Flamenco – All You Wanted to Know

This landmark historical text delivers the goods promised in its title. It does not address flamenco dance whatsoever, focusing instead on flamenco song forms with a special chapter devoted to the role of the guitar. Includes Spanish lyrics for dozens of flamenco songs along with English translations and interpretive notes, a glossary of flamenco terminology, plus a recommended bibliography and discography are also provided. Informal in its demeanor, this carefully researched, insightful book will help you develop a deeper appreciation for the flamboyant art of flamenco.
WHO INVENTED FLAMENCO?
Nobody ever sat down in a bar one evening in Andalucia and said: “Right, we want to create a new style of music, and we’re going to call it flamenco.” It simply evolved naturally from the continuous evolution which is popular music and entertainment. Perhaps the closest we can get to defining who is fundamentally responsible for flamenco music and dance as we know it today, is to say that it was invented in Andalucia, by Andalucians. Together, both Andalucians Gypsies and non-Gypsies gradually created a distinct style of song and dance, out of traditional folk music and verses already in existence. But just as not every American plays jazz every day, neither does every Andalucian sing, dance or play Flamenco. Nor do they listen to it continually, nor many of them recognise the forms.
Everybody associates flamenco with the Gypsies of Spain. Only the Spanish Gypsies, but not all of them, sing and dance flamenco. But non-Gypsies in Andalucia and elsewhere- whom the Gypsies call payos or sometimes gachós – also perform flamenco in the same way. However, since Gypsies have been settled in Spain since the 1400s and flamenco only developed in the late 1700s, it can’t be attributed to them alone. Gypsies in other parts of Europe share the same origins as the Andaluz Gitano, how come none of them play flamenco? If it were a purely Gypsy invention, surely they would also be performing it. We can’t say the Moors of Spain invented it either, since the almost 800 years of their rule have left no mention of flamenco. As no solid evidence about who invented flamenco was available, just about anybody could create a persuasive theory and become an authority. As the Spanish saying goes: ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.’ Gypsies have no reasonable explanation for the emergence of flamenco (on the rare occasion when they’re asked) other than to say that they learned the cantes from their ancestors. Since their history is as confused and obscure to them as it is to the rest of us, the origins of Gypsy Flamenco remain a mystery.
WHAT A PAIN To point a finger at one particular ethnic group and claim they invented flamenco, has led to a great confusion. It’s best to remember that when flamenco was first written about, it was not the tidy defined selection of styles we recognise today. It was an emerging art: in development, it wasn’t born fully formed! Because of all the words about suffering in el cante flamenco people have tried to attribute it to each different ethnic group that has suffered throughout Spain’s history: Spanish Gypsies, Spanish-Arabs, and Sefardic Jews. Pena- suffering in Spanish- is a recurring theme, an ancestral pain who’s cause nobody has been able to explain convincingly. All kinds of colourful theories have been published trying to explain it. It’s traditionally thought that Gypsies ‘invented’ flamenco, since this pena is their history and experience. It’s only in recent times that the full extent of the persecution of Gypsies has been fully investigated.1 The Andalucian Gypsy originated in the Punjab area of Northern India and present-day Pakistan, so their pena was sometimes said to be because of their exile from their ancestral home, hundreds of years ago. Those who tried to explain the origins of flamenco as Arabic, attributed the recurring theme of pena to the expulsion of the Moors from Granada. The musicologist Christian Poché2 describes Arabic-Andaluz music- a particular style of music which developed in the Arab ruled regions of Spain- as one long ode to absence; the lament of the homesick Moor living in Al-Andalus – mainland Spain, far from his homeland. Today that homeland would be the areas of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Those who trace flamenco’s origins back to the Sefardic Jews suppose the pena comes from their forced conversion to Christianity, and their expulsion from Spain under the Catholic monarchs. But besides the vast gaps in time between all these historic events and the emergence of flamenco in the 1780s, all these explanations assume that the indigenous Andalucians, for some unknown reason, adopted these people’s pain and suffering as their own, since the indigenous Andaluz also performs flamenco.