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Thursday, August 2, 2018

La leyenda del tiempo

I think I'll start out my chapter with Camarón's La leyenda del tiempo, and finish with Poveda's Enlorquecido.  I listened to the former this morning and it is very compelling It illustrates some of the tendencies I've noticed in Flamenco versions of Lorca, like hybridization and popularization.  

It is not framed as an homage to Lorca per se, although Lorca was certainly in the air when it was recorded, in the transition period. Not all the songs are based on Lorca.

Camarón, before this time, was not particularly into Lorca, it would seem. It is not Camarón's homage to Lorca by any means, since the idea for the record was not his, but the producer's.  Camarón is described in the liner notes as "analfabeto" [illiterate]. I don't think that's inaccurate.

It is both more popularizing and more literary, since it departed from traditional Flamenco in its instrumentation, but also in its use of "literary" texts.  It was hated by the Flamenco purists (of course).  Now it is considered a landmark of "nuevo Flamenco."  

Nuevo flamenco reaches out both to other styles of music and to a more literary frame of reference.

3 comments:

Leslie B. said...

This is very interesting.

I have an unrelated, frivolous question. Does it irritate you when people say and write, "Two poems from [Mary Smith]" instead of "Two poems by [the author]"? I cannot stand it. Are they really by this person or did this person just choose them and send them to us? Or is the person not a person, but a construct through which poems pass and are emitted towards journals? Interested in your view on "poems from."

Jonathan said...

Never thought about it, but it is irritating.

Leslie B. said...

Maybe the idea is that the poems are presents.