Category: Art

Letters from Madrid – 1st & 2nd Flamenco Shows

Timothy Price16 Comments
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Me playing between dance sets in the 1990’s

After discovering the large and vibrant music scene in Madrid, and after seeing LaBanda live at Cafe Jazz Populart, we started finding flamenco shows, and went to five flamenco shows in the first 3 months we were in Madrid. Flamenco shows usually had several different performers that included singers, guitarist, dancers and various supporting musicians playing palmas (hand clapping), cajon (a box drummed on by hand) and sometimes flute and/or strings. Sometimes a show was simply a singer and guitarist, solo guitar or a dancer or dance group with accompanying singer, guitarist/guitarists and palmeros, but shows with many artists seemed to be more common. 

The first show we saw included Potito (singer) accompanied by guitarist Tomatito in the first part of the show and then Jose Fernandez (dancer) and his company the second part of the show. The second show was El Lebrijano (singer) accompanied by guitarist Enrique de Melchor with supporting palmeros.

 

18 April 1996

Flamenco
The first flamenco concert we saw featured Potito with Tomatito on guitar the first half and Jose Fernandez and company the second half. It was a good performance, but different from the shows we’ve seen at home. This was Potito’s debut performance promoting his new album. He sang and Tomatito accompanied. On some of the songs there was a second guitar, bass, cajon and palmero. Jose Fernandez is a dancer, and he was the only dancer. He had two guitarists, two singers, two palmeros, a cajon player and a cellist to support him. The theater is under the plaza at Colon circle, just down the street from where we live. The volume was not high and the sound was good.

The second show we went to featured El Lebrijano and Enrique de Melchor. El Lebrijano is an excellent singer, one of the best we have heard. Enrique is a fine guitarist. El Lebrijano’s voice is strong, his expression, delivery and sincerity are honest, and animated. He sings right to the audience and relates his stories through song with gestures and facial expressions that convey the convictions of his heart, soul and words. Enrique de Melchor is a flashier player than Tomatito, but was still very restrained as compared to many I have heard at home. His quick busts of speed, his clear tone, and clean changes assure the listener he is a fine guitarist, but again, he never does anything to upscale the singer. He is attentive, supportive, and does what is required to accompany and enhance the singer’s tonality. There were three palmeros that assisted at times and towards the end, one palmero, who was the same person with Potito, and I was thinking maybe he is a house palmero, got up and danced during a bularias, mocking the style of women dancers. He was very good actually, with strong, fancy displantes, hip movement, and great facial expression and greetos. On another bularias, El Lebrijano did his share of dancing while, the house palmero sang. The audience brought the group back 3 times for encores. This was good cause for them to call one of the other, younger, palmeros to dance. His dance was short and simple but fun, he is not a ham like the house palmero and the singer. The house palmero danced some more and then he and El Lebrijano danced together a little bit and danced off the stage together to end what was a very good show.

Next the third flamenco show…

Videos:
Tomatito & Potito | Caminillo Viejo (tangos) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34yscu_bAsQ

El Lebrijano & Enrique de Melchor – Seguiriyas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr3gmRppEsc

Letters from Madrid – Music

Timothy Price15 Comments
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Insert of LaBanda’s No todo es Seda CD that the band members signed for me

In the last Letter From Madrid we were looking for flamenco classes and I had found a great guitar teacher. Today I move to the music scene we encountered in Madrid soon after we got there in 1996. I wrote the first letter I’m sharing on April 18, 1996 after we had been in Madrid about three months — we discovered at that time Madrid had a very active live performance scene, and we had already seen more than a dozen live performances by the middle of April. We were there primarily to study flamenco, and one aspect of studying flamenco was to go to as many performances by different flamenco artists as possible so we could see what was current, and the different styles of flamenco being performed. While flamenco was the majority of shows we saw, we went to every kind of concert from Rock & Roll to jazz to chamber music to classical. I found a spreadsheet that I kept on every concert and artist we saw perform live in 1996. The tally was 83 concerts and 187 individual performers.  

The “Music” section will take several posts because the descriptions of many of the performances we saw in the first three months in Madrid are detailed and long.

I discuss LaBanda in this post. They were the first band we saw perform live in Madrid, and after some time we became loyal followers of the band, groupies if you will, and got to know the band members well enough that we would sit around and talk with them between sets. Be sure to check out the Youtube videos at the end of this post. Two of the videos are from a TV series on the arts. The lead guitarist, Leo, talks about the group, and if you don’t understand Spanish, don’t worry, most of the time is spent on them performing live.

 

18 April 1996

Music
The music scene in Madrid is big and hopping. There are advertisements for concerts all over the place. Green Day is coming as are “The Smashing Pumpkins” as the posters have it written, Sting, Kiss (unplugged), the Sex Pistols (what’s left living I guess), Mark Knoffler and about every other currently popular or once popular group plus a lot of Spanish and European groups we don’t hear about in the states. There are classical guitar concerts, ballets, musicals, plays and orchestras playing almost every night. We went to a really good salsa dance with two bands that played until 5:00 am, and we saw Irakere, Cuba’s most celebrated salsa/jazz group. We have seen five really good flamenco concerts. We went to Jazz Club Populart on Friday nights in March and listened to the bands they have (April’s lineup didn’t look as good, we will have to see what’s on in May). The first band we heard was a Celtic music band named LaBanda and they were excellent. I would like to see them again. The second group was a blues group. They were pretty good. The leader is from New York and gave us his telephone number, and we have talked a few times since. We are planning to get together with him, his wife, and his daughter. We listened to a reggae band there also, but they did not do much for us. We have seen many ads for ballroom dancing but have not made it out to see what it’s like here. There is so much going on that we could spend every day and night of the week going to museums, concerts, plays, symphonies and discos, listening to whatever live music we are in the mood for in bars and night clubs. With that we would not even begin to see or hear a fraction of what’s available.

Celtic Music
The band that plays Celtic music is worth mentioning. The group is called LaBanda, and they were quite good and the music fun. There was a bass player, drummer, keyboard player, guitarist/vocalist, violinist and a guy who played all kinds of flutes, small reed instruments and the bagpipes. The music was a mix of traditional rhythms with a rock under-beat. The tunes went from traditional to rock and roll. A lot of the tonality between the guitar, violin, and keyboard had an early Kansas sound to it. The band was tight, there was good balance on the sound, and they sounded great. They did lose a little of the Celtic quality from the vocal arrangements being sung in Spanish. However, in one song the guitarist/vocalist got the whole crowd to yell “hey”, “hey hey” at a break in the music. It was pretty funny hearing a bunch of Spaniards yell “hey”. The second time around he said we had to sound more English “you’re learning the language now” he said in Spanish, “say it” “heyy”, “heyy heyy” drawling the words into two syllables. This was even funnier. The band was not very loud. For a matter of fact, the band was having a bit of trouble competing with a few groups of Spaniards setting in the front of the bar. The guitarist finally went back and turned up the volume to drown out the Spaniards, which I think they only matched the volume. The evening was lots of fun and very entertaining.

To be continued…

LaBanda Videos
Labanda – Fin de Semana https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5OXn8Dgfo

LABANDA. PROGRAMA ESPECIAL 1 DE 2 (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIQlkrzBuBU

LABANDA. PROGRAMA ESPECIAL 2 DE 2 (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbeLeRWHww8

LaBanda – La Batalla De Somme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wTV3J3WJIs

Letters from Madrid – The Paperwork is Done

Timothy Price18 Comments

The first letter from Madrid left the us worn out from crisscrossing Madrid trying to finish up the paperwork for our residency cards. The saga continues with us looking for flamenco classes, a description of where we lived and Tristan’s schooling. She was 9 years old when we moved to Spain.

18 April 1996

Madrid, Spain
With the paperwork out of the way, Laurie and I went off in search of flamenco classes. Of course finding dance classes was not difficult and Laurie is taking class every day for two hours, and is looking into adding some other classes. I got lucky, and found an excellent guitarist, Miguel Rivera. who has taken me as a student. He was recommended by Pablo’s old teacher, Angel Torres. Miguel is a superb player, fast and clean like Paco de Lucia, very tasteful and very knowledgeable. He is constantly on tour with flamenco groups, so I get lessons when he is town for a couple of days between shows. He is performing in northern Spain, Italy and Poland for the next three weeks. He has me playing some very difficult material plus he has exercises for every technique and fingering I am deficient in (which is about everything). The style is very different from what I have played and is taking a lot of getting used to. I’m slowly adjusting and my speed and clarity is improving already. I am very excited about the guitar right now.

We live in the barrio called Chambari, in a small, but comfortable, fairly modern apartment. As it turns out, Chambari is a fairly upscale area, and this is the best priced apartment we have found so far, especially considering it has central heat and air-conditioning (Heating is not standard in apartments, and air-conditioning is rare) included in the rent. We are central to everything and right on a metro stop. There is a nice playground/park up the street from us where Tristan goes to play in the evenings. There are a lot of families in this area and Tristan has made several friends. There are real grocery stores fairly close by, a nice market down the street, a great book store around the corner, and the main branch of the public library up the road a bit. After looking at several apartments in the areas we like, we have come to the conclusion we are in the least expensive apartment we can find, so we are staying put at the moment.

Tristan is being home schooled, which is not something normally done in Spain, as most people don’t understand the concept. The Spanish schools are in session until the end of May and then have a break until the middle of September. We might put Tristan in School in September. Classes run from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Friday here. Tristan doesn’t even want to consider it at the moment. She has just finished a fourth grade math book and moved on to a fifth grade math book (she is a third grader). She is reading regular novels in English (middle to high school level), plus the Bible and some easier history, horse and bird books in Spanish on her own. Laurie is reading Don Quijote and Greek Myths in Spanish to her. Tristan has to do handwriting exercises and write at least a page, plus she has to write letters and post cards to friends and family. I work with her on Geography and Geology from a couple of very good, generally middle school level, text books. She has an Explora science book that she is reading and doing experiments on her own with. We go to the museums regularly so Tristan is getting art, art history and Spanish history. As she has learned from looking at the classic paintings, you have to know history, the Bible stories and mythology to understand many of the paintings. She is reading the Bible and discovering many of the stories in the paintings. She is also starting to understand and see a lot of the mythology and history in the paintings also. She is actually getting somewhat of a St. Johns College curriculum in her home studies.

We have not done a lot of site seeing outside of Madrid. There is so much to do here that it is tough to get out. We are what I would call micro tourists. We are getting to know an area of about 36 square kilometers in the center of Madrid very well; and that is a very small area of the city. We are finding all kinds of great museums and seeing great musical performances, learning the history of this wonderful city, and how to get about in it.

More to come…

While I did not take many photos the first couple of years we lived in Spain, I did find videos of Miguel Rivera, the guitarist I studied with in Madrid. Although the videos where posted on Youtube only in the past 5 years, some of them go back to the the 1990’s. The last one below that is very recent.

Flamencos de la Feria – Suite Sevilla Obra de Rafael Riqueni por Miguel Rivera y René Mora  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5rBpcCFSCM (Miguel is on the right side of the screen)

El Real – Suite Sevilla obra de Rafael Riqueni por Miguel Rivera, René Mora y David Vázquez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6WaVEGjRx4 (Miguel is on the right side of the screen)

Bulerías – Miguel Rivera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r51aSk7fDOI

Así suena el genial Miguel Rivera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63H-1EW9e_8 (Miguel in 2014)