In honor of the New Year, and to combat the winter blues, Escuela Flamenca (Formerly Escuela de Ritmo Flamenco) has decided to recount our fave Flamenco moments of 2016. Yes, yes, we realize that most business organizations do this during the month of December but we have never been the typical organization aaaaand being that our admin is a staff of one…we figure to heck with it…let’s shout out the good

Without further ado, we present the first installment of our faves

Tu Ven A Mi Cover

Tu Ven a Mi–Song by La Tana and Paco de Lucia Album 2006

It was a warm March day —the day of my son Miguel’s birthday & party. The kids were all playing in my sister’s front yard, my sister was giving their family dog, Philo, his bath. Luis, Mateo, and I were sitting around on the porch sipping on icy drinks.

 

Mateo begins to play a tune on his guitar, Luis begins to hum along and then he starts in on the Tu Ven a Mi song-singing it, in his way, to the chords Mateo is playing. What every seasoned Flamenco knows is that Flamenco art is not about copying someone else to the ‘T’. Flamenco is about taking something that you like of the music/dance and adding your own individuality to it ‘a tu manera’ as they say. All of this while obeying the rules of sentiment and compas (rhythm). So Luis is humming along, and I decide to chime in, adding the letras (verses) in my way. And we are having so much fun that the afternoon quickly turns to evening..

where more friends arrive to celebrate Miguel’s birthday. Guitarist, Joel along with his beautiful wife, Bobbi with little Vinnie arrive. We have to show them this fun new way of playing an old favorite that Shimi Tree has covered in the past. It is not long before Joel is jamming along with us, Bobbi is singing the chorus and little Vinnie is twirling away and clapping her hands.

I think to myself—it won’t be perfect, but tomorrow, I’m going to record this before we forget …and so we did….

Tu Ven a Mi is more than a love song-it is a LOVE ANTHEM. We sang that anthem and carried it as our banner all of 2016. We even got to sing it with Ali de La Tota, (Luis’ brother) and guest guitarist William ‘Guillermo’ Burgess at our Boise Spanish Heritage performance. Here is a recording from that show.

Escuela Flamenca provides classes through Boise City Parks and Recs every Wednesday 6:30pm at Whitney Community Center Please follow this link for more info/registration The class is built so that anyone can jump in and join Flamenco dance anytime–come dance with us today!

SAVE THE DATE March 4th Shimi Tree Performance in Boise ID at Shangri La