birth, enabling the baby to come out. The open sound is the goal of the singer, because to be open is to be available both to your own voice and to the audience.
TRADITION
Tradition………as you find the movement at the root of singing you become part of a wonderful tradition of people stretching back through time who have discovered that this connection gives us 'meaning' in some important and mysterious way. Here are some quotes from others………..
The Spanish writer, Lorca, writes wonderfully about the soul of song, the mystery called 'Duende' in Spanish. He says 'the Duende I speak of, shadowy, palpitating, is a descendant of that melancholy imp of Descartes, who, glutted with circles and lines, went out on the canals to hear the sailors singing'. ……….in other words, knowing theory is not where singing lives…….it lives in the streets, the canals…….
The idea of 'knowing' is an illusion. It is rather about 'allowing', what Keats called Negative Capability…..'the ability of a man or woman to live in doubt and uncertainty without any irritable reaching after fact'. Technique is about a movement that cannot be known but rather felt and followed.
Duende is a wonderful concept and in the Spanish tradition is the word used to describe that which brings life to performance……..here are some more thoughts.
They all come from the writing of Lorca………..
TRADITION
Tradition………as you find the movement at the root of singing you become part of a wonderful tradition of people stretching back through time who have discovered that this connection gives us 'meaning' in some important and mysterious way. Here are some quotes from others………..
The Spanish writer, Lorca, writes wonderfully about the soul of song, the mystery called 'Duende' in Spanish. He says 'the Duende I speak of, shadowy, palpitating, is a descendant of that melancholy imp of Descartes, who, glutted with circles and lines, went out on the canals to hear the sailors singing'. ……….in other words, knowing theory is not where singing lives…….it lives in the streets, the canals…….
The idea of 'knowing' is an illusion. It is rather about 'allowing', what Keats called Negative Capability…..'the ability of a man or woman to live in doubt and uncertainty without any irritable reaching after fact'. Technique is about a movement that cannot be known but rather felt and followed.
Duende is a wonderful concept and in the Spanish tradition is the word used to describe that which brings life to performance……..here are some more thoughts.
They all come from the writing of Lorca………..
Manuel Torres, that great artist of the Andalusian people, once remarked to a singer: “You have a voice, you know all the styles, but you will never bring it off because you have no duende.”
The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitarist, a true virtuoso, remark, “The duende is not in the throat, the duende comes up from inside, up from the very soles of the feet.” That is to say, it is no a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style―of blood, in other words; of what is oldest in culture: of creation made act.
Some years ago, in a dancing contest at Jerez de la Frontera, an old lady of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists supple as water, carried off the prize merely by the act of raising her arms, throwing back her head, and stamping the little platform with a blow of her feet; but in the conclave of muses and angels
