This week I read the first lecture in the book In Search of Duende by Federico Garcia Lorca. This lecture was about cante jondo, it’s roots and its essential components. I have always loved Lorca but I was completely floored by his writing in this paper. Just wow. His is so eloquent. He did not just write about duende, he wrote every word with duende. It’s almost as if he eats and breathes duende and is incapable of producing anything that isn’t miraculous. This summary of what I learned from his lecture is littered with quotes but I felt it absolutely nessicary. One of my favorite quotes from this paper is “The wind is a character who emerges in the ultimate, most intensely emotional moments. He comes into sight like a giant absorbed in pulling down stars and scattering nebulae.” I’ve read the entire paper about ten times now and I continue to get lost in his words.
A portrait of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936).
Anyways, besides drooling over Lorca’s writing, I’ve learned quite a lot about cante jondo that I didn’t previously know historically and emotionally. I feel a lot more in tune with my research topic (duende) and more prepared to begin my field study.
Cante Jondo
Federico Garcia Lorca begins his lecture on cante jondo (deep song) by saying,
“Each day another leaf falls from the admirable tree of Andalusian lyrics, old men carry off to the grave priceless treasures of past generations, and a gross, stupid avalanche of cheap music clouds the delicious folk atmosphere of all of Spain.”
This statement, and really, this entire lecture is a call for future generations to not let all the passion and true beauty of cante jondo die away, it is a pleading for Andalusians to reject the mutated, flashy, and fake deep song that has polluted the region.
In case you aren’t already familiar with cante jondo, it is the most important component of flamenco. The other two components are guitar and dance. Although cante jondo is an essential part of flamenco, it is not usually heard in flamenco today. Kind of confusing right?
Ok, let me try to clear this up.
Cante jondo is the name “given to a group of Andalusian songs whose genuine, perfect prototype is the Gypsy siguiriya.” This type of song laid way for other songs still sung by the gypsies such as polos, carceleras, martinetes, and solares. These songs inspired the song forms that falsified flamenco is made of such as malaguenas, rodenas, and granadinas (to name a few) which different in rhythm and basic structure.
Andalusian gypsies dancing in the Sacromonte Caves in Granada, Spain.
Another important difference between modern flamenco and cante jondo is that cante jondo has roots that extend back to the days before the gypsies migrated from India, whereas flamenco did not even solidify into a song form until the eighteenth century. As Lorca said “Cante jondo is imbued with the mysterious colors of primordial ages; flamenco is a relatively modern song whose emotional interest pales before that of deep song.”
Below I have posted a video with Indian singers and another video with a well known Andalusian gypsy singer. The similarities between these two song forms is pretty astounding.
India:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Andalusia siguiriya:
Click here to view the embedded video.
A few essential similarities between the gypsy siguiyira and classical Indian folk music is the use of “enharmonism” to modulate the melody. My technical music knowledge doesn’t extend much past this point but enharmonism has something to do with a “melodic ambient that rarely goes beyond the sixth; and the reiterated, almost obsessive prolongation of a single note, a procedure proper to certain techniques of hypnosis and certain forms of historic recitation”. Apparently this has lead many to believe that song existed before language.
Poems
Another vital part of cante jondo songs is their deep and mysterious lyrics which delve into the very soul of sorrow and pain. Lorca notes that one of the most remarkable part of Andalusian poems is their lack of emotional balance or “lyrical equilibrium”. Emotiveness is the songs most prominent trait. In Search of Duende is so beautifully written, there is no possible way I can put cante jondo into words like Federico Garcia Lorca.
“Cante jondo always sings in the night. It knows neither morning, nor evening, mountains nor plains. It has only the night, a wide night steeped in stars. Nothing else matters.
It is a song without landscape, withdrawn into itself and terrible in the dark. Cante jondo shoots its arrows of gold right into our heart. In the dark it is a terrifying blue archer whose quiver is never empty.”
This is the true nature of cante jondo, and it is also the true nature of duende.
I think it’s very important to note how heavily Arabic culture influenced cante jondo, not only musically but lyrically. Many of the prominent themes in Andalusian poetry are found in Arabic poetry as well, such as weeping, the wind, the Woman (pain), and the obsession with hair and wine.