This blog was supposed to be about literature!

I maintain that one should never, ever apologize for any song on one's iTunes library (or for having iTunes in the first place), as much as one might cringe at its being discovered by anyone else. However, some songs do prompt the librarian to want to offer an explanation of their presence. One of mine follows, and actually, it did have some literary value...at least for me. It made me think of Lorca...won't say how, as that would prompt another awkward explanation.*

Cantaora

Gades

I have Beyoncé's "Ring the Alarm" in my iTunes library and here's why - The first time I heard it I was in the car during a rain-induced traffic jam. I was driving home from my Fall seminar (Literatura erótica de los siglos de oro), switching stations like I do. I stopped on one I never listen to after hearing the siren sounds that open the song. The vocals begin 8 seconds in, making for siren sounds in both senses of the word, and are accompanied by hand-clapping. I was struck by the familiarity of the clapping and of the anger and passion and locura in the voice and the way the repetition of the chorus was done. I immediately, incongruously, made a mental link to cante jondo. I envisioned a video to the song, flamenco cantaores, hand-clappers and dancers in swirling skirts working as back-up as the singer (dressed in a flamenco dress and shoes herself) sings, stamps, wails, claps, yells, moans, and almost sobs in the style of the great cantaoras. Intense Antonio Gades comes back to life to interpret the second person audience who elicits this anger and dances close to her like he's in the ring making verónicas. She snubs him, of course, with looks of disdain that only this sort of woman can level at a man.

Y mira, no más...pero not even as close to cante jondo as the above...
esflamenco.com
12/03/2007 (dd/mm/yyyy)
La estrella estadounidense Beyonce y el cantante mexicano Alejandro Fernández han grabado a dúo y en español la canción de flamenco-pop "Amor gitano". Esta singular interpretación es el tema principal de la telenovela latina "El Zorro" que emite de lunes a viernes Telemundo..."Amor gitano" es una canción de tintes latinos que combina guitarras y ritmos flamencos con otros más propios del pop.

*"...her very valid conceptions jell in a different manner. In that regard I particularly remember discussing María...and Ms.H., aware of the doldrums associated with that work's frequently wanton discourse, tempered her classmates' reactions by associating the novel to contemporary Spanish American soap operas. It was a wonderful intervention, and more evidence of how she makes connections with everything she hears, reads or sees." Even though she is often the only one for whom these connections are clear.