“All through Andalusia, from the rock of Jaén to the snail’s-shell of Cadiz, people constantly talk about the duende and recognise it wherever it appears with a fine instinct. That wonderful singer El Lebrijano, creator of the Debla, said: ‘On days when I sing with duende no one can touch me.’ the old Gypsy dancer La Malena once heard Brailowsky play a fragment of Bach, and exclaimed: ‘Olé! That has duende!’ but was bored by Gluck, Brahms and Milhaud. And Manuel Torre, a man who had more culture in his veins than anyone I’ve known, on hearing Falla play his own Nocturno del Generalife spoke this splendid sentence: ‘All that has dark sounds has duende.’ And there’s no deeper truth than that.
Those dark sounds are the mystery, the roots that cling to the mire that we all know, that we all ignore, but from which comes the very substance of art. ‘Dark sounds’ said the man of the Spanish people, agreeing with Goethe, who in speaking of Paganini hit on a definition of the duende: ‘A mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained.’
So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.”
Federico Garcia Lorca wrote about a woman who ‘…began to sing with a scorched throat, without voice, breath, colour, but…with duende. She managed to tear down the scaffolding of the song, but allow through a furious, burning duende, friend to those winds heavy with sand, that make listeners tear at their clothes…’
Nick Cave spoke about the quality in 1999. "Excitement, often; anger sometimes - but true sadness, rarely." is how he described duende. It is the 'terrible question that has no answer'.
To me, it is the duende which makes Bob Dylan so fascinating and moving. It is the darkness, the emotional rawness, the proximity of (and battle with) death, the deep mystery of the unanswered questions.
"Dark sounds, behind which in tender intimacy exist volcanoes, ants, zephyrs, and the vast night pressing its waist against the Milky Way." (Lorca)
"Dark sounds, behind which in tender intimacy exist volcanoes, ants, zephyrs, and the vast night pressing its waist against the Milky Way." (Lorca)
This is the quality of Bob Dylan's music that some critics and listeners do not understand. When I wrote about Bob Dylan's voice a few years ago, duende is exactly the word I was looking for to describe the effect. For with Dylan his power is not in technical perfection. Duende is about the emotion, the fire, the pain, the human tragedy, the joy, the easily-crushed fragile tenderness that never sinks into sentimentalism, the intimacy... the ability to touch deep in a way that superficiality can never do.
Duende also means genuineness and authenticity. The ability to convey regret and pain, joy and disillusionment, speculation and knowledge, truth and fiction… the value of a silence and the meaning in a sigh or breath.
It is the power of a moment in time. As Lorca said, "...it’s impossible for it ever to repeat itself, and it’s important to underscore this. The duende never repeats itself, any more than the waves of the sea do in a storm."
An artist does not succumb to duende, they battle all the way to the edge of rationality and back, knowing human limits of intelligence the entire way. 'Angel' represents the superficial style and virtuous elegance, 'Muse' is the accepted classical norms of creativity and form. But duende is the spirit and power from within that changes perception and leads to spine-tingling transformative art.
For more reading about the link between Lorca and Bob Dylan, Duende and the connection between Spanish traditions and Bob Dylan, one source is Christopher Rollason's worthwhile essay for the Oral Tradition magazine (2007) available to read online, Bob Dylan in the Spanish Speaking World.
