Rules/break the rules

The lesson was ok last night. There are so many falsettas in the Bulerias I'm learning that I begin to get confused in the latter sections and it gets a bit messy. I know that this will get better as it gets hard wired into my brain. I can deal with that pain. For now.
Bulerias is generally in A major. But the bit I’m on now is in A minor. And it’s beautiful. Rhythmically it pretty straightforward, my fingers can do it even though it looks complicated and it sounds great. So the kind of flamenco I can impress people with straightaway. Nice.
The A mjor to minor thing is a reminder of one of the things I love about flamenco. In many ways flamenco is about rules: in terms of rhythm, the underlying musical structure, the techniques. In terms of the underlying musical structure it’s surprisingly like 12 bar blues: you know where you are going and kind of how you’ll get there. But then in flamenco – and to some extent 12 bar – the rules are thrown aside because someone just wants to. So we don’t stay in the major, we go to the minor. Or even when we stay in the major we play a note in the scale that we shouldn’t. In A major you go to both C & Db. It should work. But it does work. It doesn’t necessarily make ‘sense’ but once you do it – and only once you actually do it - you understand. In fact it’s so perfect that when you try it the ‘proper’ way, it sounds dull, predictable, lifeless….in fact wrong.
I don’t invent in flamenco yet, other than some arsing about. Certainly nothing I’d call writing or creating. It’s not ingrained enough. But I know that when I’ll do I’ll look at the ‘rules’ and then figure out ways to break them, flamenco ways, which I guess is about technique or semi-tones and dissonance. Who knows when…