Roger,
What a wonderful account! Thank you - it's made my day.
Cheers
Simon

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From: study of popular / folk / traditional ballads on behalf of Wright, Roger
Sent: Thu 20/09/2007 10:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Improvised Iberian Folk Music



Oh, the cognac helped. It was a cold wet day in December 1976, during an International Conference on the History of Andalucía; this conference was (perhaps inadvisably) held at several different Universities in sequence, and the final day involved moving over a thousand participants from the Málaga area to Granada. Some 45 of us (Spanish postgraduates and 4 British Hispanists) were waiting in a hotel foyer from 8.30 for the coach we had been promised, after having had almost no breakfast. It didn't come. Angry chaos. One moustached student took one of the girl conference assistants hostage, to be exchanged for a coach. One of the organizers came round about 12.00 to tell us that there was no coach left for us. Fortunately, at that moment the coach arrived. More chaos. Eventually we set off, without any lunch. Rain turned to sleet. At Loja, about a quarter of the way, we couldn't stand this any more, and got the coachdriver to stop by a bar so we could get said cognac and newspaper (but almost no food). I think it was the sheer light-headedness and empty-stomachedness that led to the fun of the improvised ballads. Long before we approached Granada it had begun to snow; by evening there were nine inches of snow in the streets, and a city-wide powercut. We had to walk the final mile through the snow to the University, where the closing lecture was held by beautiful candlelight. Sfter that, a half-mile walk in the snow to the excellent closing banquet (only about 30 of us made it). What a wonderful day altogether, but the ballad improvisations were probably the highlight. (I discovered later that the story among the British Hispanists in general was that Derek Lomax and I had hijacked a bus.) It was tempting to invent a ballad on the day myself, and it's a shame that I didn't  -  RW