Jason Webster

This is the second of the two books that I won recently in a competition on the bbc.co.uk/bristol web site. This is the first competition win I've had in a long time but I was pleased. Take a look at the BBC Bristol page to see what I had to do!

Several reviewers of this book classify it as a travelogue: I could find no real evidence for that claim! Except of course that the author was born in the USA, brought up and studied in the UK and then set this book in Spain. Well, there's travelling aplenty there!

Nevertheless this is an enjoyable and easily readable book written by someone who lives with writing in his soul. I assume that's the case since Webster's story unfolds easily from his word processor.

Webster fell in love with Flamenco and decided that he needed to find himself and Flamenco at the same time. Duende is an all encompassing word in Spanish that is the Flamenco equivalent of Archimedes' eureka!

We are treated to several years of life and travail in Spain by a man who has set himself the target of being a foreigner who thinks he wants to know and can succeed at the life and language of Flamenco. He set out optimistically and then follows a path that he surely would not have followed had he been warned in advance of its outcome.

Webster speaks Spanish and that clearly helped! At the start of his saga Webster did not, however, play the guitar: any guitar, let alone Flamenco.

The guitar teacher that Webster meets up with and works with is a fascination: read the description of his living quarters and the decor: a psychologist's field day here! We are presented with a picture of a teacher for whom the best is just the beginning of what can be achieved by his students. That means Webster is humiliated as he follows the path to duende. There is also the story of passion, obsession and humiliation in the world of Flamenco dancing in this book and Webster relates the story of the young girl hoping to become a great Flamenco dancer in rather a dark way: perhaps confirming as much about his own ordeal as he does about the girl.

There is passion of a different kind in the story too: Lola! This part of the story unfolds in rather a curious way. Rather than writing about sex, steamy nights, hidden kisses on the lips of the married woman, we are treated to an affair that never seems to have got off the ground. Then there is a hint of sex. Then there is sex but it feels as if the sex were stolen in a rare moment when the reality could well be that they were at it like rabbits! Nevertheless, Webster presents himself as the obsessive being led by the nose by this relationship. The affair ends in rather an abrupt way and Webster moves on, both figuratively and physically: from Alicante to Madrid.

Alicante represented stolen love and learning to play the guitar. Madrid represented learning Flamenco and dealing with a fascinating Gypsy ensemble!

Webster falls in with a Flamenco troupe in Madrid that has a leader, gigs that take them well into the wee small hours and Jesus: a car thieving junkie whom Webster can't resist. It's in this part of the book that Webster's life became rich as he works with the Gypsy troupe and gets closer than ever to duende. He always feels an outsider, of course, as the troupe has been together for ages before Webster turns up. They are all Gypsies yet Webster isn't even Spanish. Then there is Jesus: at first Webster fears this man who dismisses him, avoids all eye contact with him but who then takes him under his wing. You need to read about this partnership: it's unpredictable and unfathomable, encompassing as it does drugs, expensive cars and death. Lola, too, is a recurring theme and they meet again: fleetingly and enigmatically

Whilst Webster does take time to discuss some aspects of Spain's inner beauty, there really is no way of classifying this book as a travelogue. Yes it's an account of a journey; but it's a man's journey to duende and not his journey to the hotels, bars and beaches of Andalusia or anywhere else for that matter.

Finally, there is the old lady who turns up out of the blue towards the end of the book and with whom Webster forms an interesting relationship. Assuming that this lady did exist, she could only have existed in the story that Webster has strung together for us. She is as enigmatic as Lola and Jesus and the search for duende. Still, she adds some colour!

Did Webster find duende? Read the book and find out whether it's even possible for him to have found it. What Webster did do was to improve his Spanish and to learn to play the guitar in the Flamenco style: his guitar playing exploits, trials and tribulations are a key feature of the book and anyone picking up a musical instrument with ambitions of finding their own musical rainbow would do well to read Webster's Flamenco story!

© Duncan Williamson

3 April 2004

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2004