Monday, July 18, 2011

Mannouche Swing Quintet



It turns out that the band we saw playing in the park was actually a Montreal staple who have a couple of albums out. We wound up seeing them in a club called Upstairs Jazz. They are called Mannouche Swing Quinte.

I shot this video of one of the tunes they played. This place serves food and wine and the people don't talk while the band is playing. What a concept!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Maestro! (continued)

Paco

The canta or singers were two guys who seemed to be “on” this night. Especially the older one. After two songs Paco had someone bring him a towel and he explained, “I buy new pants today. Very slippery. Cannot play.” Then he put the towel on his leg so the guitar wouldn't slip anymore. The entire hall erupted in laughter!

They had some tuning issues and after a few songs or about an hour and he told the audience they were all out of tune and needed to go back stage and re-tune, “We come back.” he said. Then the house lights came up and we had about a thirty minute intermission. Which no one could tell if it was scheduled or not. It didn't matter.

Everybody pretty much came back and sat down on their own and they turned the lights back down and the band came back onstage. They started out, all eight, together on a very recognizable tune but I don't know the name of it right now.
Toward the end of that song the dancer finally got up and started doing his routine on a slightly raised platform in front of the musicians. He actually really got the crowd into it and the band seemed to kick into high gear feeding off the crowd.

So the last forty-five minutes or so were highly charged and you could feel the duende flowing through the room. It was nice to see the way that the flamenco unit actually functions. When the singers come in the guitars lay back and if the singer really gets a good line off Paco throws in a rapid Spanish strum to sort of put an exclamation point on the end of the sentence. Then they pull it back down like a pulse and the singer steels himself to get ready for the next line of canta. Then he inhales and fires out the line loudly, forcefully and they thrust their arms down by their sides when the sing. Very theatrical.

I never like to listen to canta very much, but it takes on a different aspect when you can see it live. It all makes a lot more sense when you realize that it is sort of like a group of performers working together during the performance.

Sometimes the bass will throw a little run in after a line of canta too. Then they come back to the main melody and it's kind of pulsating and a little terrifying at the same time. When it's time for the dancer to get up he expresses himself a lot in the same way as the singers. He waits for the band to come down and get into the pulse then he starts tapping with his heels and getting a beat going. He builds it up and then he explodes with a strong flourish and he might do a couple of spins to cap it off, along with some real strong stomps and all the singers shout “ole, ole!” and the band comes back in on the main melody and they go through a progression then they lower it back down again and the dancer starts again tapping.

The audience really enjoyed this immensely and the band was smiling all around. Paco would typically give each musician a little room to solo while they kept the pulse going the whole time with the singers clapping a tempo and the guitars half muting the melody.

Everybody got a chance to showcase their skills, but it was the harmonica player who really got the crowd going the best. Every time, they would start out real low and gradually build up until everybody was going full bore and the room would pulsate with the ebb and flow of the music.

When the soloist was into his long runs the sound man was panning the mix so it was going from left to right and back again giving a cool stereo effect. And I think the harmonica player may have been playing with two harmonicas sometimes.

The people in the audience were there to see Paco. They were all pilgrims like me and you can bet that 80% of the audience were guitarists so everybody was really focused on the music and did not talk during the show, or had the decency to whisper.

Of course Paco played solos during all the songs too. He seems to have mellowed some from his recordings and everybody realized that we weren’t watching a forty year old Paco, but the old Maestro is still able to tap the duende and played some amazing runs that brought cheers from the crowd. He seemed content though to let the band do the heavy lifting and probably at this point he feels that he doesn’t have anything to prove anyway. It was a great performance and I feel privileged to have been there.