15 f Ranting & Reeling I
like my flat. It’s not much, but at no point since I’ve lived here has it been either freezing or stifling. I don’t have to share it with earwigs. And my bed has a mattress that protects my body from rocks. It’s ideal for my needs.
But at this time of year I’ve been known to leave my flat and attend one of the many festivals that you people seem to enjoy. Like Cliff Richard in the song Miss You Nights, there are times when I’ll trade solitude for company. And since the majority of nice people I know are involved in the folk music industry, I will occasionally leave my mis- anthropy to be looked after by a neigh- bour and spend the weekend feeling damp on a farm.
Not being at home is as much dis- comfort as I can handle. So the thought of adding to that discomfort by spend- ing the night lying on the ground makes me itch with anxiety. Camping is unnatu- ral. No one lives in tents except through great misfortune.
I like to feel clean. I like to go to the toilet without wearing wellingtons. I like not becoming so cold that I whimper in my sleep (that really happened one year
at Glastonbury – I was woken by a man in the same field yelling “Shut up you f***ing baby!”)
And few things can make me crosser than trying to get dressed whilst lying down. It’s like wrestling gravity. If jeans came with instructions I’m pretty sure there’d be a picture of someone supine, legs in the air, with a line drawn through it to demonstrate that this is not how to put your trousers on.
I know there are taller tents. But the taller the tent the more difficult it is to carry. And I hate carrying difficult things. Lugging heavy, awkwardly-shaped camping equipment along muddy tracks to find somewhere to pitch that won’t be occupied by drunk 17-year-olds shrieking at each other around an out- of-control campfire until five in the morning, makes me want to throw it all in a hedge and go home.
Because at home, or in a bed & breakfast trying its best to replicate a home, I have the basic requirements a human needs to not be all smelly and achy and furious. And I have a door. A flap is not a door. If you were a king and
you asked the court crafts- man to design something to keep the wind, rain and
marauders out of your castle and he came back with a piece of blue nylon that fas- tened with a confusing
number of zips you’d be most dis- pleased. When the only thing between me and a man trying to play Karma Police on a ukulele is a flap, then I truly appreciate how much I love doors.
I know not all of you will share my views and might even be looking for- ward to three days of spitting toothpaste onto grass. But when Joni Mitchell first sang “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” she was in a hotel room a long way from Woodstock. She would never have written something so peace- ful and profound if she’d had to camp.
Tim Chipping
The Elusive Ethnomusicologist
maker and anarchist who speaks English with a broad Yorkshire accent, a neatly- bearded professor, a woman who began her life dancing in the cave she called home, a smart left-wing activist lawyer, a gypsy blacksmith, and one half of Spain’s most celebrated beautiful couple?
W
Stepping through the looking glass and into a fantastic Andalusian adventure I discovered the answer. Flamenco. On a mission to the heart of the music for a BBC4 documentary, I imagined I’d find an art in decline, a lazy Cheshire cat grin left behind for the tourist trade. But the won- derful characters I met – musicians, singers, dancers (those above and many more), from the young and good-looking to the old and amorous, whether famous or unknown – all spoke of and demonstrated a fabulously vital musical phenomenon.
From Malaga to Cadiz, via Granada, Cabra, Cordoba and the old Moorish frontier towns, Morón de la Frontera, El Lebrija and Jerez (places once as fiercely fought over as the ownership of flamen- co is today), I found a dynamic, vibrant music. It’s politically and socially relevant, both steeped in tradition and being re-
hat links an iconic Andalu- sian goatherd who looks like Clint Eastwood’s more hand- some twin, a Spanish film
created anew. Its rhythms seem to be in the blood of the children who grow up surrounded by the twelve-beat compas, clapped to support the performer and inspire greater, more extraordinary musi- cal expression.
Everyone joins in accenting the rhythms and shouting encouragement. Flamenco is all-embracing and fantasti- cally egalitarian. I saw it spring up spon- taneously, as it can, wherever people get together. Rooted in the red Andalusian soil, intertwined with place and work, I came to realise that it’s not just music. “Flamenco,” as everyone declared, “es una forma de vivir.”
As ‘a way of living’ it is death defy- ing, involving heroic amounts of alcohol and tobacco and not eating: well, just enough tapas so you can pour your next drink or light your next cigarette. A night typically starts with riotous party songs and ends with the dawn and passionate cries of the soul: songs wrenched from the guts of the performers, dancers, singers and musicians alike.
Flamenco is about living in the moment and giving everything to it. Joy, pain, love, sorrow, all are deeply felt in sharp relief against an ever-present awareness of death. It’s this intensity that’s transmitted in the music and
dance. This is what connects us all whether we understand the lyrics or not. Flamenco might have grown from the land and experience of Andalusia, but it holds a mir- ror to all of us.
The music’s
mysteries were relinquished in fiery hot forges and cool bodegas, private houses and public parks, gypsy parties at night and deserted beaches by morning: bustling city centres in the flat glare of the midday sun and remote hillsides in glorious sunsets. It felt like being in a film by Sergio Leone one minute, and in one by Almodovar at his bonkers best the next. I’m the character gamely trying to dance and swish my curls flamenco style (tricky, as I realised too late that my hairdresser hates me) with all the ele- gance of a tortured panda – and with eyes as darkly circled from some of the most amazing experiences in my life. BBC4 Friday 30th August: 9pm.
Elizabeth Kinder
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