¡Olé!

Well, for those who have been following my progress:  I just returned from Duke and the class went extremely well.  I had the undivided attention of 15 undergraduates, a decent classroom and a lot of interesting material to share.  The only glitch, predictably, was with the sound system.  The remote refused to operate, even when we inserted a fresh battery.  I never did figure out why it wasn't working and, since I had a class to teach, their normal instructor was sound technician for the duration of the class.  With just a few minor screw-ups, we got through 80 minutes and excerpts of 17 songs.

I think the students enjoyed the class:  no one fell asleep or seemed to be text messaging while I was lecturing!   No visible yawning or audible snoring, either.  (Hey, I used to teach at a state school and I had star athletes (which equals trouble if you're a prof).)  They did their best to listen to the crazy stuff I was throwing at them helter skelter:  flamenco mixed with rap, funk, rock, blues, jazz, salsa, bolero, Afro-pop, Gypsy rumba--a whole grab bag of diverse stuff.  We ran short on time, so I trimmed a bit, but still managed to hit all of the main points with what I did play for them.

Their prof kept saying, as she walked me out, how organized my lecture was and asked me how I did it.  All I could say was that this was the way I lectured and that the organization took shape quite naturally when I put the lecture together.  That is the way I have always lectured.  I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't any time for much of a discussion after the first 10 minutes, but it was billed as a lecture and not as a seminar, and we had some material to cover that isn't in any book they could read in English, so I had to push onwards despite wanting to stop and talk about what we were hearing.  Everything was new to the students, so there wouldn't have been that much to talk about at this stage, anyway.  Only after they master traditional flamenco and then this fusion stuff could we have had a meaningful dialog, anyway.

I told the prof I would love to lecture for her class again in the future, if she could use me; or, I would be happy to come back some other semester and offer the same lecture again.  We'll have to see, she may take me up on this.

I had a lot of fun, I think the students learned something and had a good time in the class, and I know the prof learned a lot (since she knows traditional flamenco at least as well as I do and had a context to place the fusion into).

I will leave you with one of the groups I played this afternoon, Son de la Frontera.  (That funny-looking-funny-sounding "guitar" the guy is playing is a Cuban trés.)  Straight up Gypsy-style bulerías from Morón de la Frontera--with a wicked twist!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4UOHKcq2es