Word: plata
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...been a land living under military rule, preserving only the flimsiest façade of democracy. Arturo Frondizi, the deposed constitutional President who gave Peron's still-faithful descamisados (shirtless ones) a place on the ballot, still waits on his prison island in the Rio de la Plata. In the Buenos Aires Presidential Palace sits a puppet President, José Maria Guido, a minor politician who must wait, too-wait for the military men, who fear Peron, to decide what to do. Last week the generals made up their minds, and the result was a further flight of democracy...
...while, public outrage mounts. In the north coast town of Puerto Plata last week, news spread that two former Trujillo secret police agents were about to flee to Haiti aboard a Dominican freighter. Before long an angry crowd had gathered at the dock, hurling stones at the ship, screaming for the pair to be handed over. An army unit arrived, took the men from the ship to the local garrison. The mob followed, still protesting, and the soldiers reacted in familiar Dominican fashion-a burst of machine-gun fire killed one man and wounded three. Next day, in the city...
...Christ Danced." The current rage of the Riviera, Manita de Plata is one of a handful of guitarists in southern France who get out their instruments after the tourists leave and play the fiercely emotional music that they call their own. Anyone can finger the guitar, they believe, but only the true gypsy can play "flamenco"-a word that to Andalusians literally means "gypsy...
Playing for Himself. Born in a gypsy wagon near Sète, a seaport near Marseille, De Plata is of the best flamenco tradition. He is illiterate, cannot even read music. His father was a horse trader who taught his son the guitar and encouraged him ("Manita, you have remarkable hands"). For the next 20 years, roaming southern France in the caravan, De Plata stayed out of school to spend his time practicing and listening to other gypsy players...
...hear him play. But money means little to him: "When I am playing well, nothing else counts. I am playing for myself." He has never signed a recording contract, although a recording of his cabaret performances was illegally released in France, and Decca is attempting to release another De Plata disk over his lawyer's protests. Like many of his fellow guitarists, he has a scorn for non-gypsy audiences, often deliberately insults them in his improvised lyrics. He has turned down an offer from a New York nightclub because he gets seasick on ships and fears planes. Recently...