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2000s: Duende – the intense emotional state that is the essence of Spain’s signature art form: flamenco.
Duende
What you need to know before your trail
Jason Webster had an obsession and he went to Spain to indulge it. He studies flamenco guitar until his fingers bleed and had a torrent affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee the coastal city of Alicante in fear for his life.
He ends up in Madrid, and this is where he gets his first taste of the gritty world of flamenco when he meets the Gypsies who dance and appreciate 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.
Travel Guide
Flamenco and the state of the Duende
“The music started: two guitarists beating out more “Alboreas. “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, rather, an extreme world extreme passions, extreme feelings, the extremes of life and death. And it was a way of life I wanted to believe in its excitement, its danger, the affirmation it gave you that you were different, and alive”.
For a real sense of the heart of Flamenco, you should also visit Seville and other towns in Andalucia as this is the home of the dance.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Duende
Author/Guide: Jason Webster Destination: Alicante, Madrid, Granada, Spain Departure Time: 2000s
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