...is the name of an album by Paco de Lucia. I first owned the album like 15 years ago, but it was stolen from my apt in LA. I just bought it again about a month ago. For some reason I always assumed that Fuente y Caudal were two characters from a Spanish story, sort of like Platero y Yo.

I was wrong. I knew fuente meant fountain, but that's it. Fuente y Caudal, as far as I have now learned, are hydrodynamic terms to describe a river, fuente meaning source, caudal meaning flow, or discharge (i.e. how much water moves through a given space in a given time).

This now makes Fuente y Caudal a totally cool title for a flamenco album. Source and Flow...one thinks of the torrents of music coming out of Paco. Also makes me think of how flamenco songs (each of which is one of only a handful of types: solea, bulerias, fandandgo, etc.) don't really seem distinct from one another. And many types -- solea, alegrias, bulerias -- are just the same rhythmic pattern (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12) at different speeds. They are just different variations on a theme, within a particular rhythm...different streams off the same river fed by the same source.

that's the deep thought for the day.

if you have Quicktime, iTunes or a video iPod, download this video of Paco playing a Solea. I'd give my left and right ones to play like this.