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Out of my Gourd - Posted - 11/19/2009: 19:35:00
I love the rhythmic playing of flamenco guitar players and was watching this video of a flamenco strum. Looks very similar to the basic bum ditty strum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZveCRpZRPqk
Any ideas about the possible connection between the orgins of the banjo in Africa and flamenco? Woodchuck, I know you used to be a flamenco guitar player. Any thoughts? Any techniques you incorporate into your banjo playing?
oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 11/19/2009: 23:06:20
She is 100% prettier than any of my flamenco guitar teachers. Oh to be young and just starting out again.
That is one of the triplet rolls I first learned about bac in.... oh maybe... during the ----- a long time ago.
And that one is the one I can still do (for a short time). My favourite triplet roll used the Index and Ring fingers, and gave an explosive sound. The ring played a down stroke, Index played another, then Index played an Up stroke. All were done as close to equal as possible. But they could never actually be equal, and that is what made the sound so fascinating.
I used to do a lot of rasqueado strokes on my Les Paul in the RnR days too. It is the sort of stuff you have to be very selective about when the amp is at 11 but I never used a flat pick so I was able to add lots of flamenco strokes to my rhythms.
With the banjo I've never really gotten into doing rasqueados, but I took up the banjo at about the same time as I was beginning to feel the loss of finger dexterity. I still do that triplet roll however, but mostly in Jug Band tunes (blues is 4/4 overlaid on 12/8 - sort of Memphis Flamenco Jug Banjo).
If I get that far I intend to do some strum lessons for Rocket Science Banjo
http://www.rocketsciencebanjo.com
but I can't write many of the strums in Tabledit and don't really feel like starting over with a new program. I do have a rasqueado in my "Coo Coo Bird" tab, which is actually very close to what Clarence Ashley played. Like me, he was a ukulele player at one time and the most basic flamenco strum is also a uke strum.
Erik Gran - Posted - 11/20/2009: 06:15:07
To me there is an obvious connection, the human anatomy, and the mechanics of producing sound from stringed instruments with your hands.
There aren't that many ways to pluck/frail/strum, to produce clean and loud tones. As for musical connections, being rythmical or tonal, it's a little more unclear to me, although there most likely are some north African influence in the flamenco music.
Bisbonian - Posted - 11/20/2009: 08:54:50
"Memphis Flamenco Jug Banjo" ...man I love that!
plunknplinkntwang - Posted - 11/20/2009: 18:17:33
Spain has quite a lot of African history, mainly from Berbers & Almohads who were North African Arabs. Slavery was part of this culture too so possibly some of the tribal rhythms came to the Iberian peninsular in this way?
But this is all conjecture on my behalf
oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 11/20/2009: 22:36:31
Among other peoples, the Cali Gypsies came to Spain via Africa. They had split from the Romany somewhere in the Russias, went south, then across North Africa, and finally up to Iberia. They mostly settled in southern Spain and the Romany, who had spread across Europe, settled more in northern Spain.
The Moorish influences on Flamenco are heavy also, and I don't think you can separate the Moorish from the Gypsy, and the Spanish - Flamenco is a mixture, like the various elements that went into creating Ragtime and New Orleans Jazz.
I've got a wonderful cd of Sephardic songs. The Sephardics took the music of 16th century Spain to Turkey and maintained it as it was. It is amazingly like flamenco but that gypsy "deep" sound is not there, nor are the more complex rhythms. The Gypsys were only just arriving when Moors and Sephardics were driven out by Ferdinand and Isabella.
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