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Read This and You’ll Never Think of Flamenco the Same Again.
cultural
November 30, 2019

Read This and You’ll Never Think of Flamenco the Same Again.

flamenco dancer

If you were to describe flamenco in a word, what would it be?

Dance? Guitar? Feet? Stomping?

It’s a challenging part of the Spanish culture to understand and many times this performance becomes transmuted into something that it isn’t. And thus, misunderstood.

Ciclismo Classico gives you front row viewing of one of the best Flamenco schools in the region on our Andalucia departure.

For example, it may seem to be a dance embodying the Spanish spirit. But it isn’t.

Actually, its origins aren’t Spanish at all. But the theater of Andalusia gave the performance its perfect stage.

The Misinterpretation of Performance

There are several bad schools of flamenco dance in Spain. They miss the mark, failing to transmit the power and emotion found within the heart of this presentation.

One of the most central components of the piece has nothing with dancing at all. It is the voice: the song.

The voice is the quintessential instrument during any flamenco performance. The voice is the guide that occupies center stage.

In the most primitive form of Flamenco, there was no guitar (that appeared around the 19th C.) and there were certainly no dancers as we know of them today.

But if we look a bit at the history of Flamenco, we get a better idea of its origins and how it became known as the dance of Spain, and as an expression of cultural identity.

The Lament

It’s difficult to pin-point exactly where the voice comes from. There is much debate to its origins, but most researchers believe the song was born through the Gitano tribes – the gypsy people – who began populating Spain in the 9th C.

The art itself was born around the 15th C. in Andalusia. It was a popular form of lamented expression amongst the Gitanos, Jews, Arabs, and underclass Spaniards.

Most anthropologists suggest the Gitano migration lasted some 400 years, leaving the North Indian subcontinent peoples migrating west, and eventually arriving in Andalucia.

These Romanì Gitanos brought with them a dynamic musical expression, accented by virtuoso moments of immense theatrical performances, and of extraordinary improvisational talent. They fused these abilities with the language, music, and culture they discovered in Andalucia.

From Many, One

In southern Spain, these nomadic tribes discovered natural alliances, especially with the Arabs and the Jews living in the ghettos. Recently stripped of all dignity and rights thanks to the Reconquista, these ethic groups comprised the new underclass of Spanish society during the 15th C.

The electricity and tension felt between these repressed cultural groups and the evolution of the music and culture over three or four centuries gave us what we know today as cante jondo or pure flamenco.

El Duende: Catharsis of a Population

Cante jondo is considered by most flamenco professionals the cornerstone of modern flamenco. The great singers put their soul (literally) in each song, as if they had lived the tragedy they are passionately singing about.

They render their emotions naked and vulnerable. This could be a somewhat shocking experience for the inexperienced flamenco patron.

The aim is to awake the duende lying dormant within every individual, especially in the singer.

In art, duende is a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity. It is a direct emotional connection with the public, producing a cathartic state, where the public purges their emotions through empathizing with the singer’s lament.

However, duende is an allusive spirit.

Not every signer is always able to capture the essence of the lament in each performance. In the words of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, it is intangible at times. It is the singer’s responsibility to find it, with her delivery, her superstitions, her anguish and fervor, combining them in an intimate force which is both powerful and transcendental at the same time.

It’s heavy stuff, but so worth listening to.

Improvised Every Time

As I had mentioned earlier, the Gitanos improvised every performance.

They had some stock rhythms and verses to sing, but the heart – and the bravura – of the performance was in its spontaneity.

For flamenco purists, the performance must be unplanned. Until the 19th C., it was exclusively a gypsy-nomad performance. As a result, nothing was ever rehearsed nor prepared.

And these are the best performances.

Café Cantante and the Appearance of Accompaniment

By late in the 19th C., Flamenco began to have a more popular reception within contemporary Spanish society.

Certain cafés appeared (called café cantante), allowing evening performances (many by the nomadic gypsies). An evening’s would typically consist of 2 singers, 4 female dancers, 2 male dancers and 2 guitarists.

Guitar was a common nomadic instrument, as was the violin, tambourine and bandurria. However, in the early 20th C., Rámon Montoya (1880-1949) set a new precedent for flamenco guitar, forever sealing its fate in the production’s heart.

As the preferred guitarist of the famed singer Antonio Chacón (1869-1929) he toured Spain, practically creating the discipline of flamenco guitar.

It is fascinating to understand that flamenco today has become a spontaneous interpretation of all four elements: voice, guitar, dance and hands.

The artists are constantly working off of each other, following the duende of the singer, the steps and the accents of the dancers heels, the rhythm of the hands clapping and the melody of the guitar.

A Death of Flamenco, Only to be Born Again

By the end of the Spanish Civil War, public performances of flamenco dwindled significantly. Fascist feminine groups banned the dance, and the Church disavowed flamenco.

Franco had succeeded in isolating Spain from the rest of the world and his dictatorship was in peril. The lack of funds threatened to dismantle his grasp on the country. So he reintroduced flamenco to the people who would pay to see it again: tourists.

Thanks to a massive, national campaign, flamenco dancers were once again on billboards and local advertisements. They were in airline magazines and promoted in Hollywood. Travelling artists would perform at World Fairs and millions of tourists returned to Spain. Franco’s initiative brought in enough money to seed Spain’s economic boom of the 1960s.

Today, flamenco’s role in modern Spanish society remains difficult. As this nomadic-gypsy art expression, unique to Andalusia, became a symbol of Spanish identity under Franco, scholars and artists have determined to continue their research on the dance. Whereas we can never say it is symbolic of the Spanish people, we can say it is a product of southern Spain.

And thank goodness there are still dancers, guitarists and singers still practicing this unique art form.

So join us in Andalucia and experience duende and Flamenco for yourself.

 

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