Posts Tagged ‘conde’
Video – Rodriguez and Conde Flamencos
I used to play with Gerardo Morales constantly – a couple of times a week at least at tablao gigs – and then we sort of each got gigs in other places and with other people and I hadn’t really played with him for a while until recently when he subbed for the cajón player on my regular gig and I remembered how much fun it is to play with him. So I invited him to come do some videos with me since I wanted to record a few guitars. I recorded some Alegrias with a great 2010 Felipe Conde pau ferro negra and a little Bulerias on this amazing 1959 Miguel Rodriguez, one of the funnest guitars I’ve played in a while. Not necessarily my best playing, but it was really nice to play with Gerardo, who in addition to being a great cajón player is a serious flamenco and classical player.
We just got some photos from Felipe Conde of two flmencos that should be on their way any day now – a negra with some beautiful rosewood and a classic blanca. I love that he’s using some of the classic Conde rosettes on these. I did a totally unscientific side-by-side comparison last time we had a negra and blanca form the same batch and you can see that here.
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Duo Partido is guitarist Dario Griffin and singer Alicia Ramirez, and I met them a few months ago when I recorded their first EP for them. I loved what they do so I invited them to come shoot some videos in the showroom. Here they are playing Desafinado, with Dario on an Hermanos Conde AC23, and Violao, with Dario on a Luigi Locatto ‘Garcia’ model. Third video is Dario playing Guinga’s Mingus Samba on a 1999 Paulino Bernabe ‘Concierto’. You can check out their new EP here. Continue Reading
Here are some more videos of great players playing their Condes. I focused a little more on the post-Paco generation here, so these guys are generally a little younger, but all of them have already secured their place in the flamenco world. I know I’ve left out tons of players, but that’s kind of the point – everyone plays Condes, so I chose the guys I’ve been listening to lately: Diego del Morao (Moraito’s son), Niño Josele, Niño de Pura, Chicuelo and Antonio Rey.
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Here are some more of the countless great flamenco players who’ve played Condes. For the record, I’m not in any way trying to put these guys into some order of greatness – I’m just having fun watching some of my favorite players play, and it’s really easy to find videos of them all playing their Condes. So here we go with Paco Cepero, Enrique Melchor, Juan Manuel Cañizares, Rafael Riqueñi and Pedro Sierra.
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One of the questions we’re asked a lot is ‘what’s the big deal about Conde guitars?’. Certainly no other name in flamenco guitars is quite as well known as Conde, and the reason is actually pretty simple – no other guitars are played by as many of the top flamenco players in Spain. Paco de Lucia has played a Conde since the beginning of his career (and many players from the generation before Paco played them as well), and while Paco has surely had a huge influence on almost every flamenco guitarist since, it’s hard to imagine that he’s the only reason so many great players play Condes. So I’ve put together some videos of just a few of the great players who play these guitars, and I’ll put up more soon. For starters here are Melchor de Marchena, a very young Paco de Lucia, Tomatito with Camarón, Pepe Habichuela, Gerardo Nuñez and Moraito, all playing their Condes. I’ve left out plenty of great players, but this feels like a good start.
Also check out Felipe Conde’s bio here. Felipe is the heir to the Conde tradition and we’re very happy to represent him here in the US.
If you hang out at the Conde shop in Madrid long enough you’ll meet just about every great flamenco player alive, so for the past year or so Felipe Conde has been shooting video of some of the amazing players who come in to his shop, including guys like Tomatito (and his son, in the photo), Pepe Habichuela, Rafael Riqueñi, Antonio Rey and more. Here are a few of Felipe’s recent videos.
Felipe Conde and his son, also Felipe, were in town for a few days for the NAMM show and they stopped by to hang out with us at the shop in Santa Monica. I took this photo with my phone because it was two generations of Conde checking out a 1929 Esteso, Domingo Esteso being Felipe Sr.’s great uncle (and therefore Felipe Jr.’s great-great uncle). And even though I’m perfectly aware of the relationship it just suddenly struck me how cool it was to have all that history in the room at one time.
I didn’t know that Leonard Cohen owed a debt to flamenco or that he had a 40 year old Conde that he bought at the Gravina, 7, shop in the 60′s. But in his acceptance speech for the winning the ‘Principe de Asturias’ prize in Spain he said that his Conde had inspired him all his life and that all of his songs were based on the 6 chords he learned from a flamenco guitarist in Montreal (who for unknown reasons committed suicide). The prize and the speech have gotten Felipe Conde a lot of good press in Spain recently and remind us that in addition to almost every great flamenco player playing Condes, they’ve been played by a lot people you wouldn’t have guessed, from Al DiMeola to Lenny Kravitz, David Byrne and Leonard Cohen.
You can hear the whole acceptance speech here (though you’ll hear the interpreter in Spanish on top of Cohen’s English), and you can see some of the articles in the Spanish press here, here or here.
We’re celebrating the Madrid school throughout the month of November. Just buy any guitar from a Madrid maker (Contreras, Ramirez, Perez or Conde) and we’ll give you a shopping spree worth 10% of the purchase price of your guitar – and there’s no limit. You can use that 10% shopping spree to buy anything on the site – from strings to cases or furniture or even another guitar. Just give us a call or we’ll email you instructions on how to redeem you shopping spree. Cannot be combined with any other offer.
