Tientos

July 22, 2007 in Alzapúa, Flamenco, Tientos by miguel | 2 comments

Here is another contribution, tientos. I have realised that there are so many other flamenco forms to add to the blog that I should just get started and record them, despite the extremely high interest in technical exercises. In fact more than 80% of the visitors to the site are looking for picado exercises. Maybe I should develop this side of the site a little more. If there is any interest, I can write out, in TAB, the three falsetas played here as well as the the alzapúa for you.

Tientos is a paused, melancholy form of Tangos which first appeared at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries. It is most often heard as an introduction to tangos because it is such a close variant. Usually, this joining together of tangos and its slower form is known as “tientos-tangos”.

Please read the comments below for some more interesting insights into tientos…

 
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  1. Estela Zatania’s avatar

    Estela Zatania on July 22, 2007 at 9:49 pm

    Actually the speed factor is irrelevant. Tientos is that special strum with rubato, as opposed to tangos, which has no rubato. No matter how slowly you play tangos, such as the “tango parao” of Granada, it never begins to sound like tientos. Conversely, no matter how fast you play tientos, it never sounds like tangos.

    “End of the 18th century” is way too far back…tientos only began to be heard about 100 years later, circa 1900.

    Tientos is a form in its own right, and only got stuck onto tangos about 25-30 years ago, with the advent of Camarón. Nevertheless, the cantes are the same, with only very rare exceptions, perhaps one or two styles that are *only* sung to tientos.

    Estela

  2. miguel’s avatar

    miguel on July 22, 2007 at 11:08 pm

    Thanks for your valuable comments. You are right and my misinformation about dates was due to a counting error - my mind must have been somewhere else at the time… After all, the original: “end of the eighteenth and start of the twentieth centuries” leaves a wide margin of error! :)

    Also, your use of the word “rubato” very well describes the feel. Thank you for taking the time to comment, Estela. And feel free, of course, to write in again.

    For Spanish speakers there are some useful links that examine and explain the genealogy of the cante.

    In English, and an incredible source of news and information is Estela’s own site: “de flamenco magazine”.

    Happy surfing!

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Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported