What is keeping you going on?

[randymoon]

I'll chime in for fun. I, not being from Spain, will never be a "real" flamenco player. I grew up in America, listening to rock, country, jazz, and classical. I pickup a nylon string, got some lessons early on and realized in the quite solitude of my room, the intimacy of that instrument is amazing. It is so expressive. It speaks to me. The first time heard, I mean really heard flamenco, I believe it was an old Carlos Montoya record, I was blown away! Here was a group, in fact a whole culture of music based around the nylon string guitar, explore an almost limitless realm of dance music and syncopated beats. I had moved beyond a superficial understand to beginning of understanding the language of flamenco. Music IS a language of the heart and soul, and the thing those guitars said in there music, the "words" they use...if I could speak That language, perhaps I could say what I have been trying to say on my guitar since I was a child.

[federico]

Thank you Randy. You are a kind and gentle soul. Continue being as you are and this World will always be a better place.
Long Live Randy!

[ronjazz@mac.com]

I have been a pro guitarist for over 40 years. Flamenco, however, is like a disease or a condition one "catches", and it never lets you go. I have been very fortunate to have dinner at Paco Pena's home in Cordoba, and to have had a job as accompanist for Flamenco dance classes at Wesleyan University here in Connecticut. While there are very few opportunities to play Flamenco gigs, I have worked many of the sounds and techniques into my jazz presentation, and I have written and recorded a tangos. It's difficult in this American culture, but there are afficionados all over the east Coast, so we occasionally get together for a juerga and trade ideas and play each other's guitars.