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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