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Day in the life of a flamenco guitar student in Spain(Monday May 6, 2002--Granada) Many of you know guitarist Ramin el Persa. I met him in 1995 when he was the soundman for one of my shows. Afterwards, we struck up a conversation about flamenco guitar and quickly became friends. We maintained contact when he moved away to California. When he came back to the DC area, I helped him find a guitar teacher and recommended some dance classes where he could start learning dance accompaniment firsthand. He has become a regular performer in the DC area. Recently, he quit his job to spend a few months in Spain. He responded to one of my questions via email...Miguelito: You quit your job and now you're Spain to study flamenco for a few months. That's a big step for someone coming from a 9-to-5 world. What are your plans? I also needed some serious "alone time" with my guitar. I am putting in 3-4 hours of concentrated practice and a few hours here and there just toying with the guitar, each day. I never had this chance when I was in the States, since I was working ALL the time, including the weekends. I was always facing lack of time and work frustration. So I figured where else but Granada. Since Flamenco was born here, plus a lot of famous guitarists, Flamenco and classical, come from here. The Habichuela family is an example as you already know. I don't think I made a huge sacrifice. I think it was planned well. I worked hard and put aside enough savings to last me a few months. I am lucky enough to have studied something so marketable, namely computer science. So I shouldn't have a hard time finding a job when I come back. (In fact, I just got a job offer from a friend of mine in Amsterdam who thinks I would love living in Europe. :) That's it man. To give you a brief of what I do here daily, I attend the language school each day from 9:30-1:30, then I go home and review what I learned until like 2:30, then I grab a bite to eat, then it's guitar time. I play from around 3:30 to 8:00 or so, then a quick snack, then I either go out or just play more guitar while watching a Flamenco program on TV which is pretty much every night. And sometimes before I sleep, I review a little more spanish. That's my "scheduled" plan. It changes once in a while, like those days that I take guitar lessons, which is couple of days a week And on the weekends, I walk up to Alhambra since it's so beautiful. I hope this gives a good idea.
My thanks to Ramin for taking time out of his busy schedule to write. He has more pictures available at his website. If you want to write to Ramin, his email is rad_ramin@yahoo.com |
Ramin:
Thanks for your interest. I guess there is really nothing much to it.
I realized that Flamenco is a big part of my life and I have no choice
but to delve into it. To do that, I needed to learn Spanish, to be able
to communicate with the Flamencos that come from Spain and learn from
them, and also to be able to understand the letras, although some of
them are so difficult to understand that even the Spaniards have a hard
time.