Review: Passionate flamenco performance stirs audience

Flamenco music fans like to show appreciation the same way they
like their music: loud and spur-of-the-moment. Shouts of
“Olé!,” “Te Quiero!” and even
“Yeehaw!” spontaneously echoed throughout Royce Hall on
Monday night, when legendary flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia and
his ensemble performed.

Some audience members even performed “palmas,” the
rhythmic hand clapping that accompanies flamenco dance and music.
The performance ultimately became a communal experience,
incorporating and actively involving the audience.

De Lucia and his ensemble accomplished this feat by creating
luscious rhythmic textures and intense polyrhythms via the
combination of his dizzyingly-fast finger picking, the thump and
knock of the cajón drum, the vocalists’ palmas, the
rhythm bass and guitar, and the jazz saxophone.

Initially, jazz saxophonist Bobby Martinez seemed out of place
in a flamenco performance, yet he managed to blend perfectly into
both flamenco and jazz scales, further displaying de Lucia’s
famed fusion between flamenco and jazz.

The 56-year-old de Lucia played with the fervor of a
20-year-old, jerking his head from side to side according to the
violent accents of the music. Flamenco music focuses heavily on
contrasting dynamics and tempos, and de Lucia’s mastery of
transition between both extremes tempted audience members to join
the fun taking place onstage.

Yet some audience members were unable to participate, having
been captured by the trance-like fixation, or “duende,”
experienced while watching a flamenco performance. Duende is
considered the impetus behind the art of flamenco. Indeed, audience
members became amazed and transfixed by the sheer energy and
agility with which de Lucia played. De Lucia’s gentle wrist
and finger rotary motions, known as “muñecas” or
“flores,” were so fluid that he made it look easy.

Some audience members also became haunted by the
“afillá,” or hoarse and earthy flamenco voices
(think Gypsy Kings) of vocalists Hermenia Borjas Gabarri and
Victoria Santiago Borja. The two women dramatically and
operatically captured the passion and fervor at the center of the
flamenco tradition, slapping their chests, tugging at their
“mantons” (embroidered silk shawls with long fringes)
and dancing enthusiastically in their chairs onstage.

At the end of the performance, after a minute’s worth of
standing ovation from the audience (at one point the audience
clapped in unison), de Lucia and his ensemble reappeared for a
dazzling encore performance.

Both vocalists took turns in offering the audience a taste of
flamenco dancing, which added some spice to the melting pot. It was
unfortunate that such beautiful dancing was displayed so
briefly.

Next, electric bassist Alain Perez Rodriguez’s impressive
solo brought to mind jazz bass legend Jaco Pastorius, especially
with the use of dissonant-sounding chords. Rodriguez displayed the
rarely recognized range of the bass, at times playing it as if it
were a flamenco guitar and at other times as if it were a blues
guitar, in both technique and sound.

An uplifting and quickened version of de Lucia’s rumba
piece “Entre Dos Aguas” followed, and included a short
call-and-response between de Lucia’s guitar and
Martinez’s saxophone. After the encore, as all seven
performers bowed graciously to the audience, de Lucia continued to
play without any amplification, causing some eager fans to move
close to the stage. Even after the performance, with de
Lucia’s acoustic guitar and some impromptu flamenco dancing,
the passion of flamenco lived on.

–Angela Lu