Customer Reviews

Zyryab

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have listened to Paco for years, and still feel I am learning about his brilliance. As a choreographer, I have long been fascinated with the challenge of choreographing the title track, and now, as artistic director of Dance Romanesque, a Bay Area modern dance company, I am well underway with it...I am approaching Zyryab not as a flamenco piece, but as a truly classical piece of music which transcends the flamenco movement vocabulary (great though it is)- Zyryab is intense, lyrical and jazzy, and these are the qualities I hope will come out in my finished dance. Paco's work has also led me back to Al Di Meola, another guitar genius whom I will "tackle" choreographically later this year, probably a cut from one of his compilation albums featuring his work with Chick Corea, Paco and John Mac, among others. As a dance artist who takes pride in selecting the best music (I have recently worked with music by Chopin and Schubert among others), I am thrilled that there are great contemporary geniuses like Paco and Al D. out there who combine soul and technical virtuosity in such great proportions, the perfect antidote to a "modern classical" world dominated by Glass and his watered down ilk.

Thousand words could be written about flamenco, dance, music and song. To me a few words are sufficient. Gypsies are free, were meant to be free, they are proud to be free. That shows in their music, in their singing, in their dance. Zyryab is a fitting homage to an inspired man of yesterday that first had the idea to add a sixth string to an instrument that had traveled from as far back as India, possibly even China, Mongolia and Manchuria, from the ends of the world to South Spain, way back in the 13th century. The rest is history: Hendrix, Clapton, Segovia, Dylan, Paco. The title track is a masterpiece of composition, taste, ingenuity, flawless execution, arrangement, syncopation, melody, in this reviewer opinion, a par to any major composer's work: Debussy, Mahler, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven. Paco playing alone during major solo's shows music, melody, harmony, technical supremacy of the guitar as an instrument by itself as the most complex, most sophisticated, more so than piano or violin, ever. All of this made by a people that were once and during a large period of history shot on sight, persecuted, murdered, alienated. Their desire to be free prevailed. The result is music, divine music. The Almonte track has a little arrangenment of singers, flute, violins, an inspired theme that easily surpasses Carl Orf's Carmina Burana or Saint-Saens Aquarius in grace and beauty: magical duendes speaking, loving, making music, dancing and singing, down a road full of heart. Just to show what the desire to be free can do. Wish they played it forever...

I especially like the brief singing of Potito on this cd. I wish paco would have let him sing more. T Martínez-Medley

Matters of taste.... The "deeply disappointed" fan from Ohio finds no merit in this album, and even calls the cut "Zyryab" "elevator music." (I'd like to watch the reaction of the riders if they ever played "Zyryab" in an elevator - way, way too intense to be called "elevator music.") The first cut, "Soniquete" (a word difficult to translate - "a large, pleasing musical sound" does not convey the real meaning), a buleria, is, from a guitarist's perspective, worth the price of the album. It is one of the most inventive, richly textured and intricate buleria's ever recorded - a masterpiece of creativity.

The reviewer from California should immediately snub out whatever it is he/she's smoking before it causes permanent brain damage. This is an excellent album, but let's not go over the top about Gypsies. They're not all "free." They're not the exclusive source of Flamenco, nor did they invent it. And Paco is not Gypsy. As to the album's namesake: "Zyryab" was the nickname of a legendary court musician (full name: Abu 'l-Hassan Ali ibn Nafi). He lived in the first half of the ninth century, not the thirteenth. And he was reputed to have added a fifth string to the oud ("al oud," from which we derive the word "lute"), not a sixth. However, no one knows for sure as the true historical record is sketchy, especially since the first hard records we have about Zyryab were written around 1600 by an author (al-Maqarri) who reputedly quoted verbatim from another historian (Ibn Hayyan) whose works have long since been lost, and which in any event would have been written well over a century after the death of Zyryab. In any event, Zyryab was reputed to have been a multi-talented genius, not only as a genius of musical innovation, but also, amongst other things, as the inventor of the concept that "well bred" people should change their fashions four times a year with the seasons, and that meals should be served in courses rather than all at once - literally decreeing "soup to nuts." He died around 850 c.e. in Cordoba, Spain ("al Qurtuba, al Andalus"), and Paco's album is a tribute by a Spanish musical genius of the twentieth century to a Spanish (albeit adopted - he was from Baghdad) genius of the ninth.

If anything on this album is elevator music then I'm never taking the stairs again. But, seriously, the venue I usher at during the summer has a smooth jazz festival every year, so I know what real elevator music sounds like. This isn't it.

Beautiful, impassioned, inspired.

Just trust your own lugholes, punters.

(No need to intellectualize this stuff to death.)

If we ignore the early pot-boilers from when Lucía was a teenager, then with every album up to this point he moved forward. Here, however, he seems to be at a relative loss. Perhaps he was merely pausing and taking stock, but the unity of Siroco is missing from this recording.

The starkness of the former is again found in the opening Bulería, and the Taranta, which are the two best tracks. After this, however, the album goes downhill. "Chick" is pleasant enough (although nothing to do with Flamenco). The pyrotechnics of the much-heralded duet with Manolo Sanlúcar, "Compadres", can't conceal the fact that it doesn't have much to say. The drums and flute on the title track merely add increased employment among musicians.

Lucía knows Flamenco inside and out, and thus is able to take elements from other kinds of music and fit them into it with good taste. Unfortunately, he simply hasn't the vocabulary to produce jazz of comparable quality; and while I have certainly heard a lot worse, it is sad to hear one of the World's greatest musicians sounding like a second-rate Baden Powell, as he does on "Playa del Carmen"; "Canción de Amor" is just elevator music, a depressing low point in the artist's recording career.

The information provided is not so much minimal as nonexistent, devoid of even the usual expostulations from Felix Grande. We are left to deduce what we can about the other musicians from the composer credits, and Lucía's expressions of thanks.

Despite moments of great beauty, this album is a mess: not a concept, but a disjointed collection of odds and ends.

The total time is 42'20".

This album is a deep disappointment. On 'Siroco', Paco had pushed the boundaries of Flamenco yet kept its roots. This album, in contrast, sounds like an uninspired rehash. Even the Bulerias 'Compadres' - with Manolo Sanlucar - generates no excitement at all. (Compare this to any Bulerias by Cameron with Paco and Tomatito playing.) The track Zyryab just passes me by - elevator music. Skip this, get Siroco instead.

There is much better music around.

As largely exemplified by the comments below by the user from New Orleans, music - or whatever - that inpires, generates and promotes such a deluge of condescending, derogatory and hateful remarks towards others is clearly not worth your while.

You will do much better spending your time and money elsewhere.