Before I even really knew what Flamenco was, I knew the name Paco de Lucia.  He is considered one of the greatest Flamenco guitarists (arguably one of the greatest guitarists all around) and many of my generation of guitarists credit him with being the reason they dedicated themselves to Flamenco guitar.


One of the beautiful things about Paco as a person, was that he chose to honor his mother by choosing the stage name, de Lucia.  He was born, Francisco Sanchez Gomez, in 1947.  His mother was Lucia Gomez and his father was Antonio Sanchez, a laborer and a guitarist himself.  If you want a more detailed biography of Paco, please visit his website: www.pacodelucia.com

What can I say about Paco?  He was a virtuoso, but his playing went beyond technique.  It was amazing technique perfectly fused with soul.  This combination, and his willingness to explore new terrain, while staying true to his Flamenco roots, were what enabled him to take Flamenco to the world.  He has given so much to the world of music, though his collaborations with international artists, and he is also credited with bringing the world back to Flamenco.  One of the biggest examples of this is when he and his Brazilian percussionist, Rubem Dantas, brought back and adapted the Peruvian cajon to Flamenco.  This box-like drum is now a fixture in most Flamenco shows, so much so, that newbies are always surprised when they find out how recently it was introduced into our art form.

For me personally, because I love cante so much, some of his greatest collaborations were with the legendary singer, Camaron de la Isla.  Together they brought Flamenco to new heights and to the world, including me.  I am forever grateful. 

Paco passed away from a heart attack last month, on February 26th, 2014.  His heart stopped and the hearts of all other Flamencos broke that day. 

We will miss him greatly, but his music lives on.  Below are some clips for you to enjoy.  Have a beautiful day, surrounded in music.

If you've been following my newsletter and my blog for awhile, you know that I say I've been married to Flamenco for X number of years.  Right now it's 18, but it will be 19 sometime in the Spring.  Unfortunately I don't remember when our exact anniversary is.  I just know Flamenco and I finally found each other in the Spring Quarter at UCLA in 1995.

Like in any marriage, we have had our ups and downs.  The downside?  Impatience, anger, and fear.  Conflicts of the ego, where I was getting ahead of myself, wanting things to be other than they were at the moment, an unwillingness to commit.  I've mainly been the problem.  I can admit that.  Flamenco has always been there for me.  When times were tight, Flamenco bought groceries.  When I was grieving death or heartbreak, Flamenco sang to me and held me up in its rhythmic waves, to the point where I've learned to breathe and float while resisting pain.

Flamenco has also taught me joy in small things.  The satisfaction that comes from the perfect arch of the eyebrow, that slight shoulder bounce on the 10 in Bulerias, that perfect hip roll or head roll.  The fun of shaking a scarf or my hair at the audience.  Flamenco taught me how to flirt and how to own my sensuality.  It didn't teach me to do it in a cheap way either, but in a badass way.  Alluring and defiant at the same time.  As a teacher told me once, "You're saying, 'You can look at me, but if you touch me, I'll cut you' ".

Flamenco taught me patience, hard work, and care for my craft.  I honestly believe I would not have really understood mindfulness meditation or yoga if I hadn't been through the rigors of Flamenco training first.  It literally has been blood, sweat, and tears.  Toenails ripped off, bruises from falling or hitting myself too hard when doing a slapping step, a busted knee that left me on a cane for awhile, cuts on my hands from the palmas or even my castanets, a sprained toe that turned black.  That one also left me on a cane for awhile.  There were hours of staring at myself from every angle in a mirror, hours of going over the same step over and over again to get the counts or the feeling just right, hours and hours and hours of classes.  The expense and experience of selling off your stuff, packing up the rest, and moving to another country for years, just to spend hours every day honing your craft.  So now, understanding that I am a baby at meditation is really easy to accept.  Flamenco was my first practice.

Flamenco has been gifted to me in this lifetime and honestly, I feel we've been together before.  It's the only thing that explains why I've been practicing snapping on multiple fingers ever since I was a little girl.  I've recently been a little out of love with Flamenco.  Again, it's not Flamenco's fault.  I think those of us who are married to Flamenco often abuse its sacredness with getting caught up in unnecessary stuff.  Pettiness, insecurity, avarice, fear, anger.  All of these things get in the way of our contract with Flamenco.  And it is a sacred one.  No one can tell me Flamenco is not sacred.  It is a musical form with roots that go as far back as 900AD.  It came together from a merging of various cultures, led by people who were resisting persecution.  They took their pain and suffering, faced it, and channeled it into beautiful music and dance that gave them a moment's freedom.  To me that is a gift from the divine, the cosmos, the universe, the collective consciousness, however you want to look at it. 

So Flamenco, I am now working on falling in love with you all over again.  As our relationship enters young adulthood, I am looking to mature.  I will be bringing in what I am learning from my mindfulness, loving-kindness, and gratitude practices to infuse our relationship with a renewed love and respect.  I will embrace the divine feminine that you have allowed me to channel more than ever before.  I will remind myself of your grounding force every time I place my nailed feet onto the tablao, acting as a tree, rooted in the earth.  Just like a tree, I will stretch my limbs to the skies, and like the wind that blows through its leaves, I will float across the floor with the aire that breathes me every second of every day. 

Flamenco, I vow to you to honor our sacred contract.  I am grateful to you for these almost 19 years.  I want to extend my gratitude to all lovers of Flamenco.  In the present, and in our future, may we always be mindful of our service to others through this art and that we may be of service to Flamenco itself.  May we all be happy, may we all be at peace, may we all be free.

Back in 1995, I picked a dance class out of the UCLA schedule simply because it was the only class that fit my schedule.  The class was Introduction to Flamenco, taught by Liliana De Leon-Torsiello. 

As soon as I stepped into the class, I was hooked.  Liliana was funny, charismatic, and exuded a confidence I wanted to emulate.  I still have this image of her standing straight, shoulders back, long curly auburn hair flowing while she told us all about the ancient history of this dance form we were about to learn.  There was such a mystique around it all, especially to my young 19-year-old mind.

Sometime during that first quarter, she introduced us to Carlos Saura's short film, Sevillanas.  Sevillanas is a folk dance from Sevilla.  As teachers often explain, it is not necessarily Flamenco, but every Flamenco must know it because we perform it in most traditional shows.

Well, we were watching the film because of course, we were about to learn the Sevillanas.  I loved every moment of it.  Like I said, I was already hooked.  However, I didn't know what was about to hit me.

The singer in the video is José Monje Cruz, better known as Camarón de la Isla.  Now, Sevillanas, because they are a folk dance you learn as a beginner, are often taken for granted by those of us who have been doing them for a really long time.  In terms of cante, or singing, they are not necessarily the thing you gravitate toward when you're looking for real, deep Flamenco. 

However, here, Camarón reminds us not to take anything for granted.  I was immediately wrapped up in him, wanting to know who this pained man was and what was the cause of his pain.  Little did I know at the time (I didn't yet know his name nor realized that he was a Flamenco legend) that he filmed this shortly before he died of cancer.  In fact, he died the same year the film was released.  This also meant, he was already dead when I first laid eyes and ears on him.

The dancer, Manuela Carrasco, another Flamenco legend, also captivated me with the fierceness of her gaze and movement.  Her Sevillanas didn't look like anybody else's Sevillanas in that film.  Not only did she change them up and make them her own, she was expressing his pain.

This scene, which I played over and over once I had my own copy of the film, is what finally did it.  From that moment on, Flamenco was my life. 

Sometimes I want to slap myself when I take Sevillanas for granted.

There are highlights to all of this in my more recent years.  During my time in Madrid, I got to see Tomatito, the lead guitarist in this video, play live.  It was gorgeous and he was gorgeous.  A little over a year after I returned to the States, I got to tell Manuela in person about how this scene made me choose to be a Flamenca.  That was 2010.

Some progress, eh?  From seeing her on video to taking her master class was a span of 15 years.  It took incredible patience, but it was totally worth it.

Hope the video calls to you to.

Love,

Mercedes

The other night at one of our shows, a man came up to the guitarist and me to thank us for our performance.  He proceeded to pull out a funeral program and told us that he had just buried his mother-in-law and was hoping we could play something that could be a celebration for someone who has passed.  We took a moment and then the guitarist started playing Lo Bueno y Lo Malo (The Good and the Bad) by Ray Heredia.  The song is about how he is tired of all the sadness and cruelty in the world, but also reminds himself that this precious life is slipping away.  It was a truly beautiful moment and besides it being a celebration for this man's loved one, I felt like we were celebrating life and the opportunity to do what we love for a living and share it with the world. I also feel like this man shared a gift with us.  He made me feel like my grandmother was speaking to me since I've been recently looking at using Flamenco for some sort of bereavement work. I am grateful this man let us in on a little piece of his life, that  his request inspired music, and I hope we in turn inspired him to keep celebrating the beauty of all we share in this world.  Whatever your song is, please share it.

Here I'll share  Duquende and Tomatito's cover of the song, that was shared by someone on You Tube.  I think the majority of the song is beautiful.  To be honest, I could do without the 80s-style sax solo in the middle, but I share it anyway, cos like the song implies, you must "take the good with the bad".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYb0DuZ0pc

I last wrote an entry in May.  You may wonder, why the gap?  Although, I'm sure the title gives it away.  My maternal grandmother, Mercedes Teodora Aymerích, passed away on May 31 at the age of 89.  My daily existence has not been the same since.  Shortly after, her remains were flown out from Florida and my parents soon followed, as she had made her arrangements here in Los Angeles.  During that week, I kind of took the reins of the arrangements as I am the older sibling and my parents are not native English speakers and feel more confident letting me handle things.  It's interesting because I had been giving a lot of thought to death and grief prior to that.  I've given a lot of thought to both topics most of my life.  I had an infant brother who passed away when I was five years old.  That death has colored much of how I see the world.  Recently, I felt a calling, like maybe I could use Flamenco to help people process their emotions, particularly grief.  I find Flamenco to be so transformational and empowering because the lyrics and the feeling force you to face some of the strongest and hardest emotions we experience in life.  There are many lyrics about death and grief and for some reason, I had recently been contemplating them quite thoroughly.

Then my grandmother passed away and the theory got put into practice.  I suddenly found myself, not only handling funeral arrangements and giving a eulogy, but I also had to gig and sub my friend's classes for six weeks.  I was dancing in some capacity six to seven nights a week, performing and teaching in a world where now my only grandparent was finally gone.  I felt like I had to postpone my grieving because so many responsibilities made "life go on" even though some of it felt like someone else's life since I was teaching someone else's classes.  Not only that, a week after my grandmother was interred in the mausoleum, we buried my sister-in-law's grandfather.  Two weeks after that, we buried my husband's cousins' grandmother.  Suddenly it was as if the universe wanted to get me very acquainted with death and grief, not just my own, but the grief of others.  I listened and watched as tears, anger, secrets, and shock permeated everyone and everything around me.  There were moments of laughter too.  We should be mad about the tall, thin, pale and ghoulish-looking mortician who cracked an "I'm burning" joke to the priest who accidentally sprinkled some holy water on him, but it was so absurd, it was kind of a relief.  Worse was the funeral saleswoman, who had sold my grandmother the arrangements, passing out her marketing materials and bragging "I did this" as soon as the funeral was over.  And yet, in all that grief, the nonsense of such a vulgar act didn't really affect us.  It was just cause for cynical laughter.

The sweetness came in seeing family operating in a new manner.  Being more honest and remembering to say "I love you" or "How are you?" more often.  Sweetness came in not "sweating the small stuff".  The sweetness came in teaching class.  A slow arm warm-up, executed Tai Chi style, brings everyone to the present.  A "puzzle" of a heel-work step becomes a practice in snapping you back out of your mind and into life.  The joy of seeing students grasp something they didn't know just six weeks before, reminds you that life is lived for each other.  After living through so many deaths, our families celebrated my sister-in-law's birthday and a baby shower for my other sister-in-law.  Life goes on and in cycles of birth and death and in that joy and grief we meet, we find each other.  That is the sweetness.  Flamenco reminds me of it every day. 

Letra de Soleá:
"Soy piedra y perdí mi centro
y me arrojaron al mar
y al cabo de tanto tiempo
ahy mi centro vine a encontrar."

Translation of Soleá verse:

"I am stone and I lost my center,
and I got tossed out to sea,
and after a good length of time,
there (the sea) is where I found my center".