MONTEVERDE – Picking a line of bass notes with his thumb and bright flutters of high notes on the three bottom strings with the other fingers of his right hand, Felipe Carvajal commenced a concert Friday night of flamenco in this tiny Costa Rican town in a mountainous cloud forest.
The 20-year-old guitarist's left-hand fingers sprawled and scattered across the neck of the instrument like a startled daddy longlegs.
Intermittently, a voice came from another man, only seven years older than Carvajal, seated beside the guitarist on a wooden box drum, or cajón, saying “ olé ” – the age-old call invoked by gypsies of southern Spain who spawned the genre.
Sitting on and playing his cajón, Yamil Jaikel was dressed just as Carvajal in a black button-down, black slacks, black shoes and had his long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. The two boldly reached for Andalusian musical purity.
This was not a smoky Spanish tavern with wine stained tables, but rather an outdoor amphitheater in Monteverde, in green wilderness of the country's north-central region. And singer Elena Zelaya, who for the next song took to the stage along with two other musicians and a dancer, did not sing as though she'd just smoked two packs of filter-less cigarettes as so many of flamenco's most celebrated cantaores do. New to the genre, she later admitted, Zelaya's alto voice had been sweetened by Latin traditions from closer ashore.
It took some imagination on the part of the audience – a mix of visitors and locals at the concert in the second weekend of the Monteverde Music Fest.
But once Aida Vargas, the band's dancer, or bailaora, arose and began to stomp her feet, throw her arms and spin aggressively, and Jaikel and another percussionist, David Solano, worked up a rhythm frenzy on their box drums, and Zelaya's voice achieved an almost Middle Eastern-sounding cadence, the Costa Rican band Soloflamenco put things in perspective.
Was it flamenco a la Tico? The San José-born band members would like to think not. |
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