Face Melting
La Milonga Tablao — Sevilla
Metal-heads use the term face-melting to describe live shows, meaning the energy coming from the music literally melted my face, man. I have just experienced that at a flamenco show.
We went to Sevilla during a month-long, biennial flamenco festival mostly because we could. Mitzi the dog hasn’t arrived yet, and the cost is pretty cheap from Valencia. Why not? I like flamenco guitar and the combination of percussion and dancing has always been fun. So, it’s not my all-time favorite pastime, but I enjoy it.
Since we went to a festival in the birthplace of flamenco, we looked for some interesting shows online before going. We found something promising for Friday night that turned out to under-deliver. Lots of pomp and circumstance, and I’m pretty sure we saw some of the names in flamenco, but it was frankly interminable, mostly warbling vocals. I know I don’t understand much Spanish, but how much pathos can you get into a song if you only sing about seven words, drawing each syllable out to fifty or more. It seemed very purist, so maybe I’m just a flamenco poser? Who knows.
We didn’t give up, but my expectations sank pretty low. On Saturday we did some touristy exploring, and we came across a small ensemble busking outside the Plaza de España. They we good, and the dancer was working so hard in 90-degree heat, so we stayed for a few numbers, left some euros, and received a little flyer. Cool. That was amusing. We got some flamenco.
Back at our home base, we started looking for interesting evening plans, wary from having been burned on Friday. After a bit of poking around online — yeah, google “flamenco Seville” on any given Saturday night, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed — we looked up the buskers. Good online reviews, two shows a night, cheap tickets; that sounded safe.
If an experience starts on your way, the cab-ride to this space was the harrowing beginning. We were running late, but our cabby could discern where to go among a maze of alleys (all of which are named routes), and she did it with absolute aplomb. I didn’t notice until we got out at our destination, but she drove with her wing mirrors folded in, and I know why. At several junctions, she had to creep forward to allow a moment to check for pedestrians, who needed to sidle to the walls on either side to allow space for us to pass. Then she just stopped and essentially said “you’re here!,” a tiny alley where I was worried about scratching her car doors trying to get out.
La Milonga Tablao just looks like a door in a wall. The kind folks met us, asked for names and pointed us to our seats — a tiny circular two-top among about six other tables, only about half occupied. Two people fingertip-to-fingertip could touch each wall to the sides. The stage is raised so everyone can see, but no one is farther than fifteen feet from the artists. The online reviews said “intimate.”
We sat, and they started the show; they had waited for us.
If you’ve experienced flamenco before, you know what comes next — light taps that turn to little cycles of counter-rhythms, a combination of dance and percussion and emotion. But so much more. The artists call each other out, little yips of “vale!” when something just works. Ideally, they play off one another as much as play together.
So, I know the opening of this piece sounded like hyperbole. But I swear if you sat in the fifteenth row of a Metallica concert in the late 80s and you sat in the little room with us, you would have been just as blown away. A single guitarist came out and played a short number, flourished and intimate. He was technically brilliant and emotionally expressive. Then they added a singer, and his voice filled the room in an alegría, which literally means joy. And then they moved to one side, and a dancer came out in a traditional black and red swirly outfit.
These three artists echoed in that tiny room. No mics, no amplification, just energy. It was so intimate, we could hear her snap her fingers. From slow to fast and back again, the dance and music creating tension. A silence would fall, and the few of us in the audience would sit expectant, all eyes on the dancer, knowing it was a pause and not the end. She spun and stomped and tapped. It was astounding — so poised and powerful. The guitar and voice and dancing carried each other.
I had my face melted by flamenco in a little cafe / theater in Sevilla. I highly suggest it.
