The annual willow bash is almost here ...



Click here for all the fun

I am afraid the rendezvous with all of you have been rather sporadic of late. Please bear with me, but work has been hectic and, more pressingly and enjoyably, I have been busy preparing for The Third Annual Willow Manor Ball organised by our dear friend, willow of life at willow manor. The big affair is scheduled for this Thursday, September 30th, and willow is planning lots of fun for all who attend. For more info, click on the caption of the poster to the left.

A cursory look at my short list of talents and skills will reveal what anyone who knows me will readily tell you: ballroom dancing is not one of my, eerrrhhh, strengths. Indeed, I was thinking of sitting this one out. But how could I resist? The big fling, after all, is put together by the very best blog friend anyone could ever have. Indeed, 10 months ago, when I first began blogging, willow was the very first person to visit, first to comment on my blog and first to sign up as a follower after my bashful pitch for blog friends. Indeed, I think I started most of those first blog posts "Dear willow...", but sheepishly dropped the introduction just before hitting the 'publish post' button. She has been a kind and supportive blog friend ever since. And, more to the point, her own blog is consistently engaging, enriching and stimulating. Willow is one of the finest poets to be found in the blogosphere, as you can see by clicking here. And most beautifully, there are so many other bloggers who will eagerly voice these same sentiments, who make a stop at the willow manor a part of every blog day. The first toast of the night will most certainly be for you, dear willow. "You're the best", to use a favorite and generous expression of yours!

As far as I know, I will be the lone guest from Spain, which strikes me as a bit of a responsibility. So rather than polishing off my foxtrotting or lindyhopping steps, I will try to bring some flamenco flair and fire to the festivities. For the occasion, I have asked the incredible Eva Yerbabuena to be my dance partner. Watch and enjoy the video below, and see that I will certainly have my work cut out for me. So wish me luck and wish willow all the best, today, on the 30th and always. See you there ...



I hope you get as much from this video as I do, although I know it is impossible for this medium, as wonderful as it is, to convey the raw power of such performances. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, before my daughters arrived on stage, I was a regular at various flamenco bars, venues, cellar caverns and hovels in Madrid, much as I had haunted jazz clubs in New York for so many years. I became friends with some of these artists and others kindly tolerated my grateful, fascinated presence. It is beyond me to describe the impact some of those all-night sessions had on me as I watched and listened to some of the finest singers, guitarists and dancers perform for each other, after hours, sometimes until 8 or 9 in the morning or whenever.

Some of the dancers, like Eva Yerbabuena in the video, completely knocked me out. Flamenco music is rhythmically very rich and complex and the rhythms that define the various palos (styles) can be highly sophisticated. Yet that artistry is put at the service of something that at moments seems primal, almost atavistic, the stylized outpouring of a savagery and wildness that can really shake one. I hope you feel a bit of that ferocious artistry in the clip.

Through my friendship with some flamenco guitarists, I was fortunate to be able to sit in, literally, on dance classes at the famous Amor de Dios flamenco dance school in Madrid. Since the dancing is so bound up with the guitar playing and singing, they would actually have guitarists and singers there. These were classes, not rehearsals for a show; yet, they would have two guitarists (teacher and advanced student) and a singer participate in all of the classes. Sitting on the floor while all of this was going on, with the dance instructor and as many as 20 students working on their moves, whirling, pounding, clattering steps, with the thrumming guitars and the singer's plaintive call, all in front of a room-length floor-to-ceiling mirror was a privileged experience I will never forget. I can still feel wave upon wave of those driving rhythms surging up my spine from the spot on the wooden floor where I sat in rapt witness two decades ago.

But, I never did learn to dance … and what all of this has to do with willow’s dance this Thursday, I do not know. Oh well, blame it on Eva Yerbabuena. Check her out.

Flamenco reply to a Prayer Request

Flamenco Sunset — © PhotoPhil

Seguiriya sung at dusk by the sea
The cantaor opens his ancient well
from out of the mineral depths
the flint tongue hurls sparks at the moon

a night raven rises up
to circle in the riderless sky above
beating the hoarse moon drum
with its broken wing
drumming and strumming
circling and circling

to the thumping cantered beat
he howls an unsurrendering lament
licking and fanning fatuous flames
with a busted throat
fanning and flaming
beneath the tightening circle

silver in the sky
copper on the sea
blood on the sand

For Isabel, I sing a flamenco poem for you, Ricardo (photo) and your family in answer to your Prayer Request and send it across the waters, gathering moisture to soften its dry seguiriya scream into a misted fado prayer with all of the healing that music and love may wring from anguished moments like these...

And for blog friends who have never heard a seguiriya, listen below as sung by Camarón de la Isla with Ramón de Algeciras on guitar

Music is a healing force

Don Pullen sequence by Michael Wilderman - displayed in A Tribute to Jazz Piano exhibit at The Jazz Gallery, NYC

One of the most beautiful experiences I have had since transplanting myself here to Spain some 24 years ago now was my friendship with jazz great Don Pullen, whose life was cut cruelly short by disease at the age of 54 back in 1995. Below, I recount an anecdote that I am fond of from those happy earlier days ...

Don Pullen was convinced that in a previous life he had been a gypsy flamenco singer from Sevilla, a cantaor. He confided this to me in one of our first flamenco outings in Madrid to explain why he felt compelled to take in as much of the music as he could despite the demands of his quartet’s nightly playing at the Café Central.

The revelation of the earlier life had come to him one night years before while giving a concert at the Roman amphitheater in the Italica ruins just outside Sevilla. And one of its abiding effects was that in all his visits to Madrid, which were usually one or two week stays, we would go out every night in search of flamenco music. He was always up for more, no matter how hard he had played at the club or how fatigued he might be. And I, of course, was delighted to make the rounds with him.

Three of Don's later albums have flamencoesque tunes on them. A few years later, he told me that at one point he had to stop listening to flamenco because it was becoming too strong an influence and was interfering with his composing.

One night, while we were chatting at the bar between sets at Casa Patas, a downtown Madrid flamenco venue, I noticed we were being observed from across the room by a tall, spindly, long-haired, grey-bearded gypsy. I did not know him personally but recognized the man as a quixotic fixture at the club, always seen hanging with the musicians and dancers that frequented the establishment. When his gaze met mine, he got up from his table, skirted around a few other diners, and strode up to us very resolutely, as if summoning up a great purpose that belied the generally bemused and faraway demeanor I usually observed in him.

Usted es un cantaor de Sevilla, ¿no? —“You’re a cantaor from Sevilla, aren’t you?”—, he asked, almost poking Don’s chest with the index finger of his left hand. I was going to answer directly, but instead translated the question for Don.

Before he could reply the man continued, Porque he oido que en Sevilla hay un cantaor negro que canta, pero ¡para rabiar! —“Because I've heard there is a black cantaor in Sevilla who sings so good that he sends people into a rage”.

This, too, I translated for Don, who, with a slight cock of his head and half smile, as if sorry that he had to dismiss the notion, explained to our visitor almost apologetically, “No, tell him I'm just a black jazz musician from New York”.

When I translated Don's answer, the gypsy’s head popped back slightly in disbelief, puzzled and disappointed. He fell silent and then his gaze slowly drooped downward, taking a few seconds to mull over something that just didn't make sense.

Without taking his eyes of the man, Don instructed me “But tell him that in a previous life I WAS a flamenco singer in Sevilla”. On hearing Don’s matter-of-fact explanation, the man’s fretted brows unforrowed as he lifted his eyes back to Don’s. A quizzical smile gently chased away the puzzlement. ¡Claro! —“Of course”— he exclaimed, the riddle now vanquished. ¡Pues entonces yo te conocí en esa vida! —“So then I knew you in that life! — he announced, and with a triumphant wave of his arm and a generous smile he bid us goodbye, pivoted sharply on the happy discovery and strode away.

One website with a lot of material on Don (discography, photos, music, links to YouTube videos ... ) is http://www.donpullen.de/ There you can find the cover of his 1975 album Healing Force (music is a healing force, Don liked to say), graced by his daughter Tracey (the Newcomer as he called her in another memorable tune).

Juxtaposition of George Apperley's 1931 painting Canción Malagueña and photo (©Outumuro) of the dancer (bailaora) Eva Yerbabuena