flamenco shows at Las Tapas and Cabanas also had to cut back. The rumba shows have also been affected too. The Monday night Ozio show has been canceled. Same with the Thursday night show at Aroma.

So that's the latest update on the scene in general. But I'm not going get into why business is slow. Please don't say, "It's the economy." I've heard that too many times. But as they say, the show must go on. And so it is with my flamenco show at Café Citrón.

This past Monday was dancer Sarah Hart's first time to perform at Citrón. Although she has already been actively performing in just about every flamenco tablao in the DC area for years, for whatever reason she never got around to the Dupont Circle area until now. Welcome Sarah! (Not to be confused with dancer Sara Jerez who performs most Mondays at Cafe Citron. Yeah it can be confusing having two dancers named Sarah but they're both very talented and beautiful!)

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. August 10, 2009" »

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Dancer Sara Jerez with Jason Vera y Aragón, Miguelito and José Oretea at Café Citrón. March 30, 2009 photo by Jill Hatzai

It's almost 2:00pm on Friday as I type these words. My WiFi access here at Barnes & Noble expires in 20 minutes, so I'll make this quick.

My photographer friend Jill Hatzai sent me the photo you see above (click on it to see the full-size version). I've always pondered the many different ways of promoting the local flamenco scene but one thing that I do very well is make people aware of what's going on. It's really simple: I relentlessly publish pics of anything and everything going on (assuming I can make it to everything!).

But the next step after making the local community aware of what's going on, naturally, is enticing them to come out and enjoy the flamenco performances, IN PERSON. One fan of my website wrote me recently: "Even when I don't go out [to flamenco shows], when I look at your pictures, I feel like I have."

That's a compliment of course and I'll take it—I'm by no means a pro like Jill, but I am a decent photographer. But I'd rather have people come out to my shows rather than choose to stay home and catch up on what happened by checking my blog.

Oh well. It's a never-ending battle. But, not to worry, I won't ever give up. I'll do all I can to get people (especially new ones) to come out to support the flamenco scene.

Having said that, enjoy this pic by Jill. And make sure you view the full-size version. The panoramic view will make you feel like you're right there!

My thanks to Jill for the gorgeous pic. And I hope to see some new faces at my flamenco shows in the coming weeks! As for tonight (Friday), I'll be at Cabanas performing with dancer Ginette Perea and friends. Ciao!

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Miguelito warming-up before his show at Cafe Citron. July 14, 2008 9:30pm (photo by Jani)

It's 11:53am on Wednesday as I type these words. These are pics from Monday night at Cafe Citron, as usual, taken by my friend Jani. Thanks Jani! Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron on Bastille Day 2008" »

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María and Danielle dancing Sevillanas at Cafe Citron. July 7, 2008 9:47pm (photo by Jani)

It's 11:38am on Tuesday as I type these words. Last night at Cafe Citron was especially enjoyable. Since our regular singer Gerard Moreno was out of town, we had a substitute singer, José Oretea. Jason Vera y Aragón joined us onstage to play cajón. Plus we had a few of our flamenco dancer friends in the audience. Here are some random pics taken by my friend Jani. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. July 7, 2008" »

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Sara Jerez and Miguelito at Cafe Citron. June 30, 2008 8:51pm (photo by Jani)

It's almost 4:00am on Tuesday as I type these words. Believe it or not, I left Citron at midnight (early by my standards), took the metro and walked in the door around 12:30am. Just one of those of nights when I felt like going home early to work on personal stuff instead of partying late as usual. Since I'm wide awake, I might as well publish some pics from last night's show.

Singer/guitarist Gerard Moreno, who normally performs with us on Monday nights at Citron, was out of town doing a lecture tour--in case you didn't already know, he was recently awarded a doctorate in ethnomusicology. Anywayz, the substitute singer couldn't make it to Citron (due to a scheduling mixup--these things happen sometimes), so I decided to book a second dancer instead. The evening's lineup consisted of myself on guitar with dancers Sara Jerez and Shahram.

As usual, my friend Jani volunteered to be our photographer for the evening. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. June 30, 2008" »

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Jason Vera y Aragón and Pam de Campo dancing Sevillanas at Cafe Citron. June 2, 2008 9:40pm (photo by Mauricio Velarde)

Astronomically speaking, the summer official started with the summer solstice on Friday June 20th. For me, it began on June 2nd at Cafe Citron: it was first time in a long time that after the flamenco show, my friends and I stayed out pretty much all night...the weather was warm, people were more in a partying mood than usual, it seemed summer was already in the air!

My friend Mauricio Velarde happily volunteered to be my photographer during my second set. The dancer for the evening was Pam de Ocampo.

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. June 2, 2008" »

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Dancer Ginette dancing soleá at Cafe Citron. June 16, 2008 9:50pm (photo by Jani)

It's 2:47pm on Thursday as I type these words. Here are some random pics from last Monday at Cafe Citron taken by my friend Jani. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. June 16, 2008" »

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Jason Vera y Aragón, Kyoko, Laura, Luís Linares El Tiburón, Danielle and Alma Priego La Terremoto at Cafe Citron. April 21, 2008 9:40pm

My friend Alma Priego La Terremoto came to Citron last night. Quite a few other friends showed up including Jason, Danielle, Jani, Gloria, RJ, Iulia, Elena, Katya and Aseel. Diton from Vinoteca was there. We even had a couple of Miami flamencos in the audience: Kyoko and Luís Linares "El Tiburón".

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. April 21, 2008" »

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Sara Jerez dancing soleá at Cafe Citron. April 14, 2008 9:39pm (photo by Jani)

It's 1:30pm on Tuesday as I type these words. Just about to leave the house, but I thought I'd share some pics from last night courtesy of my volunteer photographer from last night. Thank you Jani!

Continue reading "Flamenco night at Cafe Citron. April 14, 2008" »

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Jason Vera y Aragón, Ginette Perea, Danielle and Isabelita at Cafe Citron. March 24, 2008 8:35pm (photo by Jani)

It's 2:23pm on Friday as I type these words. Just a quick entry with pics from Monday night at Cafe Citron. It was our first show in Spring and we had quite a few of the local flamencos, fans and friends in the audience including Isabelita, Ginette, Danielle, Jason, Jani, Carlton, Aseel, José, Giovanni, Fernando, Eddie, Raul, RJ, Ashok, Isabel and more!

My thanks to Jani for being my photographer for the evening. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron. March 24, 2008" »

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St Patrick's Day version of Corona. :-) March 17, 2008 8:26pm (photo by Jani)

It's 2:12pm on Tuesday as I type these words. Last night I went home around midnight (early by musician standards) cuz I seriously needed to catch up on sleep. Got up around 8:00am this morning then went back to sleep until noon. I feel much better now. But I have a bunch of website updates to work on. So here's a quick photographic peek at what went on last night at Cafe Citron for St Patrick's Day...um I mean, Night!

Continue reading "Flamenco at Cafe Citron on St Patrick's Day. March 17, 2008" »

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Ginette dancing soleá at Cafe Citron. January 28, 2008 9:40pm (photo by Jani)

It's 12:42am on Thursday as I type these words. Just got back from Cafe Bonaparte (in Georgetown) where guitarist Behzad Habibzai and singer Carlton Ashton were performing for the first time at this venue since October 2006! Not sure if this will become a regular gig, but I'll announce it here when I get confirmed info from Behzad.

Anywayz, this past Monday I performed at Cafe Citron as usual with Gerard Moreno, but the special surprise was having dancer Ginette joining us. It's been a while since she's performed here. And fortunately, my friend Jani gladly volunteered to be my photographer for the evening. Thanks Jani! No further commentary this time--just publishing pics for a quick blog entry here so I can go to bed early for a change and catch up on sleep. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Flamenco night at Cafe Citron. January 28, 2008" »

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María dancing Sevillanas at Cafe Citron. December 17, 2007 9:40pm (photo by Jani)

It's about 2:30am on Friday as I type these words. Although I had an enjoyable and relaxing day off (Thursday), I'm feeling a bit tired, but can't sleep so here I am editing pics and blogging to keep myself entertained. :-)

So how did I spend my day off, you ask? Around 11am, I met up with one of my top friends from MySpace who happens to be a very prominent person in the DC salsa community (HINT: this past Monday she received the award as "Washington Salsera of the Year") .

Continue reading "Monday night flamenco at Cafe Citron. December 17, 2007" »

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Jani, Gerard Moreno, Ian McClain and Claudia at Cafe Citron. November 26, 2007

It's 8:12pm on Thursday as I type these words. It's my night off, but I have plans: going to see some of my belly dancer friends perform around 10:00pm at Palace of Wonders near Union Station. But I thought I'd just spend a few minutes publishing some pics from Monday night.

My friend Jani showed up and he agreed to take pics for me again. Thanks Jani! Thing is that I had my camera manually set on "slow-sync flash" mode and I didn't warn him about it. So a lot of the pics are blurry but very warm and colorful. Some of them do look pretty cool, anyway, even psychedelic.

I'm about to head out into night. So enjoy the pics...

Continue reading "Psychedelic Citron. November 26, 2007" »

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Sonia, Miguelito and Jonathan. April 9, 2007 9:08pm (photo by Ronaldo)

It's 12:30pm on Tuesday now. Grrr...I was supposed to be out the door half an hour ago. So this is the last quick blog entry for the day. Enjoy it!

Last night I did my usual show at Cafe Citron. Joining me onstage were singer guitarist Gerard Moreno and dancer Sara Jerez. Guest artists included percussionist Jason Vera y Aragón, singer José Oretea with palmas by Richard Marlow--wow, an all-star (for Washington DC) cast!

Anywayz, in the pic above I'm with my longtime friend (three years is a long time in DC) Sonia Sheikh and her friend from New York, Jonathan. Sonia was explaining to Jonathan, "Miguelito is the reason why I moved to DC." Aw, how sweet of you to say that Sonia. Well, actually it was my website that factored heavily in her decision to move to the Nation's capital. Why you ask? Of all the cities she could have moved to (for graduate school, I assume) she chose DC because it had an active flamenco scene and flamenco is something that Sonia absolutely loves!!!

Just yesterday I read a brief article about GMU economics professor Richard Florida who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. GMU president says, '"His thesis [Richard Florida's] is that 20- and 30-year-olds first decide where they want to live, and then they decide what kind of job they want and where they want to work. They are more interested in location."'

Did the presence of an active local flamenco scene heavily influence your decision to move to the DC area?

Here are the rest of the pics from last night at Citron...

Continue reading "Flamenco Night at Cafe Citron. April 9, 2007" »

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Mariya in soleá. July 10, 2006 9:56pm (photo by Carla Pacheco)

It's 9:37am on Tuesday as I type these words. Crowd-wise last night was a pretty civilized evening at Cafe Citron. I have been performing here for almost five years now, so yeah, I know that it's a bar and drunk people tend to shout a lot. But this time around there weren't that many loudmouths. There was a decent amount of people in the audience and in fact they actually all shut up during my intro to soleá. Loved it!

Mariya tried out some of the Campallo remates that she learned at the Albuquerque festival last month. There were unusual accents galore and I didn't catch all of them on the spot, but oh well. The important thing is that I gave Mariya a solid compás canvas upon which she painted her rhythmic pattern. Next week my accompaniment will be more complementary.

Anywayz, got some morning errands to do so I'll just quickly publish a few pics and head out. The rest of this week is going to be very very busy. I've got rehearsals for the upcoming Peña Flamenca show at American Dance Institute which will be this Saturday. I'm pretty excited especially since I'll get to work with singer Alfonso Cid for the first time not to mention that some of Anna Menendez's very talented most advanced students will be performing. Buy your tickets early--I have a small supply for sale, just talk to me at one of my tablao shows this week: tonight at Las Tapas, Wednesday at Cafe Bonaparte or Thursday at Andalucía.

Hopefully, I'll finish my errands early and be able to squeeze in a movie this afternoon. Ciao for now. Enjoy the pics!

Continue reading "Cafe Citron. July 10, 2006" »

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