Flamenco Quote of the Day

The great artists of the south of Spain, whether Gypsy or flamenco, whether they sing, dance or play, know that no emotion is possible unless the duende comes. They may be able to fool people into thinking they have duende--authors and painters and literary fashion-mongers do so every day--but we have only to pay a little attention and not surrender to indifference in order to discover the fraud and chase away their clumsy artifice.

Federico Garcia Lorca from "Play and Theory of the Duende"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

We now live in a global consumer society which is becoming more competitive all the time and has nothing to do with the deeply-rooted art of flamenco. For this reason society promotes and creates dancers straight out of the laboratory who persist in a continuously banging percussion where the melody and spirit of each dance is canceled out by the mechanical effect of cuts and closings accompanied by karate shrieks after each desplante. But that's not all. They go on with their fake exits and allusive fade-outs, spurred on by a spurious percussive 'cajón' whose overbearing loudness and strength renders any sort of subtlety useless, and all for the sake of applause.

Mario Maya/Bailaor

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Every time I hear a Gypsy singing a deep song with all his body
and all his soul, I feel he is asking me a question to which I have
no answer."

Mikis Theodorakis

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

If I don't come in this life
I will come in death.
I will walk to every tomb
until I find you.

Si no me vengo en 'via'
me vengare en muerte;
como andare 'toas' las
sepulturas hasta que
te encuentre.

Seguiriya/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"I hear them talking about Manuela Carrasco... her majestic presence, her way of being, dancing forty years, suffering...and now these fools come along and do a few turns in their nightgowns and they want to take over the world. What unbelievable gall! I just call it like I see it."

Farruquito/Bailaor 2003

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Why have you sent me a gift of
seven sets of silverware?
I would have been content
with one small wooden spoon
for the time when you loved me.

Fandangos Grandes/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"To be Flamenco is to have another skin, other passions, other desires. It is a different way of seeing the world, with music in one's nerves, a fierce pride, happiness mingled with tears; it is a loathing of routine and sameness; it is to be intoxicated in song, wine and kisses; it is the translation of life into an art of caprices and of freedom." ___Tomas Borras

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The duende--where is the duende? Through the empty arch
comes an air of the mind that blows insistently over the heads of
the dead, in search of new landscapes and unsuspected accents; an
air smelling of a child's saliva, of pounded grass, and medusal veil
announcing the constant baptism of newly created things.

Federico Garcia Lorca/Theory and Function of the Duende

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

My child has a balcony
Which faces the rising sun
The sun rises, my child rises,
Rises the grace of God.

Cadiz has two small things
Which attract attention:
The girls of my neighborhood
And the street called Mirador.

Alegrias/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The jaleo is a necessary and intricate component of flamenco...the jaleo is basically made up of hand-clapping and shouts of encouragement, and can also be supplemented by finger-snapping and rhythmical punctuations with the feet...uninitiated spectators will often attempt to join in on the jaleo, not realizing that it is a science in itself. Sadly enough for the non-performer, none of flamenco's components, including the jaleo, can be attempted successfully without extensive training.

Don Pohren/Author

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Those cries...the lament...I think it comes from picking cotton and garbanzos in the countryside. It seems to come from a past that only gypsies have inside themselves. I've seen more than 700 gypsies picking garbanzos in the fields. At night we'd sleep in a huge barn. Gypsies from the whole province would come together. They had to feed their children."

Luis Agujeta/Cantaor from "El Turista Soy Yo"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Out in the sea
was a stone.
My girl sat down
to tell it her pains.

Only to the Earth
do I tell my troubles,
for nowhere in this world
do I find anyone to trust.

En mitad del Mar
habia una piedra,
y se sentaba mi compañerita
a contarle sus penas.

Tan solamente a la tierra
le cuento lo que me pasa,
porque en el mundo no encuentro
persona de mi confianza.

Andalusian Poem

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Some of those women stuck around in the weeks to come and later others joined up to dance with Carmen la Coja. I actually got to like teaching the "flamingo dance for yuppies class.".... Look at me, I told one sad suburban lady whose husband, she said, made a lot of money but was never home. I cupped her chin and her eyes went left, right, then down. Look at me, I said again. When she did I let go of her chin. Her neck was straight and her head balanced on top like a China vase on a pedestal. You keep that pose when you are on the street, when you go into a restaurant, when your husband comes home. You keep your head up. Dignity is the sexiest thing a woman can learn.

From the novel "Peel My Love Like an Onion" by Ana Castillo

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"I grew up listening to my father every morning when he came home after he worked at a fiesta. Every night he had to make money playing the guitar for the 'señoritos' or other people who would pay for a fiesta, and in the morning some singers, gypsies, would always appear at my house in the patio with my father and I would always wake up listening to them. And from that time I loved flamenco. I would listen with eyes like this and with ears like this (he demonstrates 'big' gestures) to the singers who came to my house."

Paco de Lucia/Guitarrista 1994

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

The greatest insult one can give to a Flamenco artist's performance:

"It says nothing to me."

"No me dice nada."

The greatest compliment one can give to a Flamenco artist's performance:

"This has the air about it."

"Eso tiene Aire."

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Give him alms, woman, for nothing in life can equal
the misery of being blind in Granada.

F.A. de Icaza

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

At the tomb of my mother
I started shouting,
and I heard an echo on the wind;
do not call her it sighed,
the dead do not respond.

En la tumba de mi madre
a dar voces me ponia,
no la llames, me decia el viento,
que no responden los muertos.

Malagueñas de Antonio Chacon

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

“To see you naked is to recall the Earth.” 

--Federico Garcia Lorca


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"When my oldest brother was a little boy, he fell and landed on his nose and squashed it flat. So we called him Mono, Monkey, because of his squashed flat nose. Is this cruel to call a little boy whose face has been smashed, Monkey? If your spine is a little crooked, you were called 'Joroba,' or Hunchback. If your face was a little round, your cheeks a little puffy, your lips a little small, you were El Guarrito, Piglet. If your voice was high and squeaky, you were El Capon. If you liked sex in the wrong place, you were called La Peste, The Stink...Is that cruel? No. For a Gypsy, a gitano, a cale, the only insult is not giving someone a nickname because then they don't belong, and for a Gypsy, not to belong to the tribe is to stop existing."

Sarah Bird from the novel "The Flamenco Academy"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

He who was no one
and becomes someone,
wishes to be the biggest someone.
Bigger than all the rest.

Aquel que fue poca cosa
y que cosa llega a ser,
quiere ser tan grande cosa,
que no hay cosa como el.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Better to die of loss of blood than to live with poison in your veins.

Federico Garcia Lorca/Flamenco Poet

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Sometimes you ask yourself, what did I just sing? And you don't know. It's not because you forget. You fall into a trance. That's the "duende." That which you will never do again...even if you try a million times. It's only that one moment."

Luis Agujeta/Cantaor from "El Turista Soy Yo"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

At night I go out into the countryside
and cry my eyes out,
knowing that I love you so much
and you don't love me at all.

De noche me salgo al campo,
y me jarto de llorar.
Pa' saber que yo te quiero tanto,
y tu no me quieres na'.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

If you don't have the posture, you may as well go next door and take swing dance, I said. You can hunch over all you like there, but not if you are going to dance flamenco. Now everybody say it once for me, please, I said, as ornery as anyone was ever going to be there. FLA-MEN-CO. If you want to see flamingos, go to Florida!

From the novel "Peel My Love Like an Onion" by Ana Castillo

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

You were evil,
people say you are so evil.
But they don't know that you did
it to save your children
when they were so sick.

Que tu eras mala,
dice la gente que tu eres,
dice que tu eras mala.
No saben que lo hiciste
para que tus niños se te curaran
cuando enfermos tu los tuviste.

Fandangos Grandes/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I've already told you
never to go to the same mass
that I go to.
You won't pray and I won't pray.
We will be without piety.

Solea/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Even before I began playing the guitar, I knew all the rhythms...how to make the rhythms...solea, buleria...all the rhythms...and I would say to my father, "That falseta is out of compas." And my father would say, "What? Bullshit!" But I would insist, "No, no it's out of compas." I would play the compas on the table, and we would see that I was right. This was before I was playing the guitar. That time was very fortunate for me because...that's why the gypsies are the best...because they hear the music from the time they are born. It is very fortunate. When I started to play the guitar, I knew what to do, where to go, how to play. That was the most important thing for me."

Paco de Lucia/Guitarrista 1994

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Crazy and numb,
just for a moment
I'd like to be crazy
and numb,
because feeling causes
suffering, so much suffering
and pain without end,
and the crazy man lives
without all that.

Loco y no sentir
yo quisiera de momento,
estar loco y no sentir,
porque el sentir causa penas,
tantas que no tienen fin,
y el loco vive sin ellas.

Malagueña de Enrique "El Mellizo"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Every day people write tons of books and articles on flamenco. Only flamencos know about flamenco. Period. It's a way of being. Flamenco comes from the daily struggle. From hunger, from working, from having a good time. That's flamenco. Life. A way of life that has practically disappeared. What's left are the "professionals" who make a record and get paid for it. Before flamenco was not like that. In the past people gathered in bars, in blacksmith shops, in huts...and they sang...cooked whatever was around...a rabbit, a cat...that was authentic flamenco.

Pepe Gaviño/Bookseller from the documentary "El Turista Soy Yo"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

And I loved her so much,
I took her out on the highway,
and I covered her face
with my little handkerchief
so the wind wouldn't
bother her.

Y que la queria tanto,
me la lleve por la carretera y
le eche un pañolito a la cara,
para que el viento no le diera.

Solea de Juan Talega

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