Duende

Around 1929 the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca wrote a lecture on Duende with the title: “Theory and function of the duende”. Duende; a dark and mysterious force which can inspire a singer, an actor, a toreador –but also the work of art itself. Among other qualities duende is characterized by the fact that it cannot be explained or captured... Duende fins its origin in Andalusia, the southern part of Spain, but, as Lorca writes, the arts and their interpreters from other countries are also principally capable of duende. Among other things Lorca wrote: “All through Andalusia, form the rock of Jaén to the shell of Cádiz, people constantly speak of duende and recognize it with unfailing instinct when it appears. “The wonderful Flamenco singer El Lebrijano, creator of the Debla, said: “When I sing with duende nobody can equal me!” The old Gypsy dancer La Malena exclaimed once on hearing Brailowsky plays Bach: “Olé! This has duende! “Yet she was bored by Gluck, Brahms and Darius Milhaud. And Manuel Torre, a man with more culture in his veins than anybody I have known, when listening to Falla playing his own Noturno del Generalife, made this splendid announcement: “All that has dark sounds has duende!” The duende – where is the duende? Through the empty arch comes an air of the mind that blows insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unsuspected accents; an air smelling of a child’s saliva, pounded grass and a medusal veil announcing the constant baptism of newly created things”.