More than ten years ago I titled an entry of my own like this. blog, referring to a word from Unamuno, the backstory, that is, everything that serves as "setting" for the more visible history, that is, the events that occurred but were not published, for example, in the newspapers. Following that path, I cited Rg Collinwood, who said: "The past can only be known as something that is preserved residually in the present. The past is elusive." And Miguel-Anxo Walled He states: "History is like the ashes of a fire. It is not the fire, nor even a remnant of the fire, but only a vestige of the fire's effects. The wind constantly blows it away."
In the most blogs flamencoTwo main types of sources are being published: documents found in archives, which are quite reliable, as well as the pioneering Gazapera de Manolo Bohorquez or the precise and precious investigations of Alberto R. Peñastrong, and those that come mainly from the press and historiography. Blogs like Flamenco of paper of the aforementioned Alberto, Papers Flamencos de David P. Merinero, Goblin Alley de Antonio Barberan, The Pericón Bales de Javier Osuna, me News Tuner, Or the Adventurers of the Flamenco de Rafael Chavez Arcos, to name the most visited, which focus mainly on emptying the newspaper archives, providing material for the complete study of the flamenco, providing true gems of the FlamencoContemporary history. Aware that the inner history has been left floating in the ether, we can only attempt to reconstruct what really happened with the data at our disposal, even if we never fully reveal it. History is not an exact science, nor is it mathematics.
Not so with music, which has a lot of mathematics. Reconstructing the past through music, based on history, helps us see the inner story a little more clearly, even if it's just a tiny bit. We must tread carefully but without hesitation in the face of the unexpected. And the story that has been written about flamenco It bears little resemblance to what musical analysis reveals.
El flamenco It is made, like all musical genres, with melody, meter, rhythm, harmony, form, dynamics, articulation... parameters that together form a unique aesthetic, creating a peculiar genre. The result is a kind of artifice, a musical art shaped to the taste of the respectable for centuries. When flamenco forms began to crystallize, around 1820, they were defined by distinctive features: here a characteristic twelve-beat rhythm, there a tailor-made harmonic model that we call Phrygian, Andalusian cadence, mode flamenco, even Phrygian major, among other beauties, both at the service of a singular melody that is what defines andThe genre, gypsy style, unmistakable for its artistic oriental aroma, affected, not inherited, pure and simple craftsmanship of the 19th century.
Now, how would that one sing? Silverio? Lorca He told us that, according to the old people, the echo of his voice “made the hair stand on end and the quicksilver in the mirrors opened up.” I wonder if it was more like Mairena and El CaracolI lean towards the Ortega of Cadiz Born in Seville, whose blood was made of a thousand cries of joy and sorrow from the history of his blessed land. And what would the voice of Antonio Monje The PlanetAlthough we can venture little about it, many will say that it would resemble that of Manuel Torres. AND Sweet Curro? With that nickname you'll tell me. And The NitriWhat would be the tone of voice of Enrique Mellizo, Mercé La Serneta o the trinity?
"Let's see when the payos finally invent the time machine! I ask to go to Cadiz between September 1826 and August 1828 to listen to the Planet at the Ball Theater»
La flamencology tells us about the afillá voice, deducing from the writings of The lonely man and a couplet referring to the son of Son with the Andonda, making the singer's voice correspond with a hoarse rooster. El Fillo, who in 1874 was called the Rubies of the cante flamencoThere are also those who listen to that rajo, that voice graze, that color, in Manuel Torres. And it is usually assumed that María Borrico o The Red Bottle they sang like that. If they were royal calluses They couldn't sing any other way. Although Frasco seems to have little experience.
The post-1956 generation valued the flamenco domestic and raised voices that hurt by their timbre, by the color. Going so far as to say of Thomas o Sernita, to name two aces, which they sang mu gachóThis school, wrongly called neoclassical, being totally "contemporary"” (1956-?), It values the timbre, the color of the voice, over the rest of the qualities of sound (pitch, duration and intensity, to name the other three). The more mess purer, a word that many people feel devotion to, as the film says: Triana pure and pureThe music becomes secondary; what matters is the timbre: hoarse, atavistic, visceral, raw. In my opinion, pure novel.
But who knows for sure how El Planeta or El Fillo sang? The four songs we've found by the Cadiz maestro don't tell us anything about it, only that he took to the stage at the Tacita theaters to perform them. Then there was the dance in Triana and the Assembly. And that he was thick and the references “to the monotonous cooing of its trills and cadences […] and chirrups”.
Mairena said that what he and his cousins sing is ancient, pure, and gypsy, and the current hubbub has arisen, where the racial steamroller has left many artists by the wayside. Perhaps it's because of new, impure, and idiotic artists. Half a century later, imagined purities, novelistic racism, and cartoon ancestors are still being defended. The music points in another direction. The meter is very African-American, the resulting rhythm a miracle of alchemy, like the harmonic system. And the melody? Despite the exercise in atavism flamenco carried out by the flamencoA more orthodox logy, I fear that the deep tunes, as I've already said, were not inherited but recreated, pure artifice, tailor-made, à la carte, gypsy melody, gypsy-like, malleable, tailor-made. In music, nothing manages to be pure, racial, or ancient; it is usually impure, mixed, and recent. Hence its richness.
Let's see when the payos finally invent the time machine! I ask to go to Cadiz between September 1826 and August 1828 to listen to the Planet at the Ball Theatre.
