[coll]: Rough Guide to Flamenco Nuevo (World Music)
Reviewed by Sadie O., 3/7/06
Flamenco music that evolves right before your ears. Through most of its history, flamenco has been extremely traditional, a mixture of Andalucian gypsy and Moorish musical forms, passionately individualistic in delivery but highly codified. Now it’s suddenly all the rage to mix it with hip hop and reggae and everything else that comes to hand, and Nuevo Flamenco is busting out all over. Many of these cuts are quite jazzy, many are very mellow and chill (which is not how I usually think of Flamenco!) All tracks are excellent but appeal to different interests.
No FCCs. I like 3, 9, 11, 13, but all are worth a listen.
1. lovely guitars, a rather Caribbean-Latin beat, somewhat heavy on the “smooth jazz” orchestral backing, but strong female vocals. Nice bit of hand drums, and serious fretless bass.
2. Fabulous hand percussion/clapping. Bits of extremely cool guitar. A bit of male vocals in the last minute and a half of the song. Not so much a song with beginning and ending and bridge as a showcase for all the different talents.
3. **Popular Barcelonan flamenco/hiphop fusion group. Great instrumentation and beautiful female vocals – definitely modernized flamenco. Ear candy!
4. Extraordinary virtuoso guitar duo, with bits of jazz and other influences thrown into the mix. Live performance (some audience noise), fairly freeform. Last 15 seconds or so are applause (the final flourish lasts about 30 seconds!)
5. Rather downbeat, with a definitely hiphop beat, electronica and traditional female vocals. Interesting and cool.
6. Mellow and relaxed with a bit of Latino hip-swiveller groove, sweet (not impassioned) male vocals.
7. Very cool, jazzy flourishes on the guitar. Downtempo, some overly “smooth jazz” in the backing instrumentation, but the guitar is truly exceptional. (cool piano, too)
8. Also very jazzy, this time the flute is primary instrument. The guitar, bass and percussion show flamenco bases. Male vocals. heavy use of fretless bass in this and other songs, which is not as prevalent in traditional flamenco.
9. **Funky, hiphoppy, a bit jazzy, a bit like Ojos de Brujo with a male vocalist. Lots of vocals (spoken solo and sung chorus) and hand claps.
10. Off to a slow start, slow piano, very pretty. Guitar is the real flamenco part of the instrumental mix. No particular beat.
11. **Nice combination of North African and flamenco sounds with a bit of Caribbean/Latin rhythm. Male singer from the one Spanish outpost in Morocco. Midtempo, very very cool!
12. Very jazzy, lots of synth, as well as guitars and handclaps. Sort of uptempo but still mellow. Cool beat.
13. *Very mellow, midtempo without much percussion, sweet guitar. Beat comes in after a minute, also hiphop male vocals and singing. Very cool midtempo beat, but still very chill. Ends like beginning.
14. Extremely chill, slow solo guitar, female vocals with the passionate delivery of traditional flamenco. Only a bit of overlaying vocals qualified this as “Nuevo”. Title is misleading – pretty sad song!