At Expoflamenco, we want to spotlight a new website of exceptional value for flamenco scholarship: atrilflamenco.com. Its director is Dr. Bernat Jiménez de Cisneros Puig—a musicologist, guitarist, and flamenco educator with nearly thirty years of professional experience. Once registered, users gain access to the scholarly output of leading figures in the field, including Jiménez de Cisneros himself, Dr. Guillermo Castro Buendía, and Dr. Peter Manuel, along with renowned flamencologists Luis Soler Guevara and Ramón Soler Díaz.
We strongly value the open access to academic research promoted by this team. As stated on the site, they offer «books, articles, and lectures on the musical foundations of flamenco, with transcriptions and audio examples from all periods and major artists».
"We strongly value the open access to academic research promoted by this team. As stated on the site, they offer "books, articles, and lectures on the musical foundations of flamenco, with transcriptions and audio examples from all periods and major artists"»
<scan>These studies exposed the impressionistic nature that had long defined much of the flamenco bibliography before and during the period of revaluation (1955–1985). At that time, the author’s subjective voice often prevailed over what is essential to research: evidence.</scan>
«Your truth? No, the Truth. Come with me to find it. Yours—keep it». These words by Antonio Machado, from Nuevas canciones, capture a principle that should underpin all academic work. Not as an unquestionable truth, but as conclusions grounded in evidence and built upon previous research.
Such conclusions remain open to revision. Future scholars may challenge them in light of new archival discoveries or more sophisticated theoretical frameworks. As Antonio Machado y Álvarez—known as Demófilo—put it in the nineteenth century: «others will reap the fruits of our sowing and claim the right to criticize us».
We repeat: at Expoflamenco, we celebrate this initiative. We are fully aware that some, from anti-academic positions, may respond with a familiar flamenco song lyric: «you claim to be science, and I don’t see it that way, because if you truly were science, you would have understood me». ♦
