Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco

Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco

The music started: two guitarists beating out more AlboreÃ¡s. The women took turns to dance in a frenzy, each trying to outdo the other. â€œDeep Song always sings in the night,â€ Lorca had written. It was the credo of the flamenco: a rejection of the mundane, the ordinary, the life of the everyday man, embracing, rather, an extreme world â€“ extreme passions, extreme feelings, the extremes of life and death. And it was a way of life I wanted to believe in â€“ its excitement, its danger, the affirmation it gave you that you were different, and alive.

Destined for a sedate and predictable life in academia, Jason Webster was derailed in his early twenties when his first love, an aloof Florentine beauty, dumped him unceremoniously. Loveless and eager for adventure â€“ and determined to fulfill a secret dream -- he left Oxford and headed for Spain, the country that had long captivated his imagination, and set off in search of duende, the intense and mysterious emotional state â€“ part ecstasy, part melancholy â€“ that is the essence of Spainâ€™s signature art form: flamenco.

Duende is Websterâ€™s captivating memoir of the years he spent in Spain pursuing his obsession. Studying flamenco guitar until his fingers bleed, he becomes involved in a passionate yet doomed affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer (and older woman) married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee the coastal city of Alicante in fear for his life. He ends up in Madrid, miserable and lovelorn, but itâ€™s here that he has his first taste of the gritty world of flamencoâ€™s progenitors â€“ the Gypsies whose edgy lives and fervent commitment to the art of flamenco vividly illustrate the path to duende. Before long he is deeply immersed in a flamenco underworld that combines music and dance with drugs and crime. After two years Webster moves on to Granada where, bruised and battered, he reflects on his discovery of the emotional heart of Spain.

Country	USA
Author	Jason Webster
Binding	Hardcover
EAN	9780767911665
Edition	1
ISBN	0767911660
Label	Broadway
Manufacturer	Broadway
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	336
PublicationDate	2003-03-18
Publisher	Broadway
ReleaseDate	2003-03-18
Studio	Broadway

Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco

You might also like...