more flamenco

Have I mentioned that I'm rather in love with flamenco? The sound, the rhythm, the dance, the guitar, the singing, the cajon...basically everything! I just started taking dance classes, we'll see how much I can learn in a few months....
On Thursday I went to a nearby (tango?)bar to listen to some flamenco. The guitarist "Pajarillo" is someone I've seen a few times now, and been introduced to. The singer (not a traditional "flamenco" voice, but quite good) and the man in the purple are brother and sister. This always makes the dynamics more fun, I think... The man on the right playing the cajon (percussion box) is my co-worker at school. He's a history teacher/anthropologist/flamenco enthusiast. We have English conversations every week (practise for him, since next year he has to teach the first level classes in English) and I always feel like I'm getting a free lecture, its great. Sometimes he brings the newspaper and we talk about something to do with current Spanish politics or culture or society, other times we talk about the same in the U.S. Sometimes I get a history lesson on the area--talking about the moors and the christians and the architecture and placement of villages... Other times we talk about music and he teaches me rhythms or shows me youtube videos of great flamenco or other Spanish artists. Its a pretty fun hour out of my week.

Anyway, after this show my friend and I went with this professor to another venue (smokey!) where we watched what I'm going to call a "gypsy jam session." It was awesome. It was a relatively small place and there were not a lot of people there--all part of the flamenco world, its seemed, save for Tamara and me, and they took turns singing, dancing, clapping, (smoking) etc. Everyone just playing and dancing for fun, not performance. I tried to take some videos there but it was super dark and kinda noisy so they turned out very poorly. All in all, though, a fun night.
** I'm not having success in uploading the video... I'll try it in a separate post?**