Calling Down the Spirits

I had a very vivid dream the other morning.  Now bear with me, my dreams are often, at least by the standards of "normal" folk,  quite strange.

In this dream I was in a theater waiting backstage to go on after a couple of 30-something male singers who were on stage performing.  They were seated on chairs singing flamenco, a type of unaccompanied vocal flamenco called "martinete".  These are among the oldest and most primitive flamenco melodies.  They are not major or minor, but modal.  This is Gypsy flamenco par excellence.  Melodies and lyrics are handed down in extended Gypsy families as virtual personal badges of identification.

What was so striking about this dream was not just the fact that these men were singing martinete, but that I was an old Gypsy flamenco singer (male) waiting to come on stage and sing next.  The martinete that the younger singer was performing took me back to a time when I was a child, during the Spanish Civil War, and I once again was seeing in front of me the bodies of those who had died in the fighting.  These were the first dead bodies I had ever seen and it had made a huge emotional impression on me that was unchanged after 70 years.  That song took me back to that shocking experience when I was a small child.

Yeah, some dream!

Here is a beautifully filmed example of martinete being sung by two famous flamenco singers from Jerez, one of the cradles of Gypsy flamenco in Spain.  The first to sing in Manuel Moneo and second is the legendary Agujetas.  Wait for the second singer to finish.  There is a sound that intrudes from outside of the venue where they were filming and it adds a most eerie touch.  This is an excerpt from Carlos Saura's film "Flamenco".  For anyone interested in flamenco, this is a marvelous film and one I highly recommend.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i429fxKgwIk