Siroco

• Entre Dos Aguas
• Friday Night In San Francisco
• Gold (Rm) (2CD)

No one will ever be able to deny the great importance this one man has had on the development and the appreciation of the flamenco guitar, yes, of flamenco and of guitar music in general. An innovator will tread where others have not gone, and therefore will always be one step ahead of everyone else. And for that reason will be often misunderstood, certainly by those who cling to forms from the times that they themselves started appreciating flamenco.

Paco de Lucia has for the past 50 years devoted his life to the flamenco guitar and culture. While other mortals spent time with their families, Paco was spreading the word on his culture, and defending flamenco against prejudice that classified it as "music of the street". He would come back from a US tour, looking forward to spending three days over Christmas with his family before flying off to Argentina, only to learn that there was TV and press-conference duty that reduced his time off to ... three hours. To us, the audience, he gave his huge and incredible work output, both recorded, and on the concert stage. It has been a sacrifice, to gain appreciation for his beloved flamenco.

To me, his finest albums, the ones that I most recommend, are: "Almoraima" (1976), "Siroco" (1988) and "Luzia" (1998). Of those three to my ears, Almoraima is the first album in which Paco really outlines his signature unorthodox approach: the Alegría with the choir, the use of an oud (Arab lute), the deliberate build-up of the album as a whole, yes indeed the production (unheard of!). His albums up until this one had consisted of superior guitar playing, but in other people's mold. Here, Paco creates his own terrain, and that of many guitarists to follow. A gem, a jewel of a work where I cannot find a bad or overlooked moment.

After this, Paco comes out with extraordinary albums like "Solo Quiero Caminar" and many others, in which he explores his boundaries and does some of his best playing, but always in a jazzier context.

Then, he releases "Siroco": an album of so much purity, that it almost feels as if you are "there", listening to Paco play in an intimate setting. The first time I heard "Siroco" was in a very impersonal big department store in Córdoba. Tears streamed over my face during the opening song: I forgot totally where I was and let me be grabbed by this beautiful guitar playing. Well over a decade of listening to this album have not diminished its enchantment. This is to where the flamenco guitar had developed: the master first learned how to play traditionally, took an experimental and then jazzy approach, and now came back, enriched, to the roots to make a profound statement of what could be done within this traditional yet totally new idiom.

Other, younger players stood up and gave Paco a run for his money. We heard the records and concerts of people like Gerardo Nuñez, Cañizares, Tomatito, and of course Vicente Amigo, and these guitar players, who started with the level and musicianship of Paco as the leading example, and current trend, of course developed it further, and impressed us all. And, well, Paco surely was resting on his laurels. Wrong. Out comes "Luzia". It is as if Paco de Lucia wanted to set the record straight: who exactly is the master of flamenco guitar? This is an album by a mature player who is in total control of both his instrument and his idiom of choice. Gone is the youthful exploration of "Almoraima", and in comes a statement so profound and personal it is almost frightening. Paco sings (!) of how his friend and long-time collaborator, gypsy singer El Camaron, has been taken away from his side (Cameron died in 1992). There are two bulerias on this cd that are so flawlessly filled with new and exciting material it is frightening. A solea that has melodies straddling the traditional compas in a way that had never been done before and yet makes total sense; a siguiryias that builds like a classical composition.... All right, the Alegría seems a reworking of that on "Siroco" (but just as great), and the Tangos (with Duquende singing) sounds a little too easy-listening to me, but all-in-all this ranks in my world as the definitive Paco de Lucia-album.

To anyone who is in doubt whether to buy "Almoraima", "Siroco" or "Luzia", my honest advice is: skip dinner and buy all three.

He also managed to make manifest the last cynical betrayal of his flamenco heritage. It disturbs me to say that - indeed, I never thought I would be thinking such thoughts - because Paco at one time (the 60s, 70s, and early 80s) was almost single-handedly carrying forward the torch of hope for this unique, and at the time somewhat neglected, folk-art in its instrumental form.

Then came this flamenco guitarist's infatuation with jazz and pop. That was the eighties. It was a romance that evidently went on a little too long, ending in a smug marriage. Almoraima was the beginning of the end. But at least Almoraima was original, steeped as it was in the Gypsy-Arab heritage of Andalucia.

With "Siroco" and "Luzia", the aficionado of flamenco puro is transported into a kind of waking nightmare of flamenquismo, a return to the bad old days of the Flamenco Opera. Remember? - Just what Falla and Lorca so decried in their 1922 Concurso del Cante Jondo. Then, it was orchestration of the chico (light) flamenco with fandanguillos and tanguillos proliferating, along with an almost total marginalization of such profounder forms as the Siguiriya and Solea. In the 1980s, it was proposed to replace these with a dizzying multitude of whirling Bulerias and Rumbas por guitarra. Not so bad a fate, some might think.

Nothing is sacred to this instrumentalist. His bowing and scraping to the demands of a pop-propagandised mass audience will go on: and the worst of it is, people will be convinced that this is what constitutes flamenco, because such is the power of the sleeve-note (Felix Grande turned pseud extraordinaire).

What is the remedy for the average listener looking for genuine expression in instrumental flamenco? She won't find the Duende here. I suggest going back initially to the very first days of recordings of the flamenco guitar - to the man who started it all and, many would argue, has never been improved upon musically - namely, Ramon Montoya. Next, progress to Nino Ricardo, and then on to the scintillating falsetas of Sabicas. And finally you might console yourself with Paco de Lucia's own two debut recordings: La Fabulosa Guitarra, and Fantasia Flamenca. They are a beautiful peak from which the flamenco guitar could only descend thereafter. You see, it wasn't always this way...

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