Title The bales of Pericón, new book by the journalist and researcher Javier Osuna, it is a nod to the well-known anecdote attributed to the flamenco singer Pericon of Cadizwho, with singular charm, spoke of a fantastical schooner that ran aground in Cádiz, leaving behind a valuable cargo of flamenco scores: something like the foundational treasure of this music. The same title that Osuna gave to a blog that has become a reference point for flamenco aficionados, and whose most interesting posts have just been compiled in a luxuriously published book by the Provincial Council of Cádiz.
When asked how Javier Osuna became a researcher, he immediately replies that “first came the passion, and it arose in a less than ideal context. There was no background in my family, nor did I have a favorable environment for it to develop.” flamenco flourished. Quite the opposite. My older brothers—especially the first two of four—set a very different musical standard in my house: Beatles, Credence, Hendrix, Dylan, Cat Stevens, Deep Purple, Janis, Pink FloydJoe Cocker, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Víctor Jara, Santana, Paco Ibáñez… Very beautiful music, but it didn't touch my heart, or at least not as much as… flamenco Then he would. It sprouted naturally in the streets of the neighborhood –San José–. As a child, he would read, engrossed, the poster for the Fiesta de la Parpuja that adorned the door of Casa Víquez on Dorotea Street, where he lived, every summer. Alfonso del Gaspar, with whose son he used to play ball.”
There, Osuna adds, “with the urban tribes and the dairy farms of the neighborhood, absorbed by the small sign, I mentally repeated their names like someone reciting a heroic list of Visigothic Kings: Juanito Villar, Naranjito de Triana, La Perla de Cádiz, Orillo del Puerto, Beni de Cádiz, Curro Malena, Pansequito, La Paquera de Jerez, Rancapino, Terremoto, María Vargas, Fosforito, Turronero, Lebrijano, Camarón de la Isla…From these last two I acquired a cassette tape of gas station displays, a Hand to hand Camarón and Lebrijanowhere José finished with a flamenco-style flamenco song using the little toy: I have a mat (bis) / where I sleep off my drunkennessAnd in another: Give me beans (twice) / and butter with pork rindsLebrijano, for his part, told a version of the tarara a beautiful bulerías, in my opinion even more beautiful than the one José later recorded in The Legend of Time with Ricardo PachonThat old tape, billiard-green in color, with a commercial title that looked more like a boxing slogan, opened a wonderful door for me to a new world, to the new world that would later arrive… of the white and green horse of day and night, galloping through, forcefully piercing the guts of my emotion; it 'moved the needle' inside me, as the Colombians say.”
Then came the first books of flamenco“I started devouring them and creating a personal library that greatly awakened my interest in Flemish historiography: Caballero Bonald y Colita with their Lights and shadows of the flamenco (text, today with more shadows than light); Ferdinand of Triana, with its essential photo gallery in Art and artists flamencos; big felix with its two volumes of Memory of flamenco (with a narrative more focused on the idealization of a process with idyllic reconstructions), Jose Blas Vega with its Life and cante by Mr. Antonio Chacon (outlining the paradigm of how a biography should be written), Ortiz New and their valuable transcriptions with Pepe de la Matrona, Tía Anica la Periñaca and Pericón de CádizWithout intending to, I acquired quite a bit of information, awakening in me an interest in research.”
The fact of playing the guitar, “self-taught, with a basic touch, just enough, very short on technique (especially in the right hand),” he points out, “opened up my knowledge of the revelry on-site in the beach huts, accompanying the Kiki de Trille, with a joint that was passed from mouth to mouth and bottles of wine that the public generously gave away, while the thirds of the bulerías album Samara, which had come out that year of seventy-seven, burst forth strongly from Kiki's mouth: The one who washed my handkerchief was a little Moorish gypsy girl / a Moorish girl from the Moorish quarter / she washed it in cold water / she hung it out to dry on the rosemary bushes…
"That old tape, billiard-green in color, with a commercial title that sounded more like a boxing slogan, opened a wonderful door for me to a new world, to the new world that would later arrive... of the white and green horse of day and night, galloping through, forcefully piercing the very core of my emotions. It 'moved the needle' inside me, as the Colombians say."
Based on a work that he edited Quorum Editores in 2002 and from participation in the Flamenco Encyclopedia from the Tartessos Publishing, decided to join the experience of opening a blog, which was launched in December 2012. “To paraphrase José Luis Ortiz Nuevo in his indispensable work The thousand and one stories of Pericón de CádizWhen it came to titling the blog, we gave a nod to the glorious chapter in which The Black Pudding He was telling Juan Pericón the beautiful metaphor of the origin of... jondo, through the bundles that contained the flamenco scores.”
Contrary to those who think that in the flamenco Everything has already been investigated, Osuna believes that “the doubts far outweigh the certainties and we know little compared to how much remains to be known, probably because it has taken a long time for scientific rigor to enter the studies flamenco“Yes,” he comments. “That said, the latest crop of researchers, especially those who have used blogs as a source of dissemination (Montemar, Cruzado, Bohórquez, Barberán, Faustino, Castro, Chaves…) have brought about a qualitative leap in the field of study, both in the use of methodology and primary sources, drawing on extensive documentary evidence. The result? Theories considered until relatively recently to be biblical have collapsed like Olea's house of cards. Hypotheses put forward from the early flamencoThe theories of the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, held as dogmas of faith, have turned out to be quite flimsy (when not downright shoddy) and conveniently constructed; and of course, they haven't withstood even the slightest serious scrutiny. Regarding the flamenco A construction had been made. A story. A fable built on invention and imagining what was unknown, like someone filling in a DNA sequence by inventing the nucleotides. flamenco"They were missing from the spiral of the story."
"That flamencology, initiated in 1955 by González ClimentShe never imagined that, instead of one, there were two Fillos and two Mahogany“That The planet (as I suspected) Demophilus) was a native of Cádiz and that his brother was the famous Luis Alonso to which the composer Geronimo Giménez He then dedicated two zarzuelas to her: Wedding of Luis Alonso y Luis Alonso's Dance; and both were uncles of Lazarus Quintana, that flamenco singer who was first announced in Madrid in 1846 and the first artist to receive the title of «cantaor de flamenco». THE Fernando Quiñones, because it is representative of the old era flamencoLogical and, in our opinion, one of the writers of his generation who best succeeded in their studies, he would have loved to know that Henry the Twin He recorded his superb Malagueña on a wax cylinder in 1894, under the beamed ceiling of the hall of Manuel Quirell, same room and house in which Manuel de Falla He then gave his first concert; that Paquirri Guanter He was not a glove maker by trade—as Fernando supposed—; that the bulería is documented for the first time in the press, in Cádiz in 1908; or that Magandé —not Macandé— participated in 1904 in the "gold rush" unleashed by the hardline columnists who gave rise to the tango of The old coinsAll of this has been known since 2008, that is, as a result of the «flamenco"Blogía," that is, the arrival and contribution of blogs flamencos ".
When asked if he is a supporter of to study the great figures separately, or the phenomenon flamenco as something collectiveHe responds: “In all studies, one must take into account the collective, the group's contribution, and then the historical context. Even in the subgenre of biographies, even though it is a treatise or study about a specific person, one must consider many peripheral aspects that will influence their personality: their place in the community, their sources of inspiration and nourishment, the political and social circumstances that surrounded them, and the living conditions during their lifetime; their way of life, and even more so in an art as collective as the flamenco, in which so many different ethnicities, so many distinct accents converged: from the Negroid element, the Gypsy people, the African influence in its rhythms, whose suffixes "ango" sprinkle the fandango and the tango; always the brown America behind it all and the entire flow of epic romances."
“Given that, in the absence of a phonograph to record voices—which did not occur until well into the second half of the 19th century—since artists did not have access to the scarce and arbitrary scores, due to a lack of musical knowledge, the schools of cante They were based on the invaluable oral transmission of the singing houses; and at the same time as they were being transformed and reworked canteIn its melodic, rhythmic, and literary lines (each performer gives it a personal touch), the styles, in a complex process, were created and recreated, full of nuances and more alive than ever. They survived centuries, despite the extreme pessimism and apocalyptic vision of the writers and musicians who approached and studied it, such as Demofilo in the 19th century and Manuel de Falla in the 20th, both of whom believed they were witnessing the death of art. flamenco, when in truth —paradoxically— he was more alive than ever and in the midst of the Golden Age, a period in which the largest and most qualified generation of encyclopedic flamenco singers were concentrated.”
On the other hand, Osuna denies being Cadiz-centric in flamenco matters“Absolutely not! A resounding no to navel-gazing and a yes to its status as a shared birthplace. That said, it's high time that historical justice was done to Cádiz and the Ports! Cádiz-centrism, by definition, is quite harmful, racist, and chauvinistic. And if you ask me, provincial. In fact, I am a firm believer—and if you have read my work, you know this—that it is impossible to separate Cádiz from its neighboring geographical circumstances and the historical territory of flamenco affiliation, that is, I repeat, Cádiz and the Ports: the Gypsy communities settled in the inner part of the Bay with Chiclana de la Frontera, San Fernando, Puerto Real, Puerto de Santa María, Rota, and Sanlúcar de Barrameda.”
"I am a firm believer that it is impossible to separate Cádiz from its neighboring geographical circumstances and the historical territory of flamenco affiliation, that is, Cádiz and the Ports: the gypsy communities settled in the inner part of the Bay with Chiclana de la Frontera, San Fernando, Puerto Real, Puerto de Santa María, Rota and Sanlúcar de Barrameda"
“However,” he clarifies, “I don’t buy into the tall tales—and I’m not referring to the ones the singer brought with her.” Golden Nugget of the Americas—but to the fabrications concocted in the argumentative workshop of the interests of this or that territory. First, because the earliest news appearing in the press of the first third of the 19th century originated in the southernmost coliseums: Teatro del Balón, Teatro Principal and in the early period of crystallization: 1820-1840 (fulfilling the metaphor of the bundles). Secondly, because Cádiz and the Ports, with its epicenter in El Puerto de Santa María, is the only founding territory flamenco who preserved the memory of an oral tradition of epic-type romances, an extraordinary work compiling romances already described by Cervantes en The little gypsy, in a running tone, corridos, corridas or carrerillas, carried out by its discoverer Luis Suarez Avila, which the Roma of El Puerto de Santa María and the Roma communities of the Bay of Cádiz preserved in their oral tradition for the safeguarding of epic texts of heroic deeds, of battles for territory; of Christian women, of Moorish governors, of the lances of traitorous Moorish kings who lost Valencia, of Count Sol, whom El Planeta brought from his native Cádiz to sing to and tell the Roma of Triana that great wars were being waged between Spain and Portugal. New Castilians with black bodies and gleaming bronze, who called themselves Bernardos and Carpio out of identification with the hero and to make their own the sorrows that the ballad narrated, being the custodians; the zealous guardians of chivalry; the last romantics of a centuries-old tradition written in the collective memory of an ethnic group, which knew how to give the world a lesson in the preservation of oral heritage, despite the shameful and terrible persecutions to which they were subjected.”
“A sector of the ballad tradition, epic-historical, which was unavailable throughout the Hispanic world and was preserved, at that time, only by the Gypsies of El Puerto de Santa María or those who had originated from or were familiar with El Puerto de Santa María. The case of The Bengal, who was the great-grandson of Pedro Niño The Sorcerer, a native of Puerto de la Cruz who was born in 1819, who, due to an adventure he had there with a certain Joaquinillo the Lamplighter He had to go to Triana. This Pedro Niño El Brujo was, in turn, the father of Juan José Niño López, which in 1916 picked him up Manrique de Lara; Manuel Manrique de Lara, the greatest collector of ballads, a series of epic-historical ballads. Even the events that occurred with the persecutions in the General Prison of the gypsies and the primitive tonás were witnesses of the territory: The little gypsies of the Port / were the most unfortunate / who were taken sentenced / to the mercury mines".
However, a topic as juicy as the relationship between flamenco and carnival is not included in these Bales of Pericón, “since it is a topic that we have practically exhausted in our work Cadiz, cradle of two cantesIn 2002. Until then, both worlds appeared antagonistic and separate, profoundly different and distant, and I believe that—modestly—we helped to disprove the prevailing belief that they were incompatible musical styles. Today, the historical connections that arose between the two musical traditions, due to their coexistence in the same city, are widely accepted. We have only included one entry: Fernando Quiñones and Carnival, a taboo?Because, in certain intellectual and literary circles, there remains a very condescending and elitist view of the music and texts of the historic Cádiz carnival. And to answer the chapter's question: yes, the carnival is a huge taboo for some scholars of Fernando's literary work, who are unaware of how much he studied it—suffice it to say that in his flamenco work From Cadiz and its cantes He dedicated an entire chapter to it—and how much it contributed to his story. In the last decade of his life, he changed his mind completely, but only for show, falling into contradictions that undermined the credibility of his argument: you can't have your cake and eat it too, just as you can't blame a city for dedicating time to writing choirs, while at the same time he was writing for a choir and traveling all over Cádiz and Andalusia giving carnival proclamations and charging you, of course. It doesn't wash, and I haven't read it in any scholar of Quiñones's work, whom, on the other hand, I greatly admire.”
How does the book enrich the materials that were already on your blog? “I think quite a lot,” Osuna replies. “The inclusion of six hundred illustrations greatly enhances the texts, with the convenience of footnotes. Experience tells me that it’s a mistake to place them at the end of the book, because nobody reads them. All of this is harmonized with impeccable layout, bearing the personal and professional stamp and the good stylistic taste of…” Arantxa Morales de la Fuente, which, together with Macarena Llovet"The magnificent print quality has made the book a beautiful work that the Publications Service of the Provincial Council of Cádiz, as a personal contribution to culture, has put at a fairly affordable price, I think below the quality it offers."
Finally, it is necessary to pause and consider the prologue of Ramon Soler“I have nothing but praise for him,” he notes. “He is probably the leading expert today on personal styles.” cante He has a multitude of publications and works to his name, and a well-earned reputation built on his rigor and ability. And he's also my friend. I was honored that he agreed to participate with us as an advisor in The Saint Cecilia Concert (1922-2022), both in the show that premiered in the Great Falla Theater On the very day of the Centenary, as in the subsequent book, in which he made an analysis of the nine cantes that were broken down in the Royal Philharmonic Academy of Santa Cecilia de Cádiz"...with a superb study. I believe that when one asks someone for a foreword, consciously or unconsciously, one is demonstrating enormous admiration for their writing style and their vision and integrity as a researcher. I am very grateful for his foreword and for the raisins he always brings me from his beautiful native Málaga, with which I make a top-notch liqueur."
Regarding the continuity of The bales of PericónThe author confirms that “they will continue as a blog, although without the forty-one entries that are now chapters in the printed book.” ♦
