Once again, I want to speak about the need to change flamenco contests (or \u201cfighting pits\u201d as I call them). They are not as necessary as they were thirty or forty years ago and, although they don\u2019t have to disappear completely, it wouldn\u2019t be a bad idea to sit down and consider whether there should be as many of them, to start, or if they should be relegated to the dustbin of history. I say this with this year\u2019s Festival de Las Minas in mind, with its results, the tantrums of the losers and the uncertain future now facing the winners, particularly the winner of the\u00a0L\u00e1mpara Minera<\/i>\u00a0award, Mar\u00eda Jos\u00e9 Carrasco, from Palacios y Villafranca, and the winner of the\u00a0Bord\u00f3n Minero<\/i>\u00a0award, Agust\u00edn Carbonel\u00a0El Bola<\/i>, from Madrid, already a veteran of toque.<\/p>\n
So much money, work and effort, for that? Doesn\u2019t this create more disappointment than excitement? Flamenco contests has a purpose if they try to discover and promote new talent. What has been discovered by this year\u2019s contest of La Uni\u00f3n? I didn\u2019t attend the final, but I\u2019ve read many comments in the social networks, and it looks like, for starters, the overall quality was very low. Since I didn\u2019t attend, I don\u2019t want to dwell into the particular qualities of each contestant, because that\u2019s the job of those who went to analyze this event. I\u2019ve attended this contest many times, as jury and flamenco critic, so I\u2019m entitled to voice my opinion about it, and I\u2019ve done it many times, even as I\u2019ve increasingly lost interest in this event, and in all flamenco contests in general.<\/p>\n
The last time I wrote about contests I got in trouble with some veteran\u00a0cantaores<\/i>\u00a0who keep taking part in them to make money. Yes, to make money. For the dough. Everyone is free to make a living as they can, and if they\u2019re allowed to do it, then fair enough. Why are\u00a0cantaores<\/i>\u00a0of over fifty years old taking part in such contests? Would they attend them if instead of money they would be given books or records? Thus, the big problem with contests is that they aren\u2019t really focused on discovering new, young talent and promoting them. In most cases, they are organized so there are six months of\u00a0cante<\/i>\u00a0for six thousand euros.<\/p>\n
The most important flamenco contest of them all is the one of La Uni\u00f3n and, precisely for this reason, it\u2019s the contest which should start to change. There is a lot of money spent in contests of\u00a0cante flamenco<\/i>, and there are lots of artists in dire straits. If the matter is discovering new talent, which was their original purpose, nowadays there are better ways to do this such as, for example, with the social networks and internet. Not long ago I uploaded a video of a 12-year-old kid singing\u00a0por seguiriya<\/i>, which I had recorded on my own smartphone, and after two days it had been seen by over thirty thousand people.<\/p>\n
I say it again: I have a new idea for a flamenco contest and I\u2019d like to make it happen. How much should we bet that none of the contests\u2019 organizers aren\u2019t interested at all?<\/p>\n
Translated by P. Young<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once again, I want to speak about the need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-archivo"],"yoast_head":"\n