ay,ay,ay

             3.Ay! Ay! Ay!

 

Do you love flamenco? if so. please to listen to  Manolo Caracol 

singing the siguiryia , a deep song of flamenco, on movie or video.

The cantaor would  begin the cante with an introductory !Ay!,

the lament with which all siguiryias begin. You would give your ears

to his heart-rending cante, sometimes wavering and meandering, 

of the !Ay! held for around 40 seconds. Its sound is like the wind

through the trees, The opening of the cante is not made of words,

but it is made of sounds. The sounds just tremble telling us nothing.

After the sounds comes the verse of copla, a piece of the cantaor's

soul. Listening to his siguiriya, You would be attracted by the lines,

as below, of the song in spite of yourself:

 

Cuando viene el dia

mis penas s'agrandan;

so'lo las sombras de la noche oscura

consuelan mi alma

 

When the daylight comes

my griefs began to grow;

only the shadows of darkest night

comfort my soul.

 

 Deriving from the seguidilla, a traditional folksong with  stanzas

of four line, the siguiriya was almost always sung  by a man.

Generally regarded as the most emotional type of flamenco song,

it is said to be the cry of someone afflicted by destiny.

If there is one style to which the singer has to give everything,

every bit of himself , it is the siguiriya.

Were a lover of Munc, a modern painter of ｅxpressionism to give 

his sensitive ears by chance to the triste vioce of the siguiriya,

what would his feeling be like? Probably the beginning of the voice 

filled with the ｅxpression of anguish and desperation,

would call back to his mind a woodcut print titled 'cry'.

by Munc, a European painter of ｅxpressionism.

 

 Now you could come to roughly guess how did a spectator 

feel listening to the song of siguiryia sung by a gypsy cantaor

on the out-door stage of flamenco performance at sunset

in Portland. He was a foreign traveler who happened to drop

in this city  on his way  to Seatle and Vancouver. and for him

this was the first personal experience to contact flamenco !

There at the end of the first half of the flamenco performance 

he turned his face toward a man viewer by him and said to him,

' Hello, A strange song, isn't it ? Ah... You seem to really enjoy

this monotonously harsh sound of Ay! Ay! Ay' .

 

" Of course I love it. How would you like it?"

" To me the sound is completely unfamiliar, but not bad..."

"Oh! I am Bob living here as a carpenter. Nice to meet you",

 

We exchanged such words of greeting , and  he introduced 

to me a woman looking in her twenties on the wheel chair

at his side He said,' This Ann, my daughter ,' adding

' We two live here in the downtown'

 

"Hi, Ann!, I am Gohk, a traveller", 

Gohk said to Ann, but she did not gave me a word,

 

"......."

 

"?......."

 

  So he said to her daughter ,"Ann, This gentleman is here 

to see our Pearl festival", and turning his face toward me,

he passed a line of hint about her in a lower voice,

"Hi, Gohk , Ann remains 5 years old in mentality."

Then I lost no time in replying to Bob, sensing the situation, 

"Oh!, ........Bob. you must be a flamenco afficionado!" ,

and again whispered to her as if to a little girl,

" Hi, Ann, you love flamenco, too? '

 

Bob replied, "Ya. We are flamencos. flamenco is indispensible

for both of us. It has become a  very important part of my life",

adding with his eyes toward her daughter again,

" Ann likes baile, particularly Alegrias, kind of group dance,

more buoyant and more rhythmic. She even dances it

on her wheel chair, well copying alegrias as bailaoras dance."

 

 "Hi, Ann, Your father said you dance alegrias well.

It is a beautiful dance?",

I said with my eyes turned to her,

and after a pause to her father,

" As for me, this is my first encounter with the cante siguirryia,

but strangely it seems not unfamiliar to me. Furthermore,

on listening to it, I felt tears gathering in my eyes. As you know,

I have never been present at the flamenco performance before,

neither did I hear it sung."

 

 " I got it. Oh, Gohk, you must be hooked by flamenco.  

From now on, I am sure, you will be unable to resist its lure 

any more", he replied with a significant laughter, and added,

" if you are okay , I will take you to a flamenco cafe 

named Albaisin 5 minutes walk away by the riverside.

There on saturday You can see a live flamenco.

And remember 'no vino, no flamenco'!

No art without intoxication!"  

 

 " Interesting! I heard that flamenco is a  traditional dance

of Spain. Is it from the gypsy culture ? is it right?",

I asked.

 

 To this question He gave me a long explanation of it,

" Sure. It comes from Andalusian Gypsie. and at this time 

flamenco mainly consists of cante( singing), baile( dancing)

and toque( guitar playing), which come to be all distinctive arts

in thier own right and can stand alone,but it is not just theirs.

It  now come to be universal beyond the geographical boundary. 

As, you know, it is much more than just dance, just song .

That flamenco originated in the outpouring of suffering,

lamentation and protest among the gypsies and

other oppressed peoples of Spain.

So, flamenco in its awesome spontaneity is in him

who can suffer from the world and feel within him

- like the dawning - an irresistible urge to cry out." 

 

 "Oh, You are a amazing guide. Your comment helps

my eyes to see flamenco farther and wider",

I appreciated for it, and he added one more,

"Hey, Gohk. Keep this point:

when it comes to flamenco, 

the cante of Caracol is best!"

 

 

 

From then on, I have been influenced by the invisible hand of

flamenco. You know, as mentioned before, that I must be

irresistibly signed by the invisible hand to fly to Portland,

where I was destined to meet Lau as a bailaora. In retrospect,

with this as the beginning, in a sense,

flamenco and lau as a bailaora have dominated my life. It is true ,

for I have been exchanging emails with her for about 8 years.

Above all thingsI have always met with flamenco by reading books

on it  or seeing concerts on Tv or video .Moreover I happened

to see a drawing, by Goya, of a blind couple singing, or

another drawing, by Gustave Dore, of Travelling musicians. 

The more I read about, the more I become unable to resist its lure.

 

  Fortunately I could hear Caracol on video singing flamenco songs.

That dark timbre, that roughness, that dramatic register

in the voice of the Caruso of the caves ! On hearing the cantaor ,

his eyes wet, singing the siguiriya  I was reminded of the image 

of 'Obert church', a painting by  Van Gogh.

The twisted image of it in the painting stand alones

with the roof top high toward the sky in cobalt blue.

Particulaely I have loved this short metaphorical ｅxpression

on the cante siguiriya of gypse flamenco 

by Garcia Lorca, a Spainish poet:

 

 'The infinite melody of Bach is round:

the phrase could repeat itself forever in a circular manner;

but the melody of the siguiriya disappears into the horizontal;

It escapes through our fingers and we see it off in the distance

like a perfect point of common hope and passion,

where the soul can never arrive'.

 

 

 Jean Grenier must have heard the Siguiryia sung somewhere in Spain.

If not, how could have the French writer written

an ｅxpression! of such meaning as below:

 

"There is nothing in the world, whatever it may be, 

that can deliver our mind.

Neither words, actions, images, nor dreams..........

However, a cry with no verbal meaning in a moment

sets us free!"

 

Then how comes it that I am a flmenco affacionado?

Unbelievable! 10 years ago I was completely ignorant of flmenco.

It was just exotic to me!

Now I am deeply in love of flamenco and a bailaora.

 

When I flied to Portland for the second time,

who would believe me saying that a remote cry kept alive

in my mind was an irresistible call to me?

Any who would believe me saying that I was likely to be

destined to meet a bailaora and to stand with her

on the stage of her flamenco performance?

"Korean song fits Spanish steps', which is the title

of the newspaper article on the performance held in the city,

as stated before, is vivid in my memory

 

Unexpectedly 5 or so years after she flied to Korea

to have the Morning Dews danced by herself in flamenco.

And the flamenco dance was strange and exotic here

in my home town. What is more, 2 exciting things followed it

one after another. The one is that a Spanish bailaora named

Shasha came to my hometown in korea in order to have 

workshops. here. The other to follow it was my  flying to Spain

to wander about Andalusian cities with a yearning

to feel flamenco closer.

 

In retrospect, without the fateful encounter in Portland

with the cry of Ay! Ay! Ay!, Flamenco and Lau who has shared

the partnership with me might remain strange to me. Of course

the Andaluisan cities of Spain would remain exotic,too.

Suddenly a  sparke of thinking hit me: in our life we happen

to have fateful encounters which drive us toward a direction of life

never imagined before!