It is well known that there are letters that are linked to certain canteThey are, in a way, inseparable. Lyrics and music paired by flamenco tradition. For example, if we listen They can send me…Almost everyone will say that it's about the grey hairThat's perfectly normal, unless it's the jabera that recorded it. Antonio Pozo The Little Owl in 1906, who performed it with those same lyrics. If what we hear is The grand Alcalá street, how it shinesThere's no doubt it's snails, although Chacon It will take that letter from the original toy. Holy Cross of Mudela which he will then record Pastora. The letter Go on and stop showing off. We heard it from El Caracol through a personal variant of soleá already Aurelio with another. And so it is in the repertoire flamenco multiple examples. Anyway, if the cante says They're throwing water balloons... It's mirabrás, if Royal Street of Alosno It's about the famous low-hanging cane, unless it's the fandango of The Andalusian girl recorded in 1926 with the guitar of Nino RicardoEven so, as I say, there are many letters that are forever linked to their cante matrix.
The problem arises when that supposed connection between music and lyrics leads to the great Pepe Marchena to label in his Anthology as a soleá by Yllanda the cante which he would later attribute Mairena a CharamuscoThe mistake is that Marchena recorded it with a letter that actually corresponds to a cante from the flamenco singer from Andújar José Yllandaalthough the music is completely different. The version of Marchena from 1963 with the guitar of Paquito Simón It's about the saying cante from Charamusco, with the lyrics I renounce the Rosaleswhile the one she recorded more than half a century earlier The Garrido from Jerez in 1908 with the guitar of Roman the Granadan is the classified by Luis y Ramon Soler Like Yllanda. Again, the same lyrics for two. canteYes. And that's the point.
I often spoke about this topic with the dearly missed Luis Suarez AvilaI kept insisting that a 16th-century romance is sung with very different music depending on the place and time. It's impossible, due to the natural evolution of musical genres, for lyrics to remain linked to music for four centuries. As I've been saying for many years: music, like matter, is neither created nor destroyed, it only transforms. And I told Luis this on many occasions to dissuade him from the idea that a romance like, for example, "La Monja," which he recorded... Black of the Portis cante originally about the music that we recognize today as short peteneraThis does not mean that the Mexican petenera that returned from Veracruz to Cádiz in 1826 drew from that ballad, but rather that the opposite is more likely to have happened: that El Negro incorporated the lyrics of that ballad into a very popular melody at the time, which turned out to be that of the They are Huastec from the Petén region.
"A melody that originated in 1900 can be performed with much older lyrics. In the case of romances, a centuries-old lyrical repertoire, they can be sung, and in fact are sung, with very modern melodies, without losing any of the profound emotion of the adaptation. Let's not fall into the temptation of reading 'fandango' in an 18th-century document and believing that it refers to a style similar to what we call fandango today."
In short, lyrics don't necessarily have to correspond to a specific melody. Furthermore, a melody can accommodate an infinite number of lyrics, just as lyrics can be set to multiple melodies. It all depends on the will of the creator and/or the performer, their ability to apply different lyrics to the same melody. Songs typically have different verses, each one different from the others, but they all usually share the same melody. This is inherent in the structural nature of song form. Although in the flamenco We're not talking about songs, we're referring to canteYes, it is well known that a single melodic variant of, for example, seguiriya, can accommodate very different lyrics. How it shines a Manuela Reyes It's a world away, and both sets of lyrics correspond to the classic snail songs recorded by the great Antonio Chacon.
Deducing the age of a piece of music based on the lyrics it's sung to is meaningless. The lyrics could be later or even earlier. That a poem is seven centuries old... cante Just because a melody is old doesn't mean, under any circumstances, that the melody itself is that old. Not at all. In fact, they're very likely much younger, since lyrics can be written down, but orally transmitted music is inherently unlikely to remain static; quite the opposite. According to the principle that no oral tradition lasts more than a century in its original form, which is the same as saying no music lasts a hundred years without changing some of its parameters, modifications to the melodic flow are guaranteed. The same thing happens in the popular game of whispering to each other, where what the first person says has usually become something very different by the time it reaches the last.
The reverse is also true. A traditional melody can adopt very different lyrics over time. Melodies shared across various geographical areas can have different lyrics in each case. This confirms the independence between lyrics and music, which, although they often go hand in hand, in a genre like... flamenco The same melody (variant) corresponds to very different lyrics (version). How boring it would be if... flamenco if all the soleares of Joaquin from Paula were sung to the same lyrics. Therein lies one of the riches of flamenco.
But let's get to the point. A melody that originated in 1900 can be performed with much older lyrics. And, as I mentioned before, in the case of romances, a centuries-old lyrical repertoire, they can be sung, and in fact are sung, with very modern melodies, without losing any of the profound emotion in the adaptation. Let's not fall into the temptation of reading "fandango" in an 18th-century document and thinking it refers to a style similar to what we call fandango today. They are homonymous genres but with very different music in each era. This is the very nature of oral transmission. ♦
