The music started: two guitarists beating out more Alboreás. The women took turns to dance in a frenzy, each trying to outdo the other. “Deep Song always sings in the night,” Lorca had written. It was the credo of the flamenco: a rejection of the mundane, the ordinary, the life of the everyday man, embracing, rather, an extreme world – extreme passions, extreme feelings, the extremes of life and death. And it was a way of life I wanted to believe in – its excitement, its danger, the affirmation it gave you that you were different, and alive.
Destined for a sedate and predictable life in academia, Jason Webster was derailed in his early twenties when his first love, an aloof Florentine beauty, dumped him unceremoniously. Loveless and eager for adventure – and determined to fulfill a secret dream -- he left Oxford and headed for Spain, the country that had long captivated his imagination, and set off in search of duende, the intense and mysterious emotional state – part ecstasy, part melancholy – that is the essence of Spain’s signature art form: flamenco.
Duende is Webster’s captivating memoir of the years he spent in Spain pursuing his obsession. Studying flamenco guitar until his fingers bleed, he becomes involved in a passionate yet doomed affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer (and older woman) married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee the coastal city of Alicante in fear for his life. He ends up in Madrid, miserable and lovelorn, but it’s here that he has his first taste of the gritty world of flamenco’s progenitors – the Gypsies whose edgy lives and ferventcommitment to the art of flamenco vividly illustrate the path to duende. Before long he is deeply immersed in a flamenco underworld that combines music and dance with drugs and crime. After two years Webster moves on to Granada where, bruised and battered, he reflects on his discovery of the emotional heart of Spain.
Author Biography: JASON WEBSTER was born near San Francisco and later moved to Europe as a child, living in England and Germany. He eventually ended up in Alexandria, Egypt, and then Spain, where he learned flamenco guitar and where he has been based on and off for the past ten years. He currently lives in Valencia, Spain, with the flamenco dancer Salud.
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As a teenager, Englishman Jason Webster dreamed of the sunny Mediterranean and vowed to make it his home. In his engaging memoir, Webster tells the story of his travels as he moves through the mysterious "half-mad" land of Don Quixote.
A recent graduate of Oxford, Webster refused to resign himself to the monotony of academia. Instead, he heads south, ending up in Spain to begin a search for the country's true essence -- which he believes lies in the explosive passion of one of its oldest traditions, flamenco. Landing in the town of Alicante, Webster experiences "duende," a welling up of emotion that defies explanation.
In pursuit of the elusive duende, Webster struggles to learn guitar and plunges into a disastrous affair. He next heads for Madrid, where he tangles with a band of Gypsies. Drawn into their rough-and-tumble world of music and drugs, Webster feels betrayed and alone, forced to decide what flamenco means to him. Is it a rejection of the ordinary to sample the extremes of life and death, or a simple communion with others? What he finds at last is that the feeling duende evokes may be found in many forms of art -- a song, a dance...even, perhaps, a book. Beware, a reading of this page-turner will have you cruising our music section, looking for flamenco music!
(Spring 2003 Selection)
The New York Times
Jason Webster took a chance on drowning in the culture of his dreams, which is his. In Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco, he's impelled by alarm at the thought of becoming a tame academic and rushes to Spain in search of duende -- the gut-turning, mind-dazzling impact of flamenco, a bit like ''soul'' perhaps and a lot like a visitation from a goblin, which is what duende also means. — Michael Pye
The Washington Post
Webster discovers that the dark appeal of the gypsies he admires is preserved through an insularity that resists not only foreign music but indeed anything non-Spanish, including Webster himself. While his reflections on identity and emotional growth are superficial, the book succeeds as a lively, entertaining and candid celebration of a fascinating community and its famous art form. — Lily Sheehan
Publishers Weekly
In this enjoyable Spanish travel memoir, Webster, a Brit primed for a career in academia, attempts to infiltrate the insular, vivacious world of flamenco. Moving from Italy to Spain, he becomes obsessed with learning the intricacies of flamenco guitar and seeking out the elusive yet passionate feeling of duende, an untranslatable term referring to the feeling that is the essence of flamenco. Beginning in the sleepy Mediterranean city of Alicante, he learns the fundamentals of playing from a brash flamenco guitarist and is accepted into a small group of Andalusian music aficionados. It's not long before he falls in love with a fiery-eyed dancer, but since she's married to the director of a language school where Webster teaches English, the relationship is doomed: it would never endure within the gossip-laden city. So Webster flees to Madrid, where he slips into the marginalized and dangerous gypsy community. There, he befriends two flamenco musicians who offer him a glimpse into the world of duende. "It's about living on the edge... playing until your fingers bleed," one tells him, "taking yourself as far as you can go, and then going one step further." Although the story occasionally hits a flat note, Webster makes up for it by fluidly interlacing his foreigner's perspective with edgy and often perilous cravings to live the life of a genuine flamenco guitarist. Touring with a musical group throughout southern Spain, he learns from the gypsies that duende is an introspective emotion that materializes only when one can let go of frustrations and allow music's rawness to infuse the soul. Webster deserves praise for verbalizing an emotion that most people can only feel or imagine. (On sale Mar. 11) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
At the start of this coming-of-age journal, twentysomething, American-born Webster is recovering from the abrupt and unexpected end of his first serious love affair and anticipating a predictable life in academia. An inner voice, however, steers him away from Oxford University and leads him on a colorful journey of self-discovery in Spain. His obsession is flamenco and its essence, duende, the deeply felt emotional state that mixes love, passion, and melancholy. He immerses himself in Spanish culture, first in Alicante, then Madrid, and finally Granada, and music is his entr e into this world. With a dream of learning flamenco guitar, Webster studies, practices, and eventually performs with local musicians. Along the way, he has a doomed love affair with a married woman and becomes involved with the drugs and criminal elements of the flamenco underworld. Ultimately, his quest is more about identity than flamenco; he writes, "Spain has allowed my emotions to breathe and be expressed." This earnestly written memoir is surprisingly bland despite the intense personal feelings that Webster tries to voice. With few specifics about flamenco music, dance, and culture, his story will appeal mostly to those contemplating an adventurous life change.-Joan Stahl, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
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