Flamenco Quote of the Day

You have such large eyes,
as big as millstones,
and they grind up hearts
like so many grains of wheat.

Tienes los ojitos grandes,
como piedras de molino,
y parten los corazones,
como granitos de trigo.

Alegrias/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

You dress in red
while I dress myself in black,
thinking you have left me.

Te vistes de colorado
y yo me visto de negro,
pensando que me has dejado.

Tientos/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

There is nothing left to see,
because the little boat that
was there has set sail and
gone away.

Alli no hay naita que ver:
porque un barquito que
habia, tendio la vela y
se fue.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

...Palmas is a difficult skill which few master to perfection, and those who do not should best refrain from attempting it in serious flamenco. The gypsies are masters of this art.

Barbara Thiel Cramer/Author

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

There, still in my bed,
in the small hollow she left,
is the pin from her hair,
and the little comb she used
to hold it there.

Todavia esta en mi cama
el hoyito que dejo,
la orquillita de su pelo,
y el peine que la peino.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"They lived all of this first-hand... They'd be in a forge, one of them
with the hammer, the other working the metal, and the other... All of
them with different rhythms and different ways of singing. When you
hear a martinete in a theater, and you see one of them with a hammer,
singing to himself, it has nothing to do with what would happen in a
forge, with the bellows creating a rhythm, the hammer another, and so
on. And I think that the same thing must happen in the country. And if
you're at sea, the air gets inside you and makes you sing a certain
way."

"Esto como lo han vivido tan de cerca… es que estaban metidos en una
fragua. Uno con el mazo, otro con el moldeador y el otro… todos con
diferentes compases, todos con diferentes formas de cantar… cuando
escuchas un martinete en un teatro y ves a uno con el martillo
tocándose y cantándose, no tiene nada que ver cuando entras en una
fragua y el del fuelle está haciendo un ritmo, el que moldea está
haciendo otro y el base otro. Y me imagino que en el campo sería igual.
Y si estás en la mar, el aire se te va impregnando dentro y eso te hace
cantar de una manera".

Diego Carrasco/Cantaor

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

James A. Michener writing about an incident that touched him deeply:

"Thus the great fair of Sevilla continues, day after day. Toward dawn on the last night I stood at the entrance to the Aero Club as members of the nobility departed for the last time, and in the street stood an old man leading a donkey. He was not the kind who would own a caseta, nor a horse to ride in the daily procession, nor even a job in one of the carnivals. He was a rural peasant come in with his donkey to see the sights, and as he watched the ending of the fair he sang:

'Yo soy un anima infeliz,
perdida en este mundo atormentado.
I am a miserable spirit
lost in this tormented world.'

And as he wandered off, singing to himself, the tents of the five circuses were coming down. The parking lot where the carnival trucks waited came back to life and electricians were disconnecting their wires from the multitude of little casetas which would soon vanish."

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I want to live in Granada
because I like to hear
the bell of La Vela
as I fall asleep.

Quiero vivir en Granada
porque me gusta el oir
la campana de La Vela
cuando me voy a dormir.

Media Granaina/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The hour is late. The gitano's guitar stilled in the turning air. On the esquina a small band of shadows. He comes to them and together they wind through the narrow passageways of the Barrio Santa Cruz, carrying centuries in their blood, where home is nowhere, nowhere else.

Gloria Lewyn/Poet

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Federico Garcia Lorca writing on seguiriyas...

...There are songs where the lyrical tremor reaches a point inaccessible to any but a few poets:

The moon has a halo; my love has died.

Cerco tiene la luna; mi amor ha muerto.

There is much more mystery in those two lines than in all the plays of Maeterlinck. Simple, real mystery, sound and healthy, without gloomy forests or rudderless ships. It is the living eternal enigma of death:

The moon has a halo; my love has died.

...Behind these poems lurks a terrible question that has no answer. Our people cross themselves in prayer, look at the stars, and wait in vain for a sign of salvation. The gesture is pathetic but true. And the poem either poses a deep emotional question with no answer, or solves it with death, which is the question of questions.


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Flamenco Puro ...must come from within, without conscious effort to make an impression; that the creative artist must sing, dance or play for himself, even with the audience around him; that he be completely committed to his art, deaf and blind to everything else; that he give of himself one hundred per cent."

Barbara Thiel-Cramer/Author

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"To find Triana one has to search blindly on roads not of this earth,
mazes woven with dreams, through lukewarm ashes of agonizing emotion...
and all the while knowing that, we will probably still never find her. "

"A Triana hay que buscarla a ciegas por caminos oníricos, laberintos
trenzados de sueños, entre las tibias cenizas de un sentimiento
agónico, sabiendo además que, a lo mejor, no la encontraremos nunca."

Anonymous Cantaor commenting on the cante of Triana

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

In a green meadow I laid out
my handkerchief and three
roses appeared like three
evening stars.
The wedding is complete.
What a beautiful wedding!
God has blessed such a pretty star.

En un pradito verde tendi
mi pañuelo...
me salieron tres rosas
como tres luceros.
Se logro la boda...
que boda tan bella
que Un Dibe bendijo
a tan bonita estrella.

Alborea/Traditonal Gypsy Wedding Song

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The dancer's trembling heart must bring everything into harmony, from the tips of her shoes to the flutter of her eyelashes, from the rustles of her dress to the incessant play of her fingers. Shipwrecked in a field of air, she must measure lines, silences, zigzags and rapid curves, with a sixth sense of aroma and geometry, without ever mistaking her terrain. In this she resembles the torero, whose heart must keep to the neck of the bull. Both of them face the same danger--he, death; and she, darkness.

Federico Garcia Lorca/Poet from In Praise of Antonia Merce

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Malena had a little stand where
she sold sunflower seeds
to the little ones.
Malena of mine, Malena of mine,
come dance a little buleria!

La Malena tenia un puestesillo
que vendia sus pipas, pa' los
chiquillos.
Malena mia, Malena mia,
date una vueltesita por buleria.

Bulerias/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

To help us seek duende there is neither map nor discipline.
All one knows is that it burns the blood like powdered glass,
that it exhausts, that it rejects all the sweet geometry one has
learned, that it breaks with all styles.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Flamenco Poet
From Theory and Function of the Duende

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

After the husband of the woman he loved slit
Curro Pablas' stomach and took her back,
Pablas lived long enough to sing this song:

I am going to the graveyard
oh, God! Little companion of my soul,
don't let me die so alone;
I want to die by your side.

Al cementario me voy,
por dios! Companerita de mi alma,
no me dejes morir tan solito;
quiero morir a tu vera.

Seguiriyas

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Because in this story of flamenco everything is 'me, me, me,' and if there's any room left, it's 'me', too, you know what I mean?"

"Porque en esta historia, sobre todo en el flamenco, todo es "yo, y yo y yo", y si sobra un trocito en el cartel pues también yo... Ya sabes lo que te digo."

Javier Latorre/Bailaor

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The Flamenco always comes at the end of the night
after you have given up all your forces
It comes like a wounded, galloping horse
Whose rider was lost in battle
Sweating dark, bright stars

It comes like the desperate fingers
That dig into the body of the other
In the wounded moment of love's summit

It comes like a Hemorrhage of blood
And gray wind at the top of the trees

It comes to devour the soul
in the rain that weeps over the world

It comes from the dark matter
That dreams are made of

Because It does not come to ask
Only to respond
And to lose oneself forever
Amid the screams of the crows in the wind
On the plain

And from your own nothingness
It is only the knife and not the wound
It is only the knife and not the blood
It is the Brightness of the blade
And not the Iron



El Flamenco siempre llega al final de la noche
Cuando abandonaste todo

El llega como un caballo galopante y herido
Que perdio a su jinete en la batalla
Oscuro y brillante de la traspiracion de las estrellas

El viene como dedos desesperados
Clavandose en el cuerpo del otro
En el momento de la cumbre del amor

El viene como hemorragia
Y viento gris en la cupula de los arboles

El Viene a devorar el alma
En la lluvia que llora el mundo

El viene de la corriente
Oscura material
Que de el estan hechos los suenos

Que el no ha venido a preguntar
Que vino solo para responder
Que viene a perderte para siempre
Entre los gritos de los cuervos en el viento
Sobre el llano

Dentro de lo que no hay en tu mismo
El es solo el cuchillo y no la herida
El es solo el cuchillo y no la sangre
El es la brillante punta del filo
Y no el hierro

Shem Shemy; Director of the film "Por El Flamenco"
http://www.ruthfilms.com/por-el-flamenco.html

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Sometime, if only out of pity,
write to me sometime,
for my heart is so withered
with suffering that it can no
longer even feel pain.

Alguna vez
siquiera por compasion
escribeme alguna vez,
que yo tengo el corazon
marchito de padecer
que ya no siente ni el dolor.

Malagueña/La Trini

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

George Borrow, writing in the nineteenth century on the history of gypsies in Spain draws this conclusion:

The gypsy women and girls were the principal attractions to these visitors. There can be no doubt...that they are capable of exciting passion of the most ardent description, particularly in the bosoms of those who are not of their race. No females in the world can be more licentious in word and gesture, in dance and song, than the gitanas.

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

She loosed her robe,
that I might see
her body, lissome as a tree.
The rosebud opened in that hour
and oh, the beauty of my flower.

Al Mutamid/Poet-King of Sevilla

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

What kind of bird is that singing
in the olive tree?
Go and tell it to hush...
its singing hurts me so much.

Que pajaro sera aquel que
canta en la verde oliva?
Corre y dile que se calle...
que su cante me lastima.

Tientos/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"An art that turns its guts inside out and refuses to hide behind the mask of beauty...that is the real flamenco. Clearly this is not some superficial form of entertainment. Flamenco does not please, it is inherently not pleasing."

Claus Schreiner/Author

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Virgin of Macarena,
the moon's reflection
shines on your dark little face.
There is no face like your face,
nor sorrow like your sorrow.

Virgen de la Macarena
reflejo de luna clara
da en tu carita morena.
No hay cara como tu cara,
ni pena como tu pena.

Saeta/Traditionally sung to the Virgin Mary and Crucified Christ during Holy Week in Sevilla

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Just as the forge becomes
a flame of gold,
So do my insides
when I remember you,
and I weep.

Asi, como esta la fragua
echa candela de oro,
se me ponen las entrañas
cuando te recuerdo, y lloro.

Martinete/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Ardent struggle, endless vigil, like all art...the dancer battles the air around her, air that threatens at any moment to destroy her harmony or to open huge empty spaces where her rhythm will be annihilated.

Federico Garcia Lorca/Poet


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Manuela Carrasco and I started out together, in the Cochera, a tablao in Seville. In the cuadro there was Lole Montoya, Farruquito, Manuela, and myself. Farruco always used to come and watch the cuadro and he would define us, saying that she was more a heelwork dancer, and I was more arms. Although we both dance with temperament, her way of dancing is completely different from mine.

Concha Vargas/Bailaora

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Though I tear the
hands off of my watch,
time will not stop.

Agujas de mi reloj
que yo las iba arrancando,
y el tiempo no se paro.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

These songs, to be born, must come from the singer
after fighting his own voice and falling into an ecstasy
of inwardness that will draw everyone around him
into a vortex of feeling, wrapped round by that voice,
a guitar, and the sound of naked palms beating, and surging
down the dark line that runs from nothingness to nothingness
through life.

Felix Grande

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Even after death I am
bound to keep on loving you.
For a man loves too, when dead.
I love you from my soul, and
the soul never dies.

Hasta despues de la muerte
te tengo que estar queriendo,
que muerto tambien se quiere.
Yo te quiero con el alma,
y el alma nunca se muere.

Fandangos/Traditional

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