Cayetano, The Gypsy

Chapter 24

Image adapted from:DeFlamenco.com
(Click to enlarge photos)

Cayetano was a flamenco guitar player ....de raza gitana....of gypsy race...who was a good friend of Mr. George Bowden and his family.
Cayetano performed some evenings at The Guitar Centre in Palma and although he wasn't the best of flamenco guitarists, he could be counted on to arrive and perform on time. Tall, slim and with collar-length black hair, he had the strong facial features of his race. With his black eyes and swarthy skin his appearance attracted admiring glances, and when he appeared in his black suit with white shirt open at the neck, his hair slicked down with brilliantine, he looked all the part of a flamenco guitar player....de raza gitana.

He sold bolts of cloth in the market and was married with young children. He was quite poor and often didn't manage to have enough to eat. I remember one time when Cayetano and José Cobos, another flamenco guitarist, were up at the apartment with Mr. G. and Helen after a performance, Cayetano mentioned that he hadn't eaten in two days. Without a hesitation, Helen went to the kitchen and in no time prepared him a meal of hamburger patties, peas and chips. He was very hungry and ate quickly.

George Bowden with one of his guitars

While I was teaching guitar at the Guitar Centre I was for a time also trying out a flamenco guitar
loaned to me by Mr. George Bowden, from his factory in the Pueblo Español. Flamenco models have a lighter construction and thinner body in order to give the brilliant sound needed for flamenco playing, as opposed to the deeper, more mellow sound of the classical guitar.
Mr. G. would sometimes take one of his flamenco guitars to Cayetano and ask him to try it out for sound.

At the Palma Guitar Centre Studio

I never really learned how to play flamenco properly and I believe the rhythms and melodies are instilled as a heritage from early childhood. But I had been practising a few simple versions of Soleares and Bulerias shown me by Bill Lewis when I lived in Vancouver. The music had been arranged by the maestro Bartolomé Calatayud, the beloved Mallorquin guitarist, composer and teacher.

I was very much attracted to the sounds and rhythms of flamenco and when I met Cayetano we agreed that he would give me a few lessons. He came to the makeshift music studio in the guitar centre that I had been using, where an internal door led to the small one room home of Jeremy, the scuba diving instructor.

As I mentioned earlier, Jeremy would sometimes appear in the middle of a lesson with his flippers, tanks and diving gear to disappear into his cubbyhole residence. I enjoyed learning from Cayetano although at that point in time I could barely speak Spanish. I communicated with my own Spanish pupils by hand gestures and the few words I had written down which covered the parts of the guitar and basic instructions.

So I was very pleased when, one day after I had taken a few lessons from Cayetano he got up from his chair and started to dance to my playing. Oh yes that was thrilling, although I was hardly able to keep up with him, he paid me the compliment of affecting that with my attempts at playing Bulerias I could stir his gypsy temperament into dancing.
Dear Cayetano, I hope life has been good to you since then.

Here is an amazing video of a little gypsy girl dancing Bulerías to the sound of many olés and with all the spirit of a grown woman.



And here is another video of Bulerías danced in an authentic setting:



Continue on to Chapter 25......Sopas Mallorquinas

Go back to Chapter 23......A Night in Tagomago

Off To Mallorca

Chapter 18

Girl With Guitar - Richard Emil Miller USA 1926
(click photos to enlarge)

I needed a life change and yearned to visit Europe for the first time, especially after hearing of Bill Lewis' experiences in Mallorca. So after learning from George Bowden that there was an opening for teaching classical guitar in the guitar centre in Palma de Mallorca, on the Spanish Balearic Islands, I decided to save up the plane fare and leave Vancouver. Bill Lewis had talked about The Pueblo Español and the Bowden guitar factory, “Los Guitarreros de Mallorca”, as well as the life style on that Mediterranean island and I was keen to experience it myself.
My daughters would stay for an extended holiday with my parents while I tried out life in a foreign land, calculating whether or not I could survive there, while my husband, by mutual agreement, would be going his separate way.

Alhambra replica in Pueblo Español, Mallorca.

After moving furniture and packing my music library, selling my beautiful guitar and kissing my children goodbye, I left on an Air Canada flight non-stop to Lisbon and on to Palma de Mallorca. Would this be just a holiday or was I on the threshold of a whole new life?

Plaza de La Reina circa 1970

Continue on to Chapter 19.....Eurovision 1968

Go back to Chapter 17......Vancouver Flashback V - Bill Lewis

Memories of Mallorca ~ The Arrival

Chapter 1

As I stepped off the plane in Palma de Mallorca the sun was blinding and the air was hot . My tired eyes had never seen such intense sunlight and although I'd had no sleep for well over twenty-four hours my excitement at not only being on an airplane for the first time but also arriving in Europe kept me in a state of nervous anticipation.

The year was 1968 and Spain was a sleepy old country which seemed to have forgotten it was in the twentieth century. General Francisco Franco was the head of state and mass tourism into the country had only recently begun. A liter of wine could be bought for just two pesetas, which was then the national currency, and a long baguette or barra of bread cost only a few centimos which were small thin coins made of aluminum.

I had come to Mallorca at the invitation of Canadian friends whose relatives had been established there since before the Spanish civil war. Needing a change in my life at that moment, I had accepted an offer to leave Vancouver and teach classical guitar at a music centre in Palma. It seemed to be an intervention of destiny that the position was open just at a time when I had been dreaming of being able to study with a Spanish maestro of classical guitar, but never could I have imagined that this might have become a reality.

photo from the Mallorca Daily Bulletin

Coming out into the arrival hall of the airport I clutched my one little suitcase. It was made of pink striped plastic and must have been a bargain basement purchase. It contained several cotton dresses that I'd sewn before leaving Vancouver. I'd heard that it was very hot in Spain and that cotton was the best material to wear. One dress was yellow, sleeveless and went with a yellow plastic bracelet I bought to match, and the other was a black and white printed cotton, which I made using the same pattern as the yellow one. I bought a white plastic bracelet to go with that one. I didn't have much money at all and had sold most everything I owned, even my beautiful Spanish-made guitar, to pay for my plane ticket.

Coming toward me was my good friend and guitar mentor, Mr. G. who had invited me to stay with his family. He owned a little guitar factory in Palma and had a daughter who was about to marry a Spanish man. Although she was only a couple of years younger, I was to be her chaperone over the next weeks until her wedding. It was frowned on for her to be alone with her fiancee in those days, and I was to accompany her on a trip to Barcelona to make wedding arrangements with his parents.

Mr. G. greeted me like the old friend he was and after asking me how I had enjoyed the trip he took my suitcase and guided me out of the arrivals hall once again into that bright sunlight that tingled the skin on my arms and reminded me that I was going to be experiencing many other new sensations in the next weeks.

We piled into Mr. G's car, which was a Citroën deux chevaux, a vehicle with just two horsepower and a gearshift on the dashboard which had to be pushed in and pulled out in order to change gears. The car looked as though it were made of tin, the engine whirred like a lawnmower and the soft suspension gave one the feeling of riding in a large baby pram. And so we rocked and bounced our way out of the airport and down the highway on our way to Palma city.

Palma de Mallorca - The Borne

Continue on to Chapter 2.......Palma de Mallorca