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The jondo
and the Berber
But being a fan here means always being
on the move. (In fact, while this was happening in Amsterdam,
Granada-born bailaora Fuensanta
la Moneta was doing the same at De Doelen in Rotterdam).
And more so when the audience shows every night that it
is as receptive to tradition as to breaking new ground
or intercultural mixture. In fact, one of the festival’s
initiatives has been to favor encounters between flamenco
and other types of world music. While Isabel Bayón
was dancing in Utrecht, Niño Josele was embracing
Berber music. The same as he had already done with gnawa
when he used the Barbès National Orchestra in ‘Zawiya’
on his album ‘Niño
Josele’. Of course, in just a few days of preparation
with singer Charifa Kersit and her musicians, there was
hardly enough time to get a piece ready together, to the
common beat of tanguillos. That happened at the end. The
rest of the concert was a recital by each of them. Niño
Josele’s, the first of the two, openly displayed
how Paco de Lucía can still affect a guitarist.
Even though he brought two cantaores with him, the voice
of the night was that of the singer from Atlas, whose
sharp echo to the sound of tambourines and lutar made
the very air itself tremble.
Click
the image to enlarge |
|
Niño
Josele and group (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
But the night didn’t stop there.
Just as soon as the Almería-born artist had finished,
at the Bimhuis the recital by Chicuelo
began, presenting the contents of his recent album ‘Diapasión’.
And the flamenco day kept getting longer and longer and
longer. At this Dutch Biennale there is time to perfect
knowledge, as occurred in Isabel Bayón’s
masterclass in the downtown Studio 4 on Friday afternoon
with four students and twenty-five auditors; to listen
to theories, like the one which Faustino Núñez
put forth about cante; to see the episode on Pata Negra
from the series ‘El Ángel: musical flamenco’
in a perpetual loop on the Hotel Lloyd’s internal
TV channel…
Children and flamenco
… and even to have flamenco enjoyed
by children, that future audience called for by El Pele.
Coming to take care of that is Silvia Marín, who
has toured the three venues of the festival with her educational
show ‘El flamenco en cuatro estaciones’ (‘Flamenco
in Four Seasons’). It was worth seeing the seats
at the Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ full of little girls
wearing flamenco dresses, amazed by the show’s more
interactive numbers. Well now, the ones who couldn’t
come out as volunteers remained pouting and could only
find consolation in what awaited them at the exit: supplies
to draw their impressions of this first approach to flamenco
music and esthetics which they had just experienced. A
little blonde girl wearing a red dress with black polka
dots was seated on the floor drawing the scene of the
seguiriya with the umbrellas, to which she had added the
word ‘OLÉ!’ in a bubble. Flamenco has
its future fans guaranteed... in the world.
Photo
gallery, by Daniel Muñoz
El Flamenco Vive Company, ‘El flamenco en cuatro
estaciones’
Click
the image to enlarge
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