El Cid
I've always resisted the idea of needing to know where you're from in order to know who you are. It is interesting, but it seems like people misuse their heritage, ethnic or genetic, or "race", or class, or ancestors, or education, or experience to define themselves.
On the other hand, there are some things out there in the world that reaches down deep into us. There are foods, there are languages, there is music, that touch us far deeper than makes sense, far deeper than just preference.
On the other hand, tango music, and flamenco music, really touch me. Years ago there was a supper club in East Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd, that is still there. Well, the building is still there.
The place is El Cid. In the 70s it was exclusively a flamenco performance place. You would find there various people of various skill levels that would perform, and each of them drew me in. And there's something about the hand clapping rhythms that goes along with flamenco music, that doesn't directly correspond to the music, that really moves me.
I should say, this music is gypsy music from the land of the Basque. There is some Basque DNA running through me. Maybe Romani as well. An argument can be made…….
At El Cid there were attractive women dancing, and guys with slick hair and tight pants who looked the part.
However, at El Cid there were two astonishing performers. Two who were beyond what can be described here. For me, if they were there that night, I’d go, and stay until they were no longer dancing. One was La Lupe, a plump plain looking woman, I would say probably in her 50s or 60s. You wouldn’t look at her twice out in the world. But when she danced… but when danced, but when she sang, she was so surprising, so amazing, so talented, so expert, so sexy. She could grab your heart and make you cry. I won't waste our time here trying to describe her.
I can’t.
Then there was another performer who was called El Gato. He was a small, frail man, in his 30s I would guess, a very slender body, and a proportionally large head. They called them El Gato because his eyes were shaped like cat's eyes. He was an intense dancer, and it made no sense, but when he danced, he became beautiful.
Every time, for his last dance, he would dance the flamenco, and then with the musicians playing, and with the hand clappers clapping, he would slowly go to the edge of the stage and he would tap his heels, very slowly, and then a little faster, and then a little faster, and eventually so fast that you could not count how many times a second his heels touched the floor. The ear couldn't hear the intervals between each tap. His body was drenched in sweat. Time stopped, I have no idea for how long he did this, how long this went on. Time stretched. Time was meaningless. His energy or perhaps it was our energy would make the room shine, the room would glow. The temperature of the room got hot. The crowd would draw closer.
Then he would stop.
And as a dog would, but in a single move, he would shake the sweat off of his face, off his body. It would spray the pressed audience who were standing at the stage. The only word I can use to describe the reaction, to describe the intensity of the experience, is, orgasmic.
We would all scream and applaud, and the
entire audience would worship this man.