Flamenco

The Flamenco Guitar

Really, the flamenco guitar is very simple, but it is important to understand it.

I have had the good fortune to have close friends from the place it was born. It is really they who taught me how it should be, and to understand the culture of Flamenco. To them I am indebted and I remember them as I work.

The guitars I make are much influenced by the traditional way of building; I refer to it below.

In my flamenco guitar I adhere to it completely. The decoration is usually restrained, and all my effort goes into working with best quality materials with conscience to produce a guitar with sound and feel that is authentic. I use the highest quality cypress, coupled with European spruce tops. From the quality of cypress, and from the character of the soundboard wood, I can build a guitar that is bold and serious, or a guitar that is sweet. In old days, maple was also used for good guitars; I sometimes use it. My instruments are available in lacquer or french polish. I much prefer to french polish the soundboard for reasons of sound.

The Roma, the ‘Gypsies’, played a role in the guitar we know and play today, whether classical or flamenco. Their influence is referred to in passing as a minor role, overlooked, or dismissed, often with prejudice. In truth, they played central, fundamental role, and there is ample evidence for this. That is my opinion formed through personal experience; for an excellent scholarly essay on the subject, I refer you to ‘Cultural Origins of the Modern Guitar’ by R E Brune.

During the time when Antonio de Torres Jurado and his peers were working, there was a need for a powerful, percussive guitar with quality of tone, for performance in the many popular Cafe Cantante venues of that time. The guitar that developed is distinct from the guitars being made at that time in other European centers of instrument making .The guitar we play today has changed little from the guitar developed at that time, although a little larger in some dimensions and often not built in the specific manner of Torres.

Today the ‘Classical’ and the ‘Flamenco’ guitar are though of as distinct and separate. At that time they were not. A rosewood bodied guitar was simply a more expensive model, a guitar of native cypress more cheap.

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