Product Description
This analytical history traces representations of flamenco dance in Spain and abroad from the twentieth century to the present, using histories, film, accounts of live performances, and practitioner interviews. Beginning with an analysis of flamenco historiography, the text examines images of the female dancer in films by Luis Bunuel, Carlos Saura, and Antonio Gades; stereotypes of flamenco bodies and Andalusian culture in Prosper Merimee's Carmen; and the ways in which contemporary flamenco dancers like Belen Maya and Rocio Molina negotiate the stereotype of Carmen and an idealized Spanish feminine that pervades "traditional" flamenco. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

highly recommended
I first saw this book in the library, it is a real gem for flamenco dancers and musicians.The first 2/3rds of the book is like a documentary of the great stars of flamenco.The last part of the books goes over the various dance steps and rythms in great detail, including exercises for the hands, footwork, skirt, clapping, etc. ... Read more

Product Description
Featuring full-colour photography, illustrations and maps, this title is suitable for those who want to know more about the history and art of the regions, cities, and monuments they visit. ... Read more

Product Description
Flamenco is one of the quintessential aspects of Spain and the Spanish culture. A dramatic form of song, music, and dance, flamenco long ago began to thrill and captivate the world outside of Spain, even though its true character and purpose have often not been fully understood. The culmination of centuries of folk tradition, originating in the expression of suffering, lamentation, and protest among gypsies and other oppressed peoples, flamenco has evolved into an entertainment by professional musicians and dancers that is popular with audiences throughout the world. Gwynne Edwards, an expert on the Spanish language and literature, provides a text that clarifies and illuminates the complex history of flamenco, from its beginnings in old songs that are still sung today, to its sophisticated presence in the modern repertoire of leading singers and dancers. He describes and analyzes the religious and ethnic influences on flamenco; its place in literature; the themes that appear in its passionate songs and the various ways in which they are sung; its grounding in Andalucia; the famous flamenco singers of the past; and the twentieth-century revival of its basic meanings under the aegis of the poet Lorca and other Spanish notables. Ken Haas's original color photographs of flamenco today, and the background against which it flourishes, form a complementary essay on a unique and enthralling art form. 157 photographs and illustrations, 60 in color. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

luke warm
I am both a flamenco dancer and photographer.I am luke warm about this book.The layout was poor--the text was too wordy and the pictures seemed more like calendar art than fine art photographs.I owned this book for a month before selling it to a local book store.My advice is keep searching there must be better books out there.

Ole!
I am new to flamenco. I have read Emma Martinez's book "Flamenco" which flooded me with information! Great book!This book is a good source too and gave me some information that Martinez's lack. One example, that Hindu dancers where entertaining in Spanish courts around 500 B.C.! The author highlights the similarities of flamenco, bullfighting, and the Mass as the "Holy Trinity" of Spanish culture with good points. And another parallel with Greek tragedyl. The reading is interesting and the photographs are great!
One Amazon critic is disappointed that Juan Serrano is not mentioned but the book is not solely based on flamenco guitar and hence many great players are not mentioned. But it does cover a lot of ground regarding flamenco dance, song, guitar, history and tradition. I would recommend it. The only reason why I don't give it a 5 star rating is because I am biased and wanted to know a lot more about the guitar players too! But there are plenty of other sources for that.

Visually Stunning!
The photographs in this book are astonishing.They convey a feeling of warmth and movement that is rarely seen in still photography.This is a wonderful book to own, both for latin dance lovers and photography buffs.

The Best of Its Kind
The Haas/Edwards Flamenco is worth more than its price for the photographs alone.They are lush, seductive, and captivating, even if one has no particular interest in flamenco as an art.Miraculously, the prose comes very close to living up to the photographs it accompanies.It's a careful, accurate account of the development of flamenco.If your flamenco shelf has room for only two books, they should be Donn Pohren's Art of Flamenco, for the encyclopedia and the "insider's" view, and this one for the overall story and the pictures that capture the art so well.

Simply Wonderful!
If you are looking for a book that captures the essence of flamenco - from historical as well as current perspective, this is the one. Text and photos are marvelously integrated. I recommend it for anyone interested in this expressive dance form.Great! ... Read more

Product Description
Written by a group of dedicated flamenco enthusiasts, this book traces the history and development of flamenco, the stirring form of folk dance created by the gypsies of the Andalusian region of Spain in the 19th century and still popular today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

not good
This book is a disjointed collection of "essays" about the various aspects of flamenco: cante, guitar, dance, castanets/palmas.History is thrown in somewhat randomly; parts of the book are repetitive.Occasionally you glean some kind of interesting fact (e.g. the flamenco scale is the same as in Indian and Arabic music), but it is otherwise not put together well enough to be informative. I second the view that the nostalgic, pro-gypsy, modern-flamenco-is-not-really-flamenco bias starts to get annoying.You get the message that the only real flamenco is performed by gypsies in the privacy of their homes, which *you'll* certainly never get to see so you might as well give up.

Bias, Myth and Anecdote Masquerading as Scholarship
By half way through this book, I formed a firm image of its origins:Claus Schreiner, the "editor," was probably chit-chatting with one or more of his fellow German flamenco aficionados when suddenly a thought struck him: "I know!Let's all write a book about flamenco!"And so they did.Why it was actually published, however, is a mystery.

As an introduction to flamenco for the novice, or even the merely curious, it is a complete failure.I can only think that someone with no real prior knowledge of flamenco would either be entirely confused or bored to tears - or both.The "essays," written by various different people, are disconnected - a result of there being no clear, collective image of either what the book was supposed to be about or the audience for whom it was to be written.

As a work written for serious aficionados or as a contribution to flamenco scholarship, it's worse than a failure because it is not only incredibly biased, but filled with errors, some of which would bring guffaws of laughter from any knowledgeable aficionado.The bias begins with the title:"Flamenco: Gypsy Dance and Music from Andalucia."The authors are quite obviously enamored of the Spanish gypsies - so much so that they ascribe the origin of flamenco almost entirely to them.For many reasons, that's completely absurd.Undeniably, the gypsies played a very important role in the development of flamenco, but they were definitely not the sole progenitors of this art form.(I say this with all due apologies to my former maestro of the guitar, Juan Maya "Marote," a "pure gypsy" from the barrio of Sacromonte, Granada.)

For a published work, it is a toss-up as to whether the quantity of the errors or their gravity is more surprising.A few examples:

- It claims that the Gypsies likely emigrated from northern India around 800 to 900 c.e., when the best scholarship places the date between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - the time of the Mongol invasions of south Asia and the Middle East, which caused many different peoples to flee to the West.

- It talks of "Hindu dancers" appearing in Phoenician "Gadir," continuing into Roman"Gades"(misspelled in the book as "Grades" - one of numerous misspellings, perhaps due in part to the translation from German to English).Since Hinduism developed between roughly 500 b.c.e. and 400 c.e. - well after the Phoenicians and concurrent with the Romans, who had very little commerce with the Indian subcontinent - such an appearance would be highly anachronistic.

- It claims that "the dances of the Arabs, who occupied Andalusia from 711 A.D. on, had already been influenced by the gypsies who came through North Africa from India, that is to say, these dances, in all likelihood, already contained Indian elements."Ridiculous:The Gypsies of Andalucía could not have arrived there until the late Almohad period at the earliest - some five centuries after the Muslims had arrived.And the use of the word "Arab" is misleading:"Muslim" is a much more accurate term to describe both the conquerors and inhabitants of Al Andalus, since even though the lingua franca was Arabic, ethnically they were composed of Arab, Berber, Slav, and other elements.(For anyone with an interest in this history, I would highly recommend the two volume set, The Legacy of Muslim Spain, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, where each essay is authored by a world-class scholar on his/her subject.Check out, for example, Owen Wright's essay, "Music in Islamic Spain," which debunks some of the claims about the musician Zyryab made in Flamenco.)

- It perpetuates another myth by referring to "slaves of African origin" not being "uncommon on the Iberian Peninsula" even before the conquest of Latin America.While certainly there were such slaves, the implication that black Africans were only "slaves" is to view the history of medieval Spain through the lens of the racist slave trade that developed many centuries later.There are historical references in the Arabic sources to entire regiments of black African soldiers - not slaves - appearing in the Iberian Peninsula as early as the eighth century, and repeatedly over the many succeeding centuries.Individuals of partially black African ancestry were included in the ranks of the ruling class in the Muslim periods.

- Even more astounding, even when it speaks of flamenco itself there are glaring errors:"Bulerías, for example, are to this day rarely sung, let alone danced by payos [non gypsies]."This chestnut would bring peels of laughter to anyone in Spain: There's not one professional flamenco artist, or hardly any amateur for that matter, gypsy or not, who does not perform bulerías.

- It even "dis's" the extremely fine dancer, Antonio Gades - and in the process gets it wrong again: "[Antonio Gades] thinks of himself as following in the footsteps of Antonio and Vicente Escudero, but he owes his big break to his excellent collaboration with the Spanish director Carlos Saura on the films Blood Wedding and Carmen."More incredible rubbish:Gades' "big break" - to use the author's term - came in 1964 when he co-starred in Los Tarantos with Carmen Amaya - almost twenty years before his collaboration with Saura.Gades was an icon in the dance and flamenco community when I lived in Spain in the early seventies, at which time he had already toured the world several times with his own company.

A good introduction to flamenco in the English language is still Donn E. Pohren's The Art of Flamenco, originally written almost forty years ago.While somewhat biased (as almost everything written about flamenco tends to be - that's the nature of the beast), it remains an excellent, learned, and very readable exposé of the subject by an American who has lived in Spain for almost fifty years and who has eaten, drunk and slept flamenco that entire time.

Best Flamenco book yet
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in flamenco dance and music.There are pictures and the layout of the chapters makes for easy reading.The information on the dance is very interesting

Review of Flamenco, by Claus Schreiner, et al.
I like this book with one major misgiving: the chapter on Joselito.Though Joselito is fascinating, she gives incredibly misleading information about dancer Antonio Gades.I feel that the author of this chapter took Joselito's point of view, which is skewed, and presented it as if it werethe absolute truth.As all know, Antonio Gades is a major figure inflamenco dance, and not to be taken lightly.I disagree with Joselito'scomments when she says that these types of comments are "part andparcel" of flamenco; they only show Joselito's own jealousies andrivalries.Other than that, the book is fine, the pictures are wonderful,and the chapter which includes the flamenco letras is very good.

Review of Flamenco, by Claus Schreiner, et al.
I like this book with one major misgiving: the chapter on Joselito.Though Joselito is fascinating, she gives incredibly misleading information about dancer Antonio Gades.I feel that the author of this chapter took Joselito's point of view, which is skewed, and presented it as if it werethe absolute truth.As all know, Antonio Gades is a major figure inflamenco dance, and not to be taken lightly.I disagree with Joselito'scomments when she says that these types of comments are "part andparcel" of flamenco; they only show Joselito's own jealousies andrivalries.Other than that, the book is fine, the pictures are wonderful,and the chapter which includes the flamenco letras is very good. ... Read more

Product Description
This definitive work on the contribution of the Gypsies to the development of flamenco traces their influences on music from their long migration from India, through Iran, Turkey, Greece, and Hungary, to their persecution in Spain. This new updated edition provides fuller explanation of some of the technical terms and an invaluable biographical dictionary of 200 of the foremost Gypsy flamenco artists from its origins to the present day, as well as a discography and videography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Important History and Reference Book
While this book may be small, it is loaded with information that any fan of flamenco music must have. Developed from first informal and then formal studies by the author with gypsies that led to a doctoral dissertation in 1980, this history is an eye-opener. Leblon traces the path of gypsies from northwest India through Europe and finally to Spain, documenting how they took the role of musical entertainers that was nearly left vacant by religious and social injunctions on the indigenous populations. (Jews also served as musicians, especially in Muslim lands.) Their mobility was viewed as a threat to social order, particularly in Christian Spain, which has had a long history of intolerance. After the Jews, then the Muslims, and then the converted Muslims (who were trusted less than converted Jews) were forced into exile, Spanish authorities then placed a series of horrific restrictions from the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries against the gypsies that make the American treatment of native tribes seem liberal, enlightened, and compassionate. A discussion on the specific origins of flamenco music itself ensues (as well as its name, derived, he concludes, from the gypsies who fought for Spain in the Flemish war.) The book includes musical and historical comparisons with the gypsies of Hungary. Leblon's attacks on Spanish historical ignorance, although justified, does wear thin. As for the musical origins, details are obscure, though certain milestones are noted, and he ignores the adaptation of palmas (hand-clapping) and the characteristic foot-tapping dances entirely. The second part, an annotated list of 200 flamenco artists (musicians, dancers, singers), is itself a valuable reference; it provides stage and family names, relationships, and accomplishments. A glossary also is added. The student of flamenco will consult this book often. It is an important addition to ethnomusicology. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by a group of dedicated flamenco enthusiasts, this book traces the history and development of flamenco, the stirring form of folk dance created by the gypsies of the Andalusian region of Spain in the 19th century and still popular today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hit and a miss
I was looking for a good book on flamenco and mistakingly picked up this copy. The book is full of scholarship that is only for someone who can put up with that particular style of writing; it is like being in a boring lecture hall, listening to some professor spew on and on while heads around you periodically wake from slumber.The collected essays are disjointed and according to at least one flamenco aficionado, full of historical errors. Not being versed in the history of flamenco, it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction but the reviewer who is at odds with the book as being inaccurate is probably correct in his assessment. Regardless it makes for boring reading anyway. The writing style of the essayists is dry and much too authoritive. I found myself skiming over many pages that were very tedious. Reading should be entertaining and informative and the authors miss the boat here. The subject matter is colorful but not presented as such. Few if any anecdotes or stories of interest about the various icons of flamenco are shared; this would have brought the characters of flamenco to life. This book does have some good black and white photographs but that does not compensate for the literal shortcomings. This is a controversal attempt at presenting eveything under the sun regarding flamenco into one book. I would not recommend this book for the novice or anyone for that matter unless you need some scholarly reading to put you to sleep. ... Read more

Product Description
A book of poems featuring flaminco/latin themes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Full of passion!
Anne Wilson's SOLEA is filled with passion and verve.Wilson is a master poet, and she leads us in an exciting and beautiful poetic dance in this fine collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A labour of love
Although Camarón de la Isla achieved godlike status in Spain in his own lifetime, little information about him is available in English: the only other nontrival account I'm aware of is by the American author Paco Sevilla, in his biography of Paco de Lucía (which, strangely, is not cited in the Further Reading section of the present work, although it's quoted (p.29), and the same author's Carmen Amaya biography IS cited.)

Marcos is a flamenco guitarist who wrote a useful and well-informed series of articles called "Flamenco Maestros" for Guitar International from 1987 to 1991, and subsequently became a broadcaster on Flamenco for the BBC -- the book includes a charming photo of him accompanying his young sister (although it's strange to find it bound in with the photos of Camarón, instead of just on the dust jacket).

This volume is a gold-mine of information not easily found elsewhere.Despite the occasional lapse of syntax (as on p.108, where people appear to be frying cigarettes and fish in olive oil) [1], Marcos writes well: the book's organisation is excellent and the story flows naturally and easily.In contrast to Paco Sevilla, he weaves his own quest for Camarón into the story, which works acceptably.

After the main narrative, the author looks back to the history of Flamenco to place the singer in his context.There are also extended accounts of the commodification of the singer after his death [2], the prejudice and discrimination still being faced by the Gypsies, and a great deal about the film biography of Camarón (including comments on its accuracy).All of this plus interviews with two of the singer's former intimates, the original Spanish of the interviews, a Bibliography, an Index, and many photographs.

With every phase of Camarón's life and work documented, this is clearly a labour of love involving many years of research.

Highly recommended.

NOTES

[1] Marcos's Spanish is not without its idiosyncrasies too, some rather startling.For instance, the title of the album "Te lo dice Camarón" (roughly, "Camarón says so") is translated as "You say this about Camarón" (p.22); and later (p.34ff.) we find "señioritos" (elderly señoritos?).On p.103, instead of palmas sordas (muffled hand-claps), there are palmas sorderas (deafness hand-claps).And so forth.

[2] Marcos takes at face value Lucía's statement that he hardly did anything for a year after Camarón's death except watch TV; Paco Sevilla is more sceptical, pointing out that Lucía went on tour in September. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), published by The Santa Fe New Mexican on May 16, 2010. The length of the article is 777 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Flamenco-Lovers Can Chase Their Dream To Dance Here.(Bienvenidos)(Dance review)
Author: Unavailable
Publication: The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) (Newspaper)
Date: May 16, 2010
Publisher: The Santa Fe New Mexican
Page: BI-53

Article Type: Dance review

Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning ... Read more

Product Description
This book also traces the evolution of the Spanish Dance technique, marked as it is by a turbulent history.
Antonio Triana was a dancer of mature artistry, dignity and power. His physical and technical achievements went beyond what is generally known about Spanish Dance. His dance presented the essence of the Spanish character and, in his choreography, he used his traditional background for his brilliant inspirations. He partnered the legendary La Argentinita, Pilar Lopez and Carmen Amaya with spirit and gallantry. Over the years he developed a very distinct method of teaching and he became one of the foremost Spanish Flamenco dancers and teachers of his time.
Rita Vega de Triana formed the Triana Ballet Español with her late husband. She currently teaches Hispanic dance and related subjects at the University of Texas at El Paso and directs her own school as well as performing around the United States as a guest artist and choreographer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great reading, interesting photos.
Well written account of Flamenco and Spanish dance in the early half of this century. Triana an obviously very talented individual caught up in the throes of the other inspired artists of the time. Extremely interesting,however polished storyline. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

The sourcebook for serious students of flamenco
This excellent reference work of flamenco is the bible for aficionados of this wonderful art form. The three main categories of flamenco are discussed in detail, the song (cante), the dance (baile) and the guitar (toque) with the influential performers of each art form referenced throughout the book. In-depth discussions about techniques, lessons and instructors are included, as is a major encyclopedia of the songs and their verses with translations. Author Donn Pohren is a guitarist and devotes plenty of space to the guitar and its techniques, the noteworthy players and the difference between the traditional toque and the popolar styles of today's players. Pohren is also partial to the Moron style of playing, especially the late Diego del Gastor, whose life and influence on the art of guitar accompanying is highlighted. There is also a generous selection of photos of players, dancers and luthiers at work in their shops. There simply is no other book like this one and is a must-have for fans of this interesting art form.

The Art of Flamenco
The product was in great condition for its age and a great price compared to the brand new books that were out.

Terrific
Just what I was looking for for research into the history of flamenco and gypsy dance.Sad to know the original forms have mostly died out.

Great book, poor edition
WARNING: EDITIONS

This review applies to the 2005 edition of the book, but it may also appear in listings for other editions.In the latter case, only the remarks about "Background" and "Contents" apply.In particular, the remarks about typos and photographic quality do not apply to earlier editions.

BACKGROUND

Few books in the Arts can have had an impact on their subject matter to compare with that of this seminal opus.Since its first appearance in 1962, when it was unrivalled for authority, readability and depth of coverage, it must have been the passport to Flamenco for literally thousands of readers.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Donn Pohren is* an American who came to Spain in the 1950's and fell in love both with Flamenco and with the young dancer Luisa Maravilla, whose arresting picture has adorned the cover of most editions of this book, including the present one.The Art of Flamenco, which explains not only the art but the underlying culture, became an immediate success, garnering praise from such luminaries as Carmen Amaya and winning the Spanish National Flamenco Award from the Catedra de Flamencología. It was followed in due course by Lives and Legends of Flamenco -- an encyclopædia, not so much of the art as of its artists (and still by far my favourite reference); and by A Way of Life.The latter is an autobiographical account of the author's involvement in Flamenco and of the artists he knew -- especially the old-time guitarist Diego del Gastor.Diego was catapulted from purely local reputation to international celebrity by Pohren's citing him, in his accounts, as an exemplar of purity in a sea of commercialism, and by the author's subsequent hiring of him as a teacher for the flamenco courses at the Finca Espartero in Morón de la Frontera.

CONTENTS

The present book is divided into four parts:

I. The Philosophy of Flamenco

contrasts, with many anecdotes, the traditional flamenco way of life with that of the encroaching modern civilisation.

II. The Art of Flamenco

describes its origin and background, and passes to descriptions of its components -- song, guitar, dance, jaleo and so forth -- and concludes with sections on Flamenco and the Non-Spaniard.

III. Encyclopedia of Flamenco

discusses the verses and genealogy of the cante (song), before presenting a description of each individual style, with typical verses.(It is perhaps worth noting that no attempt is made anywhere to present musical notation).

IV Appendices

giving a breakdown of the song, dance and guitar; listings of recordings of interest and flamenco venues; a discussion of guitar construction; and advice on learning Flamenco, both in and outside of Spain.

CONTENTS OF THIS EDITION

I don't have a first edition to hand here, so I use as a basis for comparison the third edition of 1972.

The proclamation "31 New Pages of Updates" on the cover may give the impression of a few tacked-on afterwords, but in fact this is a very thorough job of updating.There are indeed afterwords, and by and large the text follows that of previous editions, but where necessary it has been amended -- for instance, in lists of artists, or where legal or social situations have changed.(I notice even that "gay, [or] dull" (p.266) has been altered to "sparkling, dull", in line with shifting usage.)The addenda are just as sharply observed and useful as the original text.

The new edition comprises 366 pages as opposed to the 232 of my 3rd edition, but the increase is due in part to the new one's being set in a larger typeface. However, many sections are new or completely revised: for instance that on learning Flamenco, to take account of the advent of video instruction.On the debit side, many of the best photographs (including those of Famous Artists of the Past) have disappeared (as, irritatingly, has the index to the Encyclopedia section).

PRESENTATION

The most obvious change is the replacement of the cover photograph of Donn's wife Luisa by a drawing taken from it.The drawing is skillful (and has the approval of Donn & Luisa), but it doesn't have the impact of the original, which I would guess helped the sales of the early editions considerably.A glance inside gives a possible reason for this substitution: the quality of all the photographs is very much lower than in older editions (although an enclosed note from the publisher says that they are attempting to remedy this for future editions).This is not entirely compensated by the replacement of the hand-drawn diagrams (such as the lineage of the Ortega dynasty) by tidy computer-generated graphics.

Even more annoying, however, are the typos -- the book is riddled with them.The nature of many (such as "caj6n" for "cajón" (p.168), "compaiiera" for "compañera" (p.178) and "Alcalci" for "Alcalá", (p.192)) leads me to guess that they arise from scanning in a previous edition and then using a text-capture program such as Adobe Acrobat®.But be that as it may, while a computer spelling-checker may not catch mistakes like "tact" for "fact" (p.103), it should certainly catch "regretlully", and even "flameco" (!).

Although most such errors may be obvious in the English text, those who try, on the basis of the Bibliography, to purchase Paul Hecht's "The Wind Cries" are unlikely to succeed.And readers whose Spanish is less than fluent may get confused indeed: in the three verses of bamberas on p. 179 alone (for example), there are five spelling mistakes.

SUMMARY

In terms of content, then, I have no hesitation in recommending this edition as a first-rate job.The poor proof-reading and photographs are another matter; whether you purchase or decide to wait until next time around may depend on how irritating you find such things.

UPDATE

In a letter printed in the July 2006 issue of "Classical Guitar" magazine, the publishers stated: "... we are currently discussing with the printer ways to improve the quality of the photographs and keep the price down.The typos were the result of a rushed production to meet the demands of our customers, and likewise will be dealt with at the next printing."

Let us hope this comes soon; as soon as I become aware of it, I will modify this review.

*Donn Pohren passed away on 5 November, 2007.

Great book to read or as a referencebook
I've read this book 3 times and still it is full of interesting details about different forms of flamenco and about the difference between good and bad flamenco. Pohren is a purist and I like that. Maybe he's a littleextreme in his traditional values of flamenco but it gives a perect imageto the reader of flamenco, how it should be and how it should not be. ... Read more