Last week I got sick. The awful kind of sick that left me in bed, delirious for 4 entire days when all I wanted to do was go out and adventure! On the bright side I did get a lot of reading done, watched a few documentaries, and discovered a new academic paper that has given me a whole new perspective of flamenco.
I think that the best place to start this entry is with the history of flamenco. Although there are many different theories of the beginning of this genre, the most probable history begins with the Spanish Inquisition in 1480.
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish Inquisition) was first established in Sevilla by Catholic monarchs Ferdinand the 2nd and Isabelle the 1st to rid the country of Muslims, Jews and Catholics who were suspected of secretly practicing other religions. In 1480, the first 6 people suspected of secretly practicing Judaism were burned alive in Sevilla. Although we know that thousands were killed during the Inquisition, the exact number is unknown. Estimates range from 2,000 to 10,000.
Before I move on to talking about the Inquisitions impact on flamenco, I want to talk about barrio Santa Cruz that is now a bustling tourist area in the center of the city. It is a beautiful neighborhood, marked by cobblestone streets and colorful buildings that stand so close, I imagine one could almost make out the text on your neighbor’s newspaper if you looked out the window. This neighborhood is known as the Jewish quarter of the city, which made it a central focus of the Inquisition.
One of the streets in Santa Cruz used to be named Calle Muerte or Death Street because many Jewish people were murdered on it by the Catholics. At the beginning of the Inquisition a group of Jewish men decided to plan an ambush of the Catholic army in an attempt to begin an uprising against the Inquisition, but one of the mens daughters, Susona, told her Catholic lover of their plan and the Jewish men were burned alive. After her fathers death, Susona was so tormented by what she had done that she hung herself with chains off of her balcony and ensured that her severed head was displayed after her death as a warning to others. Today the street is called Calle Susona and you can see plaques commemorating her suicide next to the window where her head was displayed.
Through this story, one can begin to see all the anguish and pain that the Spanish people endured and it is no wonder that many of the gypsies, Jews, Muslims, and eventually Christians fled to the hills to escape the Inquisition. They lived together in caves, living largely on food they could rob from passing caravans and sharing stories, art and music. “It is thought that from the common life of these persecuted peoples appeared the first semblances of flamenco we know it. Muslim, Jewish, Indian, and Christian religious and folk music blended, developing over the years into a musical form clearly sophisticated in many ways, yet developed at a primitive level by an outcast society.” (Pohren 40)
As with the story of flamenco, the origins of the word ‘flamenco’ is also debated but the the most likely story is that ‘flamenco’ is a mispronunciation of the Arabic words ‘felag’ and ‘mengu’ (felagmengu), which means fugitive peasant. (Pohren 41)
“The main form of flamenco at that time, the cante jondo, expressed the suffering of these outlawed people, who through the years were condemned to serve in the galleys, chain gangs, and in the Spanish army in America, were prohibited to talk their own language, and who, during one prolonged period, suffered the death penalty for just belonging to a wandering or outlawed band.” (Pohren 41)
On Saturday night I decided that I had been sick for long enough and it was high time for an adventure. I had been researching various flamenco clubs and was determined to find a club untarnished by greed and tourism. I found two small flamenco clubs in the old gypsy neighborhood of Triana but unfortunately both of them are permanently closed. Although this discovery was disappointing, it was not entirely unexpected.
Flamenco was a form of music that was only played by the outsiders of Spanish culture until around the mid 1800’s when cafes cantantes began to form. These cafes were basically taverns that had a set group of flamenco performers, supplemented by guest performances. These cafes enabled flamenco to largely lose the stigma that was attached to genre and the music thrived during this time. Although the cafes created a creative environment in which flamenco flourished, they also led to its swift decline and near extinction.
Cafes Cantantes were the first places that flamenco musicians were paid to perform, thus bringing the most talented musicians from all over the Andalusia to musical areas like Triana. In the early 1900’s, tourists became interested in flamenco but focused mainly on the flair and color, not the depth and meaning of the music. This led to the creation of operatic flamenco and flamenco theaters which quickly put the cafe cantantes out of business.
The butchery of flamenco and the destruction of duende in the music, took form in flashy, sexualized performances that were extremely lucrative and brought the formerly outcasted music form to the masses. The upside of this ugly transformation of flamenco was that people all over the world were exposed to flamenco and many came to Spain to search for the real thing, for duende, just like me.
With the renewed interest in flamenco, many flamenco cafes opened and are now called tablos. With the tablos we have been able to watch history slowly begin to repeat itself. Tablos, like most businesses want to make money so they tell their guitarists to play faster, their dancers to dance more sexually, and the singers to just wail something that sounds pretty. This commercialization of flamenco musicians is once again destroying the music, and the true flamenco and duende, exists only in the small villages and coastal caves that it began in.
“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.”
Federico Garcia Lorca
On our walk through Triana, we found no trace of flamenco. The winding streets were dead until we reached the Guadalquivir river where hordes of tourists sat huddled over tapas and wine. We stopped briefly at a bar called the New Orleans Jazz, but there was no jazz so we decided to try to find one of the tourist tablos across the river. We walked through downtown and up the hill through winding streets until we hit cobblestone. It was 2am and we eventually found ourselves in a silent neighborhood where all the homes were shuttered for the night and just when we thought we were lost, we found across La Carboneria.
Unfortunately we got there right as the singer was finishing and after he left, the only music the remaining musicians played was a fusion of classical music and flamenco. Now that we know where this tablo is, we will try going again earlier this Friday to see if they will play any true flamenco.
Before I wrap up this post I would also like to talk a little bit about famed flamenco guitarist, Paco de Lucia. He was an incredible guitar player, some say he was the best of all time. He not only helped legitimize flamenco as an art form in Spain, but through fusing jazz and Latin music with flamenco he became the figurehead of the ‘New Flamenco’ movement of the 1970’s. He also is credited with being the first person to use the cajon (Afro-Peruvian box drum) in flamenco music. If you would like to learn more about de Lucia’s life and musical influence I would highly recommend watching Paco de Lucia: A Journey.
I have seen Paco de Lucia’s influence in every single encounter I’ve had with live music in Spain. Just the other night I was eating at a small bodega next to my apartment in Los Remedios and got to watch an old man sing and strum soleas on his guitar while his son pounded out rhythms on the cajon.
Hopefully I will be able to find more music this week. Over the past few weeks I have read so much about flamenco, but I have yet to really feel like I’ve actually heard it. Even as I write this I sit at a sidewalk cafe watching a flamenco dancer stomp her way through a song, bludgeoning the song of the cantador and the guitar with every step. A crowd of tourists surround them, watching with wide eyes, thinking that this must be real flamenco, not realizing that this is the kind of thing that may very well lead to flamencos ruin.
Yesterday I took a walk through the beautiful streets of Santa Cruz to see the old house of Susona and came across a few plaques that show places that Georges Bizet used in the famous opera Carmen. This week I will watch Carmen and explore the parts of Sevilla that were featured in the book and the opera.
I have contacted a flamenco school and it’s looking like I’ll be able to start taking flamenco classes this week and I am really excited to see what I can learn from the people who are working to preserve flamenco and of course, find the elusive duende.
