Duende

A Journey In Search Of Flamenco

Jason Webster

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Paperback

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English

Black Swan
01 June 2004

Folk & traditional music; Travel & holiday; Travel writing

Part travelogue, part picaresque adventures of a young man, DUENDE takes the reader to the emotional heart of Spain.

Having pursued a conventional enough path through school and university, Jason Webster was all set to enter the world of academe as a profession. But when his aloof Florentine girlfriend of some years dumped him unceremoniously, he found himself at a crossroads. Abandoning the world of libraries and the future he had always imagined for himself, he headed off instead for Spain in search of duende, the intense emotional state - part ecstasy, part desperation - so intrinsic to flamenco.

Duende is an account of his years spent in Spain feeding his obsessive interest in flamenco- he subjects himself to the tyranny of his guitar teacher, practising for hours on end until his fingers bleed; he becomes involved in a passionate affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer (and older woman) married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee Alicante in fear of his life; in Madrid, he falls in with Gypsies and meets the imperious Jesos. Joining their dislocated, cocaine-fuelled world, stealing cars by night and sleeping away the days in tawdry rooms, he finds himself spiralling self-destructively downwards. It is only when he arrives in Granada bruised and battered, after two years total immersion in the flamenco lifestyle that he is able to put his obsession into context.

In the tradition of Laurie Lee's classic As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, Duende charts a young man's emotional coming of age and offers real insight into the passionate essence of flamenco.

By: Jason Webster
Imprint: Black Swan
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 242g
ISBN: 9780552999977
ISBN 10: 0552999970
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 01 June 2004
Recommended Age: From 0 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Jason Webster was born in San Francisco in 1970 and grew up in England and Germany. After living for several years in Italy and Egypt, he went to Spain where he learnt flamenco guitar. He currently lives in Oxfordshire and Valencia. Duende is his first book.

Reviews for Duende: A Journey In Search Of Flamenco

The autobiography-as-travelogue that is also a rite of passage is a form which worked brilliantly for Laurie Lee and Bruce Chatwin - both novelists as well as seekers after the truth-behind-the-truth. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new star of the genre: Jason Webster * Daily Mail * His descriptions of troubled modern day Spain are mesmerising, but the greater curiosity is in seeing just how much trouble the confused innocent can create for himself before finding out whom he might really be * Daily Express * Wonderfully told, with enough detail about flamenco to educate the curious, and enough drama and characters to fill a novel, Webster may not have turned out to be a guitar maestro, but his journey is recounted like a master * Wanderlust * Duende is an intensely personal portrait of a country in the throes of modernisation, whose spirit still defies definition * Observer * One of the best books ever written about Spain * Literary Review *