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Alegrias Flamenco Guitar

The structure of the Alegrias can change depending on whether you’re playing as a solo guitarist, accompanying a singer, or accompanying a dancer.

For the most part it’s a series of compás and falsetas. However, within this basic structure there’s some other material that act as a cue for dancers. Specifically, the llamada, silencio, and escobilla.

Letras

When accompanying a singer, the alegrias has between one and four letras, or sung verses. Each of these letras may have three or four 8-syllable lines.

The subject matter of the songs are often about sailors. This makes sense because Cadíz is a coastal city.

Note that guitarists will sometimes perform a letras section even without a singer.

Llamadas

Llamadas are dramatic, single compás sections that you’ll encounter in several flamenco forms. When accompanying a dancer, the main role of the alegrais llamada is to indicate a transition between sections. For instance, you might play a llamada to introduce or conclude a flaseta.

These are typically loud and intense phrases so that the dancer has a clear cue of what’s coming next.

Although most people associate the Alegrias with dancing, this is also one of the popualr forms to accompany a singer.

Escobilla

The Alegría includes two sections for the dancer, one of which is the escobilla. The escobilla is a section when the dancer shows off their fancy footwork. This two compás phrase includes a virtuosic guitar solo and gradual increase in rhythm.

Silencio

A second section that accompanies the dancer is the silencio. The silencio is a slow and dramatic section that’s usually played in the parallel minor key. For instance, if you were originally in the key A major, then the silencio would be played in the key A minor.

Because this section is more of a guitar solo, guitarists can take some liberty with the rhythm. Therefore, this section can be played either with a strict compás rhythm, or more freely with rubato. The silencio usually lasts for six compáses cycles.

Runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front. What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren’t surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi. In January 2020, NASA placed the Spitzer Space Telescope in safe mode, ending its 16 successful years of exploring the cosmos.

Pablo Rodríguez Lozada (January 4, 1923 – February 28, 1973), better known as Tito Rodríguez, was a Puerto Rican singer and bandleader. He started his career singing under the tutelage of his brother, Johnny Rodríguez. In the 1940s, both moved to New York, where Tito worked as a percussionist in several popular rhumba ensembles, before directing his own group to great success during the 1950s. His most prolific years coincided with the peak of the mambo and cha-cha-cha dance craze. He also recorded boleros, sones, guarachas and pachangas.

Rodríguez is known by many fans as “El Inolvidable” (The Unforgettable One), a moniker based on his most popular song, a bolero written by Cuban composer Julio Gutiérrez.

Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flutist. In addition to his extensive solo work, Wess is remembered for his time in Count Basie‘s band from the early 1950s into the 1960s. Critic Scott Yanow described him as one of the premier proteges of Lester Young, and a leading jazz flutist of his era—using the latter instrument to bring new colors to Basie’s music.

Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, the son of a principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz on moving to Washington, D.C., and by nineteen was working with big bands.

James Carter (born January 3, 1969) is an American jazz musician widely recognized for his technical virtuosity on saxophones and a variety of woodwinds. He is the cousin of noted jazz violinist Regina Carter.

Carter was born in Detroit, Michigan, and learned to play under the tutelage of Donald Washington, becoming a member of his youth jazz ensemble Bird-Trane-Sco-NOW!! As a young man, Carter attended Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, becoming the youngest faculty member at the camp. He first toured Scandinavia with the International Jazz Band in 1985 at the age of 16.

John Jenkins (January 3, 1931 – July 12, 1993) was an American jazz saxophonist.

Born in Chicago, Jenkins initially studied clarinet in high school but switched to saxophone after six months on the instrument. He played in jam sessions led by Joe Segal at Roosevelt College from 1949 to 1956. He played with Art Farmer in 1955 and led his own group in Chicago later that year. In 1957, he played with Charles Mingus and recorded two albums as a leader. He played as a sideman with Johnny Griffin, Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Paul Quinichette, Clifford Jordan, Sahib Shihab, and Wilbur Ware in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but essentially dropped out of music after 1962, aside from a few dates with Gloria Coleman.

After leaving the jazz world he worked as a messenger in New York and dabbled in jewelry; he sold brass objects at street fairs in the 1970s. After 1983, he began practicing again and playing live on street corners; shortly before he died he played with Clifford Jordan.

Herbert Horatio Nichols (January 3, 1919 – April 12, 1963) was an American jazz pianist and composer who wrote the jazz standard “Lady Sings the Blues“. Obscure during his lifetime, he is now highly regarded by many musicians and critics.

He was born in San Juan Hill, Manhattan, New York, United States, to parents from St. Kitts and Trinidad, and grew up in Harlem.  During much of his career, he took work as a Dixieland musician while also pursuing the more adventurous kind of jazz he preferred. He is best known today for program music that combines bop, Dixieland, and music from the Caribbean with harmonies from Erik Satie and Béla Bartók.

His first known work as a musician was with the Royal Barons in 1937, but he did not find performing at Minton’s Playhouse a few years later a very happy experience, as the competitive environment did not suit him. However, he did become friends with pianist Thelonious Monk.

Nichols was drafted into the Army in 1941. After the war, he worked in various settings, beginning to achieve some recognition when Mary Lou Williams recorded some of his songs in 1952. From about 1947, he persisted in trying to persuade Alfred Lion at Blue Note Records to sign him up. He finally recorded some of his compositions for Blue Note in 1955 and 1956, some of which were not issued until the 1980s. His tune “Serenade” had lyrics added, and as “Lady Sings the Blues” became identified with Billie Holiday. In 1957, he recorded his last album as leader for Bethlehem Records.

Nichols died of leukemia in New York City at the age of 44.

Troy Andrews (born January 2, 1986), also known by the stage name Trombone Shorty, is an American musician from New Orleans, Louisiana. He has worked with some of the biggest names in rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip hop. Andrews is the younger brother of trumpeter and bandleader James Andrews III and the grandson of singer and songwriter Jessie Hill. Andrews began playing trombone at age four, and since 2009 has toured with his own band, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.

Andrews was born to James Andrews Jr. and Lois Andrews in New Orleans and grew up in the culturally vibrant Tremé neighborhood, steeped in New Orleans jazz, R&B and music-related traditions such as second line parades. Andrews’ family have deep roots in the music scene of New Orleans – his grandfather was musician Jessie Hill, his great-uncle Walter “Papoose” Nelson played with Fats Domino, and Andrews’ mother Lois Nelson Andrews was a regular grand marshal of jazz funerals and second-line parades in New Orleans, where she routinely encouraged young musicians and was known as the “Mother of Music” and “Queen of the Tremé”. Andrews’ father James Andrews Jr., a member of the Bayou Steppers Social Aid & Pleasure Club, would frequently invite musician friends to visit their home. Other musical family members include his brother James Andrews III and cousins Glen David Andrews and the late Travis “Trumpet Black” Hill.

Hisao Oma “Isao” Suzuki (鈴木 勲, Suzuki Isao, 2 January 1933 – 8 March 2022) was a Japanese jazz double-bassist.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Suzuki learned to play bass on United States military bases, and played early in his career with Shotaro Moriyasu, Hidehiko Matsumoto, and Sadao Watanabe. He led his own ensemble in Tokyo from 1965–1969, also performing with Hampton Hawes in 1968. He moved to New York City from 1969 to 1971, playing with Ron Carter, Paul Desmond, Ella Fitzgerald, Jim Hall, Wynton Kelly, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Bobby Timmons.

Frank L. Marocco (January 2, 1931 – March 3, 2012) was an American piano-accordionist, arranger and composer. He was recognized as one of the most recorded accordionists in the world.

Born in Joliet, Illinois Frank Marocco grew up in Waukegan, near Chicago. At the age of seven years, his parents enrolled him in a six-week beginner class for learning to play the accordion.

Nick Fatool (January 2, 1915 – September 26, 2000) was an American jazz drummer. He was born in Millbury, Massachusetts, United States. Fatool first played professionally in Providence, Rhode Island, which he followed with time in Joe Haymes‘s band in 1937 and Don Beston‘s in Dallas soon after. In 1939, he played with Bobby Hackett briefly, and then became a member of the Benny GoodmanOrchestra. He became one of the most visible drummers of the 1940s, playing with Artie Shaw (1940–41), Alvino Rey (1942–43), Claude Thornhill, Les Brown, and Jan Savitt. In 1943, he moved to Los Angeles and took work as a session musician, recording profusely. Credits include Harry James, Erroll Garner (1946), Louis Armstrong (1949, 1951), Jess Stacy, Tommy Dorsey, Matty Matlock, John Scott Trotter and Glen Gray. He began an association with Bob Crosby, playing with him regularly between 1949 and 1951 and occasionally with Crosby’s Bobcats into the 1970s.