Flamenco Quote of the Day

What memories have you of Seville in the thirties?

"Triana and the Alameda made a point of being different: the people from Triana were always very proud and seldom came to "Seville"; if you wanted to hear them you had to cross the river, and they also made a big thing about not ever catering to the 'señoritos', although that was only in the beginning, and later on everything changed. The Alameda was something else. Outsiders always congregated there."

El Chocolate/Cantaor 2001

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Not everyone can understand this.  In order to understand flamenco singing, you have to live with someone who sings, and you hear them all the time, and then you say “this one sings, but that one doesn’t”.  Nowadays everyone is a flamenco singer, but that’s not how it is, not just anyone can sing."

"Pasa una cosa, todo el mundo no lo entiende.  Porque tú para entender de cante, tienes que vivir con una persona que sabe cantar, y escuchas cantar, entonces dices tú, “este canta, pero aquel no canta”.  Hoy en día la gente cualquiera canta y no, cualquiera no canta."

Maria Bala/Cantaora
1933-2014

Flamenco Quote of the Day

I'm throwing stones in the street,
and if they hit someone,
forgive me. It's just that I'm going
crazy from all this thinking.

Tirando piedras por las calles
y a quien de, que lo perdone.
Tengo mi cabecita loca
de puras cavilaciones.

Bulerias

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

How sad for the man who eats
His Bread out of another man's hand,
Always having to check the face
To see if it approves or disapproves.

Desgrasiado de aquel que vive y
come pan de mano ajena.
Siempre mirando a la cara,
si la pone mala o buena.

Martinete/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I am still not very flexible with respect to flamenco. Lola Flores, for instance; every time she released a record, it was brought to my place so that we would know about it, and we never played it, no sir. I never considered Lola as a good cantaora or a good bailaora; she was a very temperamental and very Andalusian woman, no doubt about it, but there is a great difference between that and flamenco. Well you can imagine that if I didn't stand up with Lola, how am I going to stand up with all the bullshit that the administration of today wants to sell to us as being flamenco, you understand? I am not a very tolerant person regarding Flamenco.

Paco Lira/Owner of La Carboneria in Sevilla (long before it became just another tourist attraction)

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I would like to die
Just to see if you would dress
In black for me.

Yo me quisiera morir
a ver si tu te ponias
negro lutito por mi.

Solea por Buleria

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

Oh! Beautiful Cuban woman,
I have a house in Havana
saved just for you,
with a ceiling of ivory
and a raised floor
for you, my little white dove,
I'm bringing you a lily.

Ay! Hermosisima Cubana,
tengo una casa en La Habana
reservada para ti
con el techo de marfil
y el piso de plataforma
para ti, blanca paloma,
llevo la flor de lis.

Guajiras

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"How are you going to be able to talk about Spain
after you've actually been there?"

Heinrich Heine to Theophile Gauthier

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

Your mother says nothing;
Your mother is one of those
Who bites with her mouth shut.

Tu madre no dice nada;
Tu madre es de las que
Muerden con la boca cerrada.

Bulerias

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

You want me to love you.
Let your mother love you,
she has the obligation to!

Quieres que te quiera yo.
Que te quiera a ti tu madre, 
tiene la obligacion!

Bulerias

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

You say you don't love her,
don't even want to see her,
but the little path between
her house and yours
grows no weeds.

Dices que no la quieres
ni quieres verla,
pero la veredita de
tu casa a la suya
no cria hierba.

Seguiriya

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

I'm not sorry that you're leaving;
I'm just sorry that you're taking
all the blood from my veins.

Yo no siento que te vayas;
lo que siento es que te llevas
la sangre de mis venas.

Solea

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Flamenco is the means through which
man reaches God without the intervention
of saints or angels."

Luis Antonio Vega


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

What drama of an entire people is
expressed in these songs of wounded love,
what drama of a whole people who
managed to save only a guitar from
a disaster where they lost their psalms,
their altars and their gods?

Rafael Cansinos Assens/La Copla Andaluza


www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

If one day I call you
And you don't come,
I could be murdered,
I wouldn't feel a thing.
Little companion of my soul
I carry you in my heartbeat.

Seguiriyas/Traditional

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"The singer who sings siguiriyas leaves in each line
a piece of his soul; and, if not, he is deceiving the 
listener, perhaps even himself. If there is one style
to which the singer must give every bit of himself, 
it is the siguiriya."

Angel Alvarez Caballero

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

A few years ago, in a dancing contest at
Jerez de la Frontera, an old woman of eighty
carried off the prize against beautiful women
and girls with waists like water, merely
by raising her arms, throwing back her head,
and stamping her foot on the platform; in that
gathering of muses and angels, beauties of shape
and beauties of smile, the moribund duende,
dragging her rusty knives along the ground, 
was bound to win and did in fact win.

Federico Garcia Lorca/Theory and Function of the Duende


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"My idols have always been Carmen Amaya and Farruco."

Manuela Carrasco/Bailaora

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I used to pray to Saint Anthony to find you
And bring you back to my side.
Now I pray to the Virgin of Carmen
That you'll leave and never come back!

Bulerias

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

"For my generation, knowing about cante and flamenco dance required going through the school of many moonless nights and above all, having a real love for flamenco. Having had the opportunity to know, to see dance and hear sing those unique artists, always of course, without forgetting the daily rigor and sacrifice of dance discipline. That and none other was my school, where I learned about dignity and about respect for the maestros that preceded me. Today's youth no longer cares about these things."

Mario Maya/Bailaor 1937-2008

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Flamenco does not act out tragedy, it is a tragedy.
It makes no poetry, it is poetry. It does not need
exuberance to express itself. It is content to cry out."

Anselmo Gonzalez Oliment "Flamencolecia"

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

I am jealous of the breeze
That caresses your face;
If the breeze were a man
I would kill him. 

Tengo celos del aire
que da en tu cara;
si el aire fuera hombre,
yo lo matara.

Solea

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Flamenco is fashionable now, but flamenco isn't my thing.
I don't sing flamenco, or 'deep song', I sing gypsy. Flamenco
is for Americans, and what my father does is also gypsy cante, 
not flamenco. I don't care what other people do, that's their business,
not mine."

Dolores Agujeta/Cantaora

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

From your neck hangs a cross
Set in gold and ivory.
Let me die on it
And crucify myself there,
On that cross that hangs from your neck

Granaina

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

"Farruco has twelve grandchildren and the only one
with a birthmark on his back in the shape of a hat is
called Manuel el Carpetilla."

La Farruca (daughter of Farruco)/Bailaora


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

On the day that I die,
I ask only this of you;
That you tie up my hands
With strands from your
Black hair.

El dia que yo me muera
mira que te encargo;
que con la hebra de tu
pelo negro
me amarres las manos.

Seguiriyas

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

For you it is as if I were made of wood;
you take little bites out of my flesh
and expect it not to hurt.
Bulerias

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

I have bought three knives
For you to end my life,
So that I will not have to
Suffer the pain
Of hating you.

Solea

www.MatadoraFlamenca.com

Flamenco Quote of the Day

The artistic treasure of an entire race is passing into oblivion. Each day another leaf falls from the admirable tree of Andalusian lyrics. Old men carry off to the grave priceless treasures of past generations, and a gross, stupid avalanche of cheap music clouds the delicious folk atmosphere of all Spain.

Federico Garcia Lorca from 'Deep Song'


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Flamenco Quote of the Day

“I've often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake” 

--Federico Garcia Lorca

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Flamenco Quote of the Day

It was said of Enrique el Mellizo that he would go to the
Capuchinos and sing to the crazy ones locked up in there. Other
times he would go to the wall and sing out to the water.
Sometimes he would get drunk and in the middle of the night
go to the wall and sing in a way that would make the hair of the
baldest man in the world stand on end. When he got that way
you could offer him all the money in the world and he would 
still not sing to you; he wanted to go sing to the poor crazy ones
or sing to the water.

Alvarez Caballero

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