Manolo Sanlúcar, José Antonio Rodríguez, Manolo Franco y Paco Serrano will teach 'toque' in Córdoba Guitar Festival

Inmaculada Aguilar and Javier Latorre will explore technique and choreography
for flamenco dance

Alberto García Reyes

The guitar isn't an excuse to visit Córdoba. It's an extra added attraction. After the month of May with its flowers and patios, the typical salmorejo sauce and the tortilla de casa Santos, the fair and the bullfights, the populace gathers down at the Plaza del Potro, on the road to an old artisan's shop. Just a few meters from an old inn Manuel Reyes Maldonado is sanding away the exotic palosanto wood which in his hands will eventually become a six-stringed instrument. Armas Street in early July is the starting point for a stroll through the world of the caliphs. Perhaps it is there that a city's devotion to an instrument begins -an instrument it honors with a festival that is genuine, pioneering and basic.

Manolo Sanlúcar

Everything in Córdoba relates somehow to the guitar. The sound of Juan Serrano's six strings marks the hours por seguiriyas in Las Tendillas. The sounds of José Antonio Rodríguez evoke Picasso with the orchestra directed by Leo Brouwer. What is all this really good for? It doesn't matter. Whatever it's worth, every year Córdoba pays tribute to the guitar, spilling into the street and the Gran Teatro to contemplate the vibrations of the instrument descended from the vihuela. The adulation is not directed at the music with any of its geographical labels. No. Here the praise is directed at music, period. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything that can possibly flow forth from the mouth of a guitar, whatever it may be, has a place in this genuine, pioneering and basic festival.

For a native Cordoban the jazz guitar of Al di Meola, John McLaughlin or Larry Coryell is just as essential as the classical sounds of María Esther Guzmán, Costas Cotsiolis or Víctor Pellegrini. Just as important is the flamenco sound of Manolo Sanlúcar, Paco de Lucía or Moraíto, and the dancing of Israel Galván, La Yerbabuena or Manuela Carrasco to the music of Andalusia's six strings. Córdoba is closed to nothing -except to prejudices- and is wide open to the harmony of cultures via the sound of strings tensed upon wood.

Teaching

More importantly, this genuine, pioneering, basic festival has another angle: teaching. Séneca said there is no good wind for the person who knows not his destination. Séneca said it. Córdoba, his child, inherited the wisdom. And this year, as all others, the festival will guide the lovers of knowledge towards the northlands of flamenco so they may take pause in search of the truth. From the 5th to the 13th of July, Manolo Sanlúcar, José Antonio Rodríguez, Manolo Franco and Paco Serrano will explore the depths in 'Naturaleza y Forma de la Guitarra Flamenca' [Nature and form of the flamenco guitar]. Inmaculada Aguilar will take on 'Técnica y coreografía del baile flamenco' [Technique and choreography for flamenco dance] from the 1st to the 5th of July. And Javier Latorre will pick up where she leaves off from the 8th to the 12th of the same month, a period during which Calixto Sánchez will take a break from his normal job as elementary school teacher to practice his profession as cantaor. The guitarmaker Francisco Santiago Marín and teachers Manuel Barrueco, Rolf Lislevand as well as the previously mentioned Costas Cotsiolis, Víctor Pellegrini, Larry Coryell and Leo Brouwer will also contribute their knowledge and experience. It must be borne in mind that all these individuals will be following Séneca's saying: the reward for a good deed is in having performed it. The 2002 Festival de la Guitarra is reward enough for those who travel the tensed strings of the art, because it is genuine, pioneering and basic. Three wonderful adjectives to express a thousand virtues. Wonderful Córdoba. Nothing more, nothing less.

Javier Latorre (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)