Unforgetttable moments 1-caves of the heart 2

Unforgettable moments

1.

The sound of solea Marina Heredia sings in her harch and tough voice reminds Inu of Albaisin in Granada which he visited for the first time in the year of 2014. From the moment that he happened to read a review saying that she was born in Granada and her father was a singer of of Albaisin quarter. he has become more familiar with her name. He likes to hear her cante which lets him have a feeling that in flamenco there is a tinge of the Arabic tone and another feeling that her impassioned and man-like voice has a moving ｅxpression of both tragedy and exultation.

Sometimes through a youtube video seeing her performing he wishes he were again in gypsy caves of Sacromonte , a quarter of Albaicin, which is situated directly in front of the Alambra. And also another case that he dreams of walking up at night along the narrow alley led by sounds captivaing his ears in search of the hideout from which the cante accompanied by palmas and guitar rhythm are streaming out .

In Albaicin he spent three nights at a hostel as a traveler with only an aim: to see and hear flamenco. It was the second day in Albaicin. Walking up alone at sunset to find out caves of flamenco which were known to be situated in the hillside of the gypsy quarter, he was captivated by a pitiful voice of a deep song coming up far from the lower valley side , getting connected ceaselessly, which was filled with sadness and possessd a strange power of ｅxpression. The hoarse sound produced by a woman singer resembled the cry of a wild animal deserted alone by its pack. Then unconsciously concentrating he stopped a moment concentrating his ears on the sound of the voice and muttered to himself : "Oh, How lamentable the harsh sound is!" As you know, flamenco song is in a real sense antiaesthic and is hardly calculated to appeal to the refined musical taste. The sound is actually like a howl or a call half-lost in air but imperative and terrible. pure passion.

living in Masan, South Korea, he often sees Marina Heredia singing cante on the youtube in his study. He is familiar with her images on the laptop screen where the focus of camera is placed on her facial ｅxpressions which she makes absorbed in accompanied by the guitarist whose face in part is buried invisivle in the darkness and the exotic rhythm of flamenco compas the player emits by his fingers on the guitar body . He enjoys a contrast of light and darkness which the exotic sound of her voice to the accompaniment of the guitar arouses. He has once read an interview in writing on the lap-top screen, which she, 40 years or so old, had with a writer. A part of it says as fillows:

" ......I’ve sung many, but mostly from listening to my father, who is a great singer of soleá, so I had it right at home......And this soleá is a memory of the cante Camarón did so well. Camarón had that voice, that fine sweetness…and my father is more in the line of Indio Gitano, hoarse, the kind of singer who sounds flamenco as soon as he opens his mouth."

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These days he gives ears to Marina Heredia's cante of solea in a man-like voice with a color of Arabic tone more often than before. once the sound of her hasky voice with a magnatic power of rhythm in accents of grief let him think of 'Seopyeonje', a South Korean film on the life of a family korean taditional pansori singers who makes a living in the modern world. While he was listening to her singing, he saw a scene of the film streaming before his mind's eyes without cuts in succession 5 minutes or so, in which there appeared 3 persons of the wanderers family on the hill coming down along the slope from the ridge, two of them dancing and singing 'pansori' and the other drumming on 'jangku', a Korean drum,

In his memory, the streaming scene was the best part of the film because the sad sound of girl singer's pansori matched well with the lonely landscape. It seemed that the three wanders could forget completely their unhappiness and suffering by being absorbed in singing 'jindo-arirang ' in pansori form. For your information, pansori is a story-singing art that grew out of the composite musical-literary culture of premodern Korean storytelling. While the basic storylines partake in the main staples of fictional and historical repertoires, the detailed contents of pansori narrative is dense with esoteric literary quotes and historical allusions. Pansori features a harsh, rough tone of voice. Like the cave flamenco performance, the line between performer and audience is blurred. The good audience is expected to shout 'ulsu' a word of encouragement to the singer as in the case of flamenco performance the audience does 'ole' to the singer. Then there is a big difference:while flamenco song is poetic and abstract in verse, the pansori song is descriptive and like a story telling prose in poetic form

One day while he was listening to Marina Heredia sing solea, a boy and a girl familiar to him showed up into his mind! They were his maternal cosins who had spent their childhood . They lived for a while not far from Inu's house in his boyhood. It was probably because a week ago the cousins , seemingly in their 50s , payed an unexpected visit to his house. For a long time he was not in touch with them. In fact it is 40 years or more since Inu has not seen the two. Inu was somewhat surprised to see both of them looking much brighter and better than ecpected, recalling to his mind their childhood in which the little cousins were sent to an orphanage because their parents died one after the other in a year. on that day of their visiting before sunset with a mixed feeing of gratitude for their present brightness and regret over for their past darkness he saw the guests off. The two in their adolesence looked pure with no traces of unhappiness and hardships on their facial ｅxpression. How did they get over the bitterness of their past lives? He had a disturbed sleep on that night thinking of them. on hearing Marina Heredia singing solea ,he murmured to himself:

Her voice he is somewhat different from that of Camaron.

She has a melodic tone and harmony in her cante,

while Camaron's cante is not music yet to my ears .

his sound seems to be a cry of a wolf deserted in the wilderness.

Then the sound of his voice is getting more charming than before ,

now that he is gone.

I have to search for him.

I want to hear him shouting, rather not singing,

with Paco De Lucia's guitar accompaniment.

I loved to see Camron singing

with a glass of vino blanco in his hand

and Paco De Lucia playing guitar

with a cigarette on his mouth

on a youtube video.

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Inu in his 70s usually stays indoors mainly reading and teaching himself how to play guitar. He plays guitar watching video lessons through youtube, then It is harder than expected to learn it . It is hardest of all to practice playing it repeatedly everyday. Before a guitarist playing the pieces of the Bach music has been his object of envy. And he had an ambition to be a wonderful guitarist.Furthmore he wished he were in Spain as a flamenco guitar player performing on the cafe accompaning. To his disappointment, he dares not to go out far away form home for a long journey alone such willingly as he did several times in the previous time.

Therefore as an alternative of it he would rather search youtube in order to see flamenco videos of which he chooses cante videos. cante is preferable to baile, as the former is much better for him to appreciate than latter, as his mind is moved much stronger by aural sounds of lamentation or wild cry than by the visual movenents or ｅxpressions.

When it comes to flamenco, the colorful images of exotic gypsy women twirling into the bright spotlights with a fascinating precision and angular , squared-off gestures are likely to come into our mind. However, such images are far from the essence of flamenco . Those dancing images are for the use of commercialism to attract the eyes of tourists. We know that flamenco is made up of three basic components,that is, cante, baile and toque( guitar), but overlook a point that in origin cante was flamenco itself. Many cantes were laments and their lyrics told of persecution, suffering and death were only sung, not accompanied by any musical instruments like the guitar. There was only minimal accompaniment, usually by a simple beating of time with the knuckles or a small stick, etc..In old days in Andalusia whereever the gypsies settled in signicant numbers , they found themselves on the botton rungs of the society , sharing the same cruel punishments of imprisonment and forced labor, The world was simply a battleground , heartless and oppressive. The only answer possible was a cry, an ｅxpression of anguish, desperation and protest- a cry that was the origin and essence of what was to become flamenco.In old cantes, the cry at the beginning of the performance became part of the song itself. The cry even replaced words, the human voice being used as an instrument, communicationg,but not verbally. The plaintive "ay" that introduces and structures many cantes arose as an instinctive personal reaction to deprivation and suffering shared by those present.

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Days gone by, In MADRID Inu happened to find a small -sized paperback in a bookstore and bought it with deep interest. because in it were a couple of poems on guitar and bullfights made by Garcia Lorca. who said, " guitar is the soul of flamenco". on that day he was drunk with a bottle of vino blanco and intoxicating poems by the poet in it alone by his bed in the hostel which were as below:

' The Guitar'

The weeping of the guitar

begins.

The goblets of dawn

are smashed.

The weeping of the guitar

begins.

Useless

to silence it.

Impossible

to silence it.

It weeps monotonously

as water weeps

as the wind weeps

over snowfields.

Impossible

to silence it.

It weeps for distant

things.

Hot southern sands

yearning for white camellias.

Weeps arrow without target

evening without morning

and the first dead bird

on the branch.

Oh, guitar!

Heart mortally wounded

by five swords.

<* poema de cante jondo(1931)>

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'The six strings'

The guitar makes dreams weep.

The sobbing of lost souls

escapes through its round mouth.

And like the taranttula

it spins a large star to trap the sighs

floating in its black wooden water tank.

Now in the afternoon in his study he looks over the window outside to the sky,sunny and bright, which, in his thought, resembles the sky of September in Portland. he turns his eyes toward the corner where the guitar case is laid. He takes the guitar out and tunes lines by ear. He beats the line one by one sounding the diatonic scale, that is, C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C and next ACE of Am chord , EGB of Echord, CEG of C chord. He plays Lindenbaum, a piece of Subert's , the scale of which he memorizes. Then after a short time of cease, putting it aside he turns his eyes again out toward the high sky, with the vague of Helena floating before his mind's eye.

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