Federico García Lorca attempts to shed some light on the eerie and inexplicable sadness that lives at the heart of certain works of art. "All that has dark sounds has duende," he says […]. Contemporary rock music seems less inclined to have at its soul, restless and quivering, the sadness that Lorca talks about. […] Bob Dylan has always had it. Leonard Cohen deals specifically with it. It pursues Van Morrison like a black dog […]. My friends The Dirty 3 have it by the bucketload. But, all in all, it would appear that the duende is too fragile to survive the compulsive modernity of the music industry.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025) — Shock telepatico
Info & reflection: duende isn't a technical quality but something too fragile to survive the logic of the industry.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Nick Cave on duende, quoted by Brondi: too fragile for the music industry, like sincerity that turns cringe in the aesthetics of cute