|
Upcoming Pasion Y Arte Events:
A Night with Pasion Y Arte on Nov. 4th
Cafe Habana
102 South 21th Street
Philadelphia
November 4, 2004 at 10PM
Admission: $10
For Reservation call 215-561-2822
|
Hola familia!
A question many people learning about Flamenco ask is “What is duende?” Technically it is a word from southern Spain that has only recently been translated into the English language and mentality. In the search for a definition, some people can find duende a very illusive and foreign concept. The most conventional place to look for a definition would be in the dictionary; however dictionary definitions themselves are very obscure and can merely add to the puzzle.
The Cambridge dictionary gives:
1. elf; 2.ghost; 3. to have charm
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives:
1. charm; 2. ghost, goblin; 3. power to attract through magnetism
One of the most prolific and phenomenal sources on duende is Federico Garcia Lorca, who explored duende in his written work “ In Search of Duende.” In Lorca’s journey into the heart of Flamenco he describes duende as the black earthly power with which the artist battles and evokes in the moment of creation. He stresses that duende should not be identified with the Catholic devil or any other shallowly represented demon or evil. Duende is the spirit of the earth, ancient as the cycles of life and death that finds its way into our souls through a open relationship with death. It is important to say that Lorca uses Flamenco and Spanish culture to ground most of his ideas on duende, because he feels that “Spain is moved by the duende, for it is a country of ancient music and dance where the duende squeezes the lemons of death- a country of death, open to death.” Duende cannot repeat itself and is manifested uniquely to each individual and to each moment. Lorca has written that “Every man and every artist, whether he is Nietzsche or Cezanne, climbs each step in the tower of his perfection by fighting his duende, not his angel, as has been said, nor his muse. this distinction is fundamental, at the very root of the work.”
A critic named Brook Zern after seeing a Flamenco performance has said: “ it dilates the mind’s eye, so that the intensity becomes almost unendurable.... There is a quality of first-timeness, of reality so heightened and exaggerated that it becomes unreal, and this is characterized by a remarkable time-distortion effect which is frequent in nightmares...”
After reading up on duende, I find it a concept only fathomable when in relation to myself, belonging to the individual experience- a experience that can be shared, but that is ultimately processed alone. I find duende to manifest many of the emotions, instincts and archetypes that I have learned to fear and eventually repress. I would say that most of this fear was learned in the society in which I was raised, and that I am by far not the gravest victim of this repression. I recognize duende as what “Woman Who Run With the Wolves” would call the life/death/life nature, as the ancient goddess Kali of destruction and rebirth and as my very own internal dragon. I see duende as the possibility of facing my rawest potential, knowing that there will be a struggle, but also knowing that I will find freedom, if only for a moment, in a true expression of myself.
Lorca writes “Each art has a duende different in form and style, but their roots meet in the place where the black sounds of Manuel Torre come from- the essential, uncontrollable, quivering, common base of wood, sound, canvas and word. Behind those black sounds, tenderly and intimately live zephyrs, ants, volcanoes, and the huge night, straining its waist against the Milky Way.” (by Monica Craun)
Hasta pronto,
Elba Hevia y Vaca
Artistic Director, Pasion Y Arte
|
