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Duende : A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco
Duende A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco
Author: Jason Webster
The music started: two guitarists beating out more Alboreás. The women took turns to dance in a frenzy, each trying to outdo the other. “Deep Song always sings in the night,” Lorca had written. It was the credo of the flamenco: a rejection of the mundane, the ordinary, the life of the everyday man, embracing, rathe...  more »Destined for a sedate and predictable life in academia, Jason Webster was derailed in his early twenties when his first love, an aloof Florentine beauty, dumped him unceremoniously. Loveless and eager for adventure – and determined to fulfill a secret dream -- he left Oxford and headed for Spain, the country that had long captivated his imagination, and set off in search of duende, the intense and mysterious emotional state – part ecstasy, part melancholy – that is the essence of Spain’s signature art form: flamenco.

Duende is Webster’s captivating memoir of the years he spent in Spain pursuing his obsession. Studying flamenco guitar until his fingers bleed, he becomes involved in a passionate yet doomed affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer (and older woman) married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee the coastal city of Alicante in fear for his life. He ends up in Madrid, miserable and lovelorn, but it’s here that he has his first taste of the gritty world of flamenco’s progenitors – the Gypsies whose edgy lives and fervent commitment to the art of flamenco vividly illustrate the path to duende. Before long he is deeply immersed in a flamenco underworld that combines music and dance with drugs and crime. After two years Webster moves on to Granada where, bruised and battered, he reflects on his discovery of the emotional heart of Spain.
ISBN-13: 9780767911665
ISBN-10: 0767911660
Publication Date: 3/18/2003
Pages: 336
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Publisher: Broadway
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 1
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melusina avatar reviewed Duende : A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco on + 32 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I fell into this book as into a mysterious and timeless dream. I've always been fascinated by the concept of duende, especially after reading Federico Garcia Lorca's collection In Search of Duende. It's such an elusive idea--tantalizing, resonant, numinous--the words that come to mind are inadequate.

To my amazement, Duende: A Journey into the Heart of Flamenco fulfills its promise. It's not about flamenco dancing, but flamenco guitar--and how it's wrapped up in a whole artistic package with other instruments and dancing and the enraptured attention of the audience.

By going on the author's journey, inside his consciousness, as he follows the path of a student learning from his master, you'll learn, gradually, and then finally with the force of a spiritual revelation, what duende is. When you emerge from the long dream, that knowledge will be your prize.

--Fiona

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