Dance - Jaleo Flamenco

If you go to a tablao in Andalucia and watch a genuine flamenco performance, if you are lucky the musicians will reach a spiritual high point when they are carried by a wave of passion into onto a different plane of existence. If you are very lucky they will carry you with them. This sensation is known as ‘duende’. Duende to flamenco music is as orgasm to sex. The great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca says of it "All through Andalucia people speak constantly of duende, and recognize it with unfailing instinct when it appears… These dark sounds are the mystery, the roots thrusting into the fertile loam known to all of us, ignored by all of us, but from which we get what is real in art. Thus duende is a power and not a behavior, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old master guitarist say: ‘Duende is not in the throat; duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action."

Jaleo Flamenco are a six-piece flamenco group from Andalucia. They are very talented, and frequently tour Europe. If you have never seen flamenco they will give you a very good idea of what it is about: the staccato clapping; the rat-a-tat foot percussion; the powerful guitar; the lamentful Arabic-inspired singing; the contorted-yet-graceful dancing. They will do this in a well-choreographed manner. But will they achieve duende? It is doubtful. But you never know… AL