‘Beatnik’ and guitarist by Soleás: the story of Donn E. Pohren, the ‘Yanqui’ that revolutionized flamenco | Culture | EUROtoday

In music there are crosses of flashing roads that change locations. Just a few weeks in the past Kiko Veneno – a musical son of Seville – defined that it was in California the place he was keen on flamenco. The enigma that hides such a press release is on a solar and water farm referred to as Espartero, in Morón de la Frontera. There, within the mid -sixties and till shortly earlier than the loss of life of the dictator Franco, with the assist of the Excellent guitarist Diego del Gastor, the American Donn E. Pohren arrange a lodge that supplied the expertise of delving into the flamenco tradition in his pure habitat, with out painters or any banalization.

Thus, elbow aspect, Gastor (Diego Amaya Flores, born in Arriolate, 1908, who died in Morón in 1973) and Pohren (Minneapolis 1929-Madrid, 2007) constructed a luminous flamenco scene to which a whole bunch of younger Americans got here in pilgrimage, and likewise some English, Australians, Swedish, Japanese, Japanese and Spanish. Then, some unfold that artwork on different sides (therefore the invisible map that Kiko Veneno toured till it stumbled in San Francisco with Agustín Ríos, a gastor nephew that taught him the toque of Morón).

From the Espartero farm there are fingerprints in current books resembling Everything is flamenco rockby Antonio Jesús García and Ramón García (Efe Eme, 2025); One hundred fires. Flamencos, hippies and poets within the countercultural Andalusia, by Antonio Orihuela (paper stone, 2023), and This time we come to hitby Fran G. Matute (Silex, 2022). And earlier than, in Living machines. Flamenco and structure within the occupation and unemployment of areas (The Viceroy Center of the Imatge, 2019) and The eye eye. Flamenco, mass tradition and avant -garde, by Pedro G. Romero (Athenaica, 2016), or The golden age of flamenco in Morón de la Frontera (1960-1970), Pedro Luís Vázquez García (Diputación Provincial of Sevilla, 2016).

Counterculture and freedom

Espartero was not only a area for music. It was additionally a microcosm of freedom, an area for coexistence that radiated different prospects of being and being in life. A manufacturing of manufacturing and countercultural manufacturing and transformation that artists and critics resembling Darcy Lange and Dan Graham in contrast – bypassing the distances – with The Factory of Andy Warhol, explains Romero in Living machines. That in full Franco and in a cruelly punished folks in the course of the Civil War for its quite a few associates to the CNT anarchist union.

It all began in 1947, in Mexico, when on a trip Pohren noticed Carmen Amaya act, she fell in love with the jondo and as quickly as she might purchase a ticket to Spain to delve into her thriller. He married the dancer Luisa Maravilla, hung out in Malaga, Sevilla and Madrid, the place he arrange the Flemish Studies Club at Los Gabrieles tabrieles. But by neighborhoods and villages they instructed him in regards to the extraordinary fantastic thing about Diego del Gastor’s music, he heard him play within the stew of Utrera and, in a type of seek for the Flamenco Holy Grail, he determined to go to Morón. There he discovered him at Casa Pepe, the bar of the gypsies of the city, with out sleeping after a few days of spree. “Man, take a glass,” keep in mind that Gastor instructed the American. Pohren determined to remain on his aspect that evening and day-after-day and years, till the guitarist died.

Gastor was already a legend, a trainer with a novel contact of historic gypsy. An elegant and libertarian man good friend of the vacations for Miss and the incipient music enterprise. He solely performed when he needed and lived with “minimum expenses and maximum intensity,” writes Pedro G. Romero in The eye eye. The Minneapolis labored an administrative time on the Morón American navy base to earn cash, purchase the farm and repair it. He renamed her as a flamenco middle of Espartero, and shortly turned one thing much like the neuralgic website of purest flamenco, with out distilling.

The American quickly had outcomes. Espartero attended a whole bunch of younger folks, attracted by that place of encounter with different stressed folks from completely different backgrounds and cultures that lived with the gypsies and coincided with them when having fun with the times and nights, outdoors the political and social radar. “What they did was live on the margins, which is where life itself is gained in the middle of a world emptied of meaning,” says Orihuela, creator of One hundred fires. Pohren’s was an uncommon motion, and his thought of ​​providing a residing and actual flamenco expertise, a cultural transformation. In normal, within the Francoist Spain “the flamenco” was thought-about considerably closed to the Payos, a marginal factor of gypsies.

The e book and guitar

Pohren knew flamenco very effectively when he appeared in Morón. In 1954 he already moved by means of the Malaga streets of Los Negros and Cruz Verde monitoring music, and two years later he was residing within the Sevillian home of the Pavón, one of the crucial necessary dynasties that Flamenco has given. And in 1962 he printed The Art of Flamencoa e book that was reissued a number of instances in several languages ​​and have become a basic component within the dissemination of that music and its methods of life.

“Pohren dignified flamenco. Then he was not consideration that he has now,” explains Antonio Jesús García, creator of Everything is flamenco rock Together with Ramón García. In Espartero, “with Gastor as a musician residentssurrounded by all star From the moment as Joselero de Morón, Juan Talega or Perrate de Utrera, ”Pohren undoubtedly contributed to the worldwide flamenco, says Garcia. freelance (in keeping with personal description) in Flamenco Projecta photographic restoration undertaking of that point coordinated by Steve Kahn – an everyday property within the sixties -, in the direction of the yr 2009.

Like so many, Zern succumbed to Gastor’s mystique, to his potential to speak with the guitar – the “liturgical box”, was referred to as Federico García Lorca – the emotional amplitude of flamenco that goes from struggling and the blackest penalty to pleasure for Bulleries. This was additionally lived by Estela Zatania, a New York that was pre -adoled a part of the folks circuit of the town till he listened to the Sabicas guitarist. “It is that my soul illuminated. I had never felt so much beauty in a musical sound,” he confesses to Jerez. It was she who nonetheless lived in New York earlier than coming to stay in Spain helped Pohren within the distribution of her books within the United States.

“Many say that for them it was like reading the Bible. People knew anything about that art and the book was determining in the development of flamenco,” in keeping with Zatania, one of many architects within the restoration of the work of Minnesota. It occurred in September 2011, on the First Flamenco Festival on the border, held in Morón, when he issued the convention The Pohren impact.

“The first to arrive at the farm were beatniks, scholars, theater people or the world of dance that I wanted to know and learn really flamenco, ”explains Fran G. Matute, author of This time we come to hit. Others arrived from closer sites. For example, Nazario’s cartoonist, illustrator and writer met that scene while working as a teacher in Morón, and guitarist and singer -songwriter Toti Soler arrived from Barcelona. “I did not know flamenco, I only knew about the most commercial things, such as Lola Flores, etc. Rite and Geography of Canteand then I learned that it was Diego del Gastor’s guitar, ”explains Soler.

That melody took him to Morón, where the winter of 1972 spent, when scholars beatniks that months or years were installed there to learn to play guitar, sing or dance were replaced by hippies They were just passing. “I assumed I used to be going to a misplaced village, and I discovered a spot that jogged my memory of Ibiza,” recalls the Catalan guitarist. Even Pohren scared his invention of impact. “I might by no means have imagined that there can be so many strangers wandering by means of the folks seeking to depart. He turned frankly overwhelming, and spoiled exactly the environment he was writing from,” he admitted in an interview.

The ‘Managers’ of the Donero

More than half a century has passed, but Toti Soler still remembers Diego very well. “He had a great personality. And he was not professional. He didn’t want to live, not music. Nothing to do with the roll of managerswith the thing of the bowling, ”he says. Gastor was a luminous lighthouse, almost a guru.“ His absolute indifference to money and material goods sometimes scratched in contempt, ”writes Pohren in Flemish art. It was a vital positioning, almost a political statement.

“The anarchist root in Diego was very current, it has to do in its methods, in its manner of seeing life. It was very impartial. Once, at a celebration get together they took out a package deal of camel cigarettes and started to smoking – then it was essentially the most – and Diego stopped enjoying and mentioned: ‘What’s improper? The gypsies don’t smoke?’ And he continues: “Again they called him from the Alcazar of Seville for a party with a Francoist gerifalte, and rejected it by saying: ‘O SARDINA ”.

In Morón, these visits from younger folks all over the world have been a heat dream, a change of life that introduced consideration, cash and recent air. Pedro Luís Vázquez was a young person when all that occurred. “People came progresspeople who were against the Vietnam War and who had a lot of interest in knowing the Flemish culture and Diego, ”explains Vázquez, creator of The golden age of flamenco in Morón de la Frontera (1960-1970). Those visits “They were a very striking thing, a revolution,” says Vázquez, who was embelceded by symbiosis between gypsy tradition and tradition beatnik, after which the hippie. In Espartero, spree have been celebrated that generally lasted days. Everyone was on the lookout for the elegant second that after happens while you add the artwork of people that sing and dance collectively, contact the guitar and let go along with the assistance of alcohol and heat of the folks. “Pohren understood it like that. Almost as if it were an almost religious type ritual. In Espartero there were more than 400 springs. It is that for the elf to arise, alcohol has a fundamental role. Something similar to a ravein search of a mystical ecstasy, ”says Orihuela.

Against what’s believed all that lived on his again to the Morón navy base. “There is no connection with the base. It was several kilometers, and it was impregnable, they did not usually walk. In fact, pamphlets against the military who said ‘Yankies Go Home,” Matute explains. In 1973, rejecting cash, fame and excursions, Diego died and, with out him, Pohren determined to not proceed. But the toque From Diego del Gastor, a type of superpower that left paralyzed and crying to many, started to unfold all over the world. “That is very complicated for me,” they are saying that Paco de Lucía as soon as mentioned when referring to Diego’s artwork.

So a few years later, the rugged path that Pohren and Gastor drew continues to be open. Gervasio Iglesias, director of the documentary Underground. The metropolis of rainbow (2003), that portrays the Sevillian countercultural motion within the sixties and seventies, it’s optimistic: “All that is still totally alive. The music of our country changed and opened the door to enter others. Flamenco has very complex metrics and is always in evolution.” In any case, it’s legion which can be nonetheless on the lookout for that second of fullness that solely a guitar and a human voice can provide. “Flamenco sometimes itchs deep, and you can’t live without him,” says Zatania. We are notified.