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Flamenco for the Fourth Friday in July


One of Rett's streptocarpus plants named "Flamenco" inspired this post.



The Flamenco Color Scheme palette has 4 colors which are Carmine (#9A0320), Harvard Crimson (#BD001D), Spanish Red (#E70026) and Rich Black [FOGRA39] (#000105).



Polo


Ay!

I have an ache in my heart

of which I can tell no one.

A curse on love, and a curse

on the one who made me feel it!

Ay!


English Translation of the original Spanish by Jacqueline Cockburn and Richard Stokes published in the The Spanish Song Companion (Gollancz, 1992)


From Britannica


flamenco, form of song, dance, and instrumental (mostly guitar) music commonly associated with the Andalusian Roma (Gypsies) of southern Spain. (There, the Roma people are called Gitanos.) The roots of flamenco, though somewhat mysterious, seem to lie in the Roma migration from Rajasthan (in northwest India) to Spain between the 9th and 14th centuries. These migrants brought with them musical instruments, such as tambourines, bells, and wooden castanets, and an extensive repertoire of songs and dances. In Spain they encountered the rich cultures of the Sephardic Jews and the Moors. Their centuries-long cultural intermingling produced the unique art form known as flamenco.



After the mid-19th century, flamenco song was usually accompanied by guitar music and a palo seco (Spanish: “dry stick,” a stick that was beat on the floor to keep time) and a dancer performing a series of choreographed dance steps and improvised styles. Baile, or dance, has been the dominant element of flamenco since that time, though it is never performed without accompaniment.



As an accompanist to the dancer (bailaor [male], bailaora [female]), the singer (cantaor) relates the legends and stories of daily life that reflect the experiences of an outcast subculture within predominately white, Christian Spain. The dancer is the protagonist of the singer’s narrative and its interpreter. The baile is a sensuous display of fluid motion, stylized and yet highly personal, involving movement of the arms (braceo) and upper torso, hand and finger movement (florea), footwork (zapateado), and heelwork (taconeo), which are often displayed in long solo passages (solea). Male dancers usually perform intricate footwork, whereas female dancers, traditionally wearing elaborately ruffled dresses, emphasize the hands and upper torso. The guitarist (tocoar) keeps the rhythm (compás) necessary to the dancer’s individual rhythmic cadences, accompanying (and, when the performance space is large, even following) the dancer.


A deeply musical dancer, after a 15- or 20-minute sequence, is said to fall into a duende, an intensely focused, trancelike state of transcendent emotion that Federico García Lorca in 1933 described as los sonidos negros (“the dark sounds”) invading the performer’s body. This extraordinary state is enhanced by rhythmic hand clapping and encouraging interjections (jaleo) from the audience and fellow performers. Gitano flamenco performers regard the cante jondo as a form of prayer, and thus, in duende, the dancer communicates with both the audience and God. What may well reveal the ancient origins of flamenco are the gestures of the profound dance (baile grande), in which the arm, hand, and foot movements closely resemble those of classical Hindu dance of the Indian subcontinent.


If you want to see some thrilling, authentic flamenco, I direct you to:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T7QVAPM2gs


The Unfaithful Housewife



TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY CONOR O’CALLAGHAN

For Mary Peace


Then I led her to the river

certain she was still a virgin

though she had a husband.

The fourth Friday in July,

as good as on a promise.

The street lights were vanishing

and the crickets flaring up.

Last bend out of town

I brushed her sleepy breasts.

They blossomed of a sudden

like the tips of hyacinths

and the starch of her petticoat

bustled in my ear like silk

slit by a dozen blades.

The pines, minus their halo

of silver, grew huger

and the horizon of dogs

howled a long way from the river.


Past the blackberry bushes,

the rushes and whitethorn,

beneath her thatch of hair,

I made a dip in the sand.

I took off my neckerchief.

She unstrapped her dress.

Me my gun and holster,

she her layers of slips...

Not tuberose, not shell,

has skin as half as smooth

nor does mirror glass

have half the shimmer.

Her hips flitted from me

like a pair of startled tench:

the one full of fire,

the other full of cold.

That night I might

as well have ridden

the pick of the roads

on a mother-of-pearl mare

without bridle or stirrups.

Gentleman that I am,

I won’t say back the scraps

she whispered to me.

It dawned out there

to leave my lip bitten.

Filthy with soil and kisses,

I led her from the river

and the spears of lilies

battled in the air.


I behaved only the way

a blackguard like me behaves.

I offered her a big creel

of hay-colored satins.

I had no wish to fall for her.

She has a husband after all,

though she was still a virgin

when I led her to the river.














CPW



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