[New-Poetry] Duende, etc.

[Jeff Newberry]

Hal,

Do you know the source of this quote?  Is it an article or book?

I'd like to track it down.

Best,
Jeff Newberry

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Halvard Johnson <halvard at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Bullfighting and jazz are two minor arts with much in common. At the
> beginning
> of the century they were national and special; and both depended on
> collective
> improvisation. In New Orleans, the trumpet, trombone, and clarinet
> improvised
> on a given melody; in Spain, the picador, banderillero, and matador
> improvised
> on the theme of a given fighting bull. Suddenly, in the 1920s, there arose
> in both
> countries a revolutionary performer who not only changed the course of the
> art
> he was practising but made it for the first time internationally renowned.
> In Spain,
> Juan Belmonte, and in America, Louis Armstrong. Outside their countries of
> origin, both were predictably reviled as harbingers of fiendish moral
> depravity.
>
> "In the 1930s commercialism takes over. We hear on one side that
> bullfighting
> has been ruined by the mechanical, crowd-pleasing efficiency of Domingo
> Ortega; and on the other that jazz has been killed by the popular triumphs
> of
> Benny Goodman. The first hints of resurrection appear in 1939; at Minton's,
> in Harlem, a nucleus of venturesome musicians inaugurates the modern
> movement
> in jazz; and in Spain, a lean young rebel named Manolete takes the *alternativa
> *and
> becomes a full matador. There follows, in both countries, a ferocious
> struggle
> between the supporters of modernism and the adherents to tradition. The
> arrival
> of the LP permits a favoured soloist to improvise for fifteen minutes
> without
> interruption; at the same time, bullfighters develop the habit of
> prolonging the
> *faena*--the series of passes that precedes the kill--until it becomes the
> focal point
> of the spectacle. Traditionalists love teamwork; modernists love soloists;
> and
> the battle in both countries remains unresolved for more than a decade. An
>
> armistice is ultimately achieved. In jazz as in bullfighting, there arises
> a modern
> classicist, one who combines the best of both worlds. In Spain, his name
> is
> Antonio Ordóñez, the *Número Uno* of living matadors. In America it is
> Miles Davis.
>
> "The Spanish have a word, *duende*. It has no exact English equivalent,
> but
> it denotes the quality without which no flamenco singer or bullfighter can
> conquer the summit of his art. The ability to transmit a profoundly felt
> emotion
> to an audience of strangers with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of
> restraint: that is as near as our language can get to the full meaning of
> *duende*. Laurence Olivier has it; Maurice Evans does not. Billie Holiday
> had
> it, and so did Bessie Smith; but Ella Fitzgerald never reached it. It is
> the
> quality that differentiates Laurette Taylor from Lynn Fontanne, Ernest
> Hemingway from John O'Hara, Tennessee Williams from William Inge.
> Whatever else he may lack, Miles Davis has *duende."*
>
> --Kenneth Tynan, c. 1963
>
>
>
> Hal
>
> "Never underestimate the power of stupid
> people in large groups."
>                --George Carlin
>
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> halvard at gmail.com
> http://sites.google.com/site/halvardjohnson/Home
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>
>
>
>
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>
>


-- 
You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that
is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and
experience, from which each according to his own immediate and peculiar
needs may draw his own conclusion. --W.H. Auden
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