Tag: Flamenco

Daniele Camarda – Sound Act (solo bass guitar)

Daniele Camarda effectively straddles two zones of musical practice, invoking two distinct sets of assumptions about sound, art and how they relate to each other. He is a solo bass guitar performer, employing an advanced technique on an extended range (seven string) instrument; this is an unusual thing to be, but not unprecedented, and for the last couple of decades various musicians have been demonstrating to the world that the bass guitar can not only lead an ensemble, but transcend it entirely. These bass players have operated in a number of ways, producing textures that range from the ambient to the brutal, some using drum machines and samples, some employing live-looping technology, some performing in total bare-bones …

Asgeir & Mo – Danza de Andalucia (Flamenco fusion)

Flamenco is a music that lends itself to fusions, and that has been successfully fused in many different contexts, but it is also the site of a pronounced ideology of purism. The kind of cultural essentialism that has afflicted British folk music, or the blues, is still probably still the norm in Andalucia: this is not to say that Flamenco’s practitioners are unwelcoming to outsiders, but they are expected to come as respectful supplicants to the tradition, and those that skirt its fringes are clearly aware of this. I’ve heard Gabriela Quintero at a concert, sounding positively anxious to disavow any claim to the name of Flamenco, on the grounds that ‘those guys will go fucking mental’. There are reasons for this purism, beyond the usual ethnic insecurities …

Fernando’s Kitchen at The Junction, Cambridge, 19 May 2011 (world fusion)

There are not many completely independent bands that can pack out a venue the size of The Junction (which is not huge, but it’s a substantial venue); and a smaller subset of those which perform something as commercially challenged as ‘world music’. Fernando’s Kitchen are playing a good game (admittedly with a strong hand), and do all the right things to reach, engage and retain a loyal audience.