h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd like to add here some information about an extraordinary flamenco guitarplayer, named SABICAS.

He was born in 1912 at Pamplona of the Gypsy family of Castellon Campos. As a child he played the guitar on his own, without a lesson,
without advice and without a teacher.

Sabicas played first in public at the age of seven and when he was ten, he gave a concert in Madrid.
In 1934, after his recital in the Plaza de Toros at Sevilla, he was carried in triumph.
In 1950 he settled in New York and from 1967 he frequently returned to Spain and gave many concerts.

Before Sabicas, there seemed many things impossible to do on guitar but his great technique shows otherwise.

But Sabicas was not only a guitarist, but also a composer; a rare thing for a Gypsy.
He could neither read nor write music. One day he said, that the notes on a stave looked like "little birds on electric wires", but because of his mastery of the guitar and very strong memory, he was capable of playing his compositions, note for note, over and over again, while it is extremely complex.

A flamenco specialist wrote about him; "He does not give us the sensation that he is playing, but that the music flows out by itself" and thís is the trigger for my love for his music.

And a flemgo guitarist said about him; "The entire output of Sabicas is a music of plenitude, happy music, the reflection of this little man who was at peace with himself and with the world".

And finally, what said Sabicas about himself?
"You know, I had no teacher. I had a brother who wanted to learn, but I did not know how to show him a variation! I cannot teach, probably because no one ever taught me. I do not know music. I do not know what it begins with. But you see, since I took up a guitar, people say it is a revolution. So after all, I am happy, because others have written down my music and study it and so it will remain when I'm gone".


And this swarming of birds that sprang from the fingers of this ordinary little man from Pamplona, sing to me authentic Gypsy songs
that can light a fire of passionate living.

Maybe you can enjoy his music aswell and that's the reason why I write here about him.



Greatings from Amsterdam

Sabicas died in 1990.

But his music is a live.

I do not sight read music either, it seems to put a part of my brain into the loop that blocks the musical flow. But i learn new songs by using tablature and sometimes tablature generated from specialized text files called ABC files. I was surprised to find while researching this guide entry that a major influence in the early days of tablature development was a Flamenco guru. Raphael Marin felt that study of folk music, dissection and theorizing in the classical music mode, destroyed it and educated players would have great difficulty making it "real". So he devised a notation system for his books on the style that is very like modern tab, sort of a schematic of the instrument in question with marks for various tonal flavorings. When i play a song that i'm learning from tablature it flows much better. If i think ahead in the tablature, i am imagining placing my fingers in a certain place and it happens. If i am using traditional notation, i have to interpret the note on the staff and then imagine where on the guitar it is. That extra thought process just destroys the music, which only comes when one has a very strange state of relaxed yet total concentration.

How so called "handicaps" can illuminate the muses!