Francisco Antonio Clinton

My name is Francisco Antonio 'Tony' Clinton (b.1965). I am a London-based flamenco guitarist. My father is English and my mother Spanish. My father was one of the first flamenco players in England and taught himself from records. My uncle was George Clinton, editor/founder of Guitar International magazine which ran from 1972 and folded in the early 90s due to his sad and untimely death. My uncle regularly included flamenco articles in his magazine. One memorable issue reported the first concert by Paco de Lucía in London at the Wigmore Hall in 1976 which I had the fortune to attend at the tender age of 10 even though I wasn't playing at that time. Therefore I had a lot of exposure to all things guitar related.
I was lucky enough to be listening to flamenco all through my childhood as my father would practice for hours, play records when he wasn't practicing and he also gave lessons so I was around it the whole time. He also played for many dance classes and I started joining him in classes at the age of 14 or 15 (I started playing at age 12) which was an invaluable experience coupled with the things I learned from him. Although I learned a lot of music from my dad, he was never too analytical about technique so in this area I struggled and at some point I decided to analyse it myself and have been on the case ever since trying to always improve. I spent two years ('85 & '86) in Holland at the Rotterdam Conservatory where Paco Peña had been given an honorary professorship. The course was inspired by a Vicente Amigo performance at the Conservatory which hugely impressed the Conservatory's director who decided to include flamenco on the repertoire of studies.
A lot of non-Spanish guitarists find it difficult because they know that some Spanish (and indeed non-Spanish) people will not accept them and therefore they do things to pretend they are Spanish and hide their true roots. The thing is that flamenco music is heading to be truly international and therefore that will (or indeed 'must') include non-Spanish players in the equation. To this end players from other countries must gain the confidence to be themselves. Nowadays, with all the media available students from all over the world can easily see what there is to achieve. Of course, a good teacher and visits to Spain are important (and inevitable to anybody interested in the flamenco guitar) because there is an inspiration necessary from the combination of the culture, architecture, weather, food etc. that cannot be gained elsewhere.
Flamenco is my discipline and I have listened for years to guitarists and studied and worked out rhythm and analysed compás etc. Therefore I always begin a composition with a blank canvas of a form and build on it without trying to think too much about what is the current trend in Spain for example. I remember trying out a passage I had just thought of and it seemed to me to sound a little like something John Barry would have come up with. However instead of not using it because it wasn't typically flamenco I respected that it was part of my overall influence (I love John Barry) and I was correctly using flamenco form, compás, technique and attitude in the playing so what is not 'flamenco' about that. In fact if a passage sounds too 'fashionably' flamenco I usually discard it because there is enough of that anyway. The main requirement is not to find excuses for a different kind of flamenco (such as some so-called 'nuevo flamenco') just because of lack of study, but to really study and listen and get a full understanding of what flamenco guitar playing is all about. You can hardly go wrong then.