The best laid plans of mine and men...

I just spent about a month in Spain.  My plan was to spend 10 days working on Flamenco:  the Land Is Still Fertile (Flamenco:  la tierra está viva) and then, since co-director Antonio de la Malena was scheduled to go on tour in Mexico, I'd spend another three weeks, well, having fun:  a bit of editing, a bit of checking out lead mines (lead mines?  Yes, lead mines), a bit of flamenco dance lessons, a few days in Paris and plenty of just hanging out.

Manuel de Malena with guitarist Malena Hijo

However, Antonio's tour to Mexico was cancelled at the last minute and so I got to - WORK.  The whole time I was there.

And I must say, we did get a lot done.  We filmed the very fine (and famous) flamenco guitarist Diego del Morao playing a solo, and also interviewed him on camera.  We filmed the very fine (and also famous) flamenco singer Manuel de Malena singing a solo, and also interviewed him on camera.  We conducted a second interview of the very important figure, former guitarist Manuel Morao.  We interviewed critic Estela Zatania.  We interviewed Mila Méndez, a nice of the great singer, la Paquera (and Mila sang a little for us in the style of her aunt).  We got some editing done.  I filmed some lead mines near Córdoba, in a small city called Linares.

Diego del Morao getting his microphone attached.

Lots of work!  But in fact, it was a trip well spent - and I did get a few days in Paris at the end.

When I say "we," it's because the contributions of every crew member, plus all the talented people we are filming, are essential to the project.  This includes is our new sound tech, Carlos Pérez, who comes down from Sevilla to work with us;  along with camera operators Eve A. Ma (yours truly) and Roberto Aguilar;  lighting tech Sergio Monja;  and of course our fantastic co-directors Eve A. Ma (again) and Antonio de la Malena.  Plus most of the time we also have a boom operator.

Co-directors and part of crew work out a problem.

How the (Afro-Peruvian) cajón entered (Spanish) flamenco - part 2 of 2

When I told this story to some flamenco friends, they said “we heard a different story” and recounted how Paco de Lucías’s percussionist (a palmero - a person who does the hand-clapping that is the usual accompaniment for traditional flamenco) went to Perú where he “discovered” the cajón, bought one, and brought it back to Spain.

Well, I was surfing YouTube one day, and happened across this video in which Paco de Lucía confirms Lalo’s story;  if you don't understand Spanish, you'll just have to take my word for it:

Paco de Lucia explaining how he was introduced to the cajón in Peru.

Again, for those of you who can read Spanish, this interview with Caitro Soto adds more detail LINK. 

Apparently, el Comercio, a newspaper in Lima, arranged for Paco de Lucía to explain how he learned about the cajón by watching Caitro Soto (and others) at an after-party, and then purchased one, which he gave to his percussionist.  LINK.  According to Paco, it was easier for flamenco percussionists to use the cajón than to do the traditional palmas (hand clapping), which is why the cajón caught on so rapidly.

So there you have it.

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Author Eve A. Ma, who dances flamenco, is the producer/director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvian music and dance.   Lalo Izquierdo appears in both;  here's a LINK to one of them.   

Keep up with Ma's work:  http://PalominoPro-signup.com

NOTE:  this article first appeared in the on-line magazine, www.SomosPrimos.com.  It is reprinted here with permission.

How the (Afro-Peruvian) cajón entered (Spanish) flamenco - part 1 of 2

If you are either a flamenco aficionado or a cajón enthusiast, here's a story that you will enjoy.

I consider myself fortunate to have a friend, Lalo izquierdo, who is a master of the Afro-Peruvian cajón (or, if you will, the Peruvian cajón)., a percussion instruments that you see in almost every Afro-Peruvian performance, in much of Latin jazz, in other styles of jazz and in modern flamenco.

Lalo is a percussionist, a dancer, a choreographer and a folklorist of his Afro-Peruvian community.  He lives in Lima, but has spent many months in the United States.  I have seen – and filmed – him in both places.

Lalo Izquierdo with a quijada de burro

Once, he told me a story about how the Afro-Peruvian cajón became incorporated into flamenco.  He said that he along with others, including Caitro Soto, were enjoying themselves in an after-performance party for Paco de Lucía, a seminal flamenco guitarist then on tour in Peru.  Lao, Caitro Soto and others started playing the cajón and Paco de Lucía came over.

Lao Izquierdo playing the cajón

Paco was very, very interested.  He wanted to know more about the instrument and its capacities.  At some point, Caitro Soto offered him one, and he accepted.  Later, he purchased another one.

And that's how the (Afro-Peruvian) cajón entered (Spanish) flamenco.

(Don't forget to read part 2!)

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Author Eve A. Ma, who dances flamenco, is the producer/director of two documentaries about Afro-Peruvian music and dance.   Lalo Izquierdo appears in both;  here's a LINK to one of them.   

Keep up with Ma's work:  http://PalominoPro-signup.com

NOTE:  this article first appeared in the on-line magazine, www.SomosPrimos.com.  It is reprinted here with permission.

After the drought comes rain, after the silence comes ...

I haven't written any blog posts for quite a while. That's because I've been busy doing things filmmakers have to do that some filmmakers, myself being one of them, really hate to do: writing funding requests, finding distributors, doing publicity for events. First, the announcement of the event:


                

Then, moving right along: I got off a major funding request last week; took me about 10 days to do it with some of the major parts already roughed out. No fun, but done.

I also learned that one of my documentaries, A Zest for Life: Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz (revised 2015), will be listed on the national server maintained by NETA (National Educational Television Assn.) so that educational stations nationwide can pick it up for broadcast.

The fact that it's available does not, of course, guarantee that it will get lots of air time. I will have to do some heavy duty publicity work to actually get station managers to check it out. SIGH.   But it's still an honor.

And by the way, yes, I realize the title is, well, a bit long.

Here I am doing something I like better:  directing.

There are also several distributors that are offering to carry some of my work. Some want exclusive contracts, some are happy with non-exclusive contracts, and some are still reviewing individual titles after having them in hand for more than a month.

Once a distributor does decide to carry your titles, for each title you have to prepare "deliverables:" publicity packets, digital versions of the program (and different distributors want different forms of digitizing), and so forth. It's time-consuming and once they have everything in hand, they will take one to two months to actually get your title(s) up on their system.

Some of these distributors will do publicity for the titles they are taking, others will not. They'll just make it available on their server and the filmmaker gets to do his/her own publicity.

Oh, and I needed to get a publicity packet off to a festival that will be screening one of my shorts;  a small but very nice festival that I enjoy participating in.  It's called the Shortz Film Festival.  They are people with a sense of humor.

Then, there's that event coming up on August 22.

Without boring you any further, I'll just point out that I have been pretty busy. Hasn't everyone?

Listening to criticism, offering streaming versions

A year or so ago, a reviewer opined that my experimental short Two Streets & Adela had missed a great opportunity by not showing hardly any of the lovely and historic city in which the action takes place.  I took that comment to heart, and figured out how to add some beauty shots without sacrificing the story or my intentions.

In an ardent desire to move into the modern world, I've made Two Streets & Adela available on-line for streaming or download HERE

On the set of Two Streets & Adela

Streaming seems like a good idea.  "Everyone" spends so much time each day on-line that it makes sense to have a full, on-line presence.  It's also a lot easier to deal with after you've gotten the initial set-up completed.

With that thought, I have now uploaded Tone Poem with Hang Drum and some time within the next three months, CreateSpace/Amazon.com will make it available.  (They are very slow.)

Liron Mann (Liron Man) with his hang drum.

In the next few weeks, I'll get other of my videos up as well but it's a slow process.  it takes hours to convert a video to a format that CreateSpace/Amazon.com like, and more hours to upload once the conversion is done.

FYI re the final product:  purchasing a streaming version on Amazon/com usually runs less than $2.00;  the download is a little more expensive.
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Eve A. Ma has produced/directed about six experimental shorts, several shot in Spain and a few in the U.S..  She is now editing  a short she and her crew filmed in Peru called Masters of Rhythm.  She hopes to complete it before the end of 2015.

National Educational Television - NETA - at last!

I have been dying to have my work get national exposure.  I went to Peru last December because the director of NETA (National Educational Television Assn.) suggested this was the only way I could make my documentary, A Zest for Life, suitable for them to include for broadcast over national educational television.  Well, the trip paid off and NETA has now officially accepted A Zest for Life. 

WOW!

It will take about two months for the documentary to get set up, but then, well, the sky's the limit.

So what is NETA and how does educational television in the United States work?

Let's start at the bottom, where we find public access stations, really great, locally connected television stations who allow almost anyone that walks through the door to put on a TV show - and in many cases, also teach them how to do it.  I say "almost anyone," because many local public access stations do have a residency requirement and things of that sort.

Similar to the public access stations are the television stations run by educational institutions in which the students learn how to make television programs by - making television programs.

Next up is local broadcast above the public access level.  Here, you have professionals but not the cream of the cream professionals.  This will be your local, commercial stations.  They do a lot of local news and local interest programming.

Sticking with educational television but moving on to quite a higher level, you have PBS.  Each individual PBS station can put on, or select, its own programming so long as it fits the national PBS guidelines.  Above that, you have the national educational distributors who distribute not only to PBS stations but also to other educational television networks.

Some of these national distributors pay for all the programming they accept, some pay for only some of it and take the rest free, and some don't pay for any of the programming they accept.  Why would they get free programming?  Because of people like me, who want national exposure but haven't quite gotten to the level of having programming good enough to get paid real money for it.

So that's where I am - national, but not yet paid.

My next goal, of course, it to make something that will not only air nationally but that I will get paid for.  I'm hoping to reach that goal within the next year.  Let's see what happens.