In this article, the first in a series I'm going to dedicate to a golden age of the most traditional short plays, I'm going to take you on a little tour, not of the Royal Walls, but of some musical works from the repertoire of tonadillas, entremeses, sainetes, and festive farces of the 18th century in which heel-tapping is mentioned. Five thousand short pieces, with their handwritten scores, are preserved in the Madrid Municipal Library, in the cellars of the old Conde Duque barracks, where they keep hundreds of references that I already published a few years ago in my Annotated guide to pre-music and danceflamencos(1750-1808)In the ones I bring today we can intuit, without having to use too much imagination, some of the elements that shaped the dance flamenco as we know it today.
Let's begin the tour with the oldest one, an anonymous farce from 1761 entitled The Grape Harvest, in which the singer Casimira Blanco, known in the trade as The PortugueseHe sings with a "payo" style: "Come on, Juan, sing her a little tune, dance and jump... and let's make a little tune with our voices, our feet and hammers. The heels keeping the beat, tra tra tra tra trarratratá (the blacksmiths), the hammers will make the bugle, trin trin trin trin trin, (the carpenters), and the barrels will make the drum, tron tron tron tron." It was the great Poland Rochel, outstanding singer, especially gifted for gypsy roles, she who sang What a wiggle, and then a jump with heel-tapping… in the tune The Frenchman and the Maja de José Castel (no date). And in the farce of 1778 The kites, by the prolific Navarrese composer Blas de LasernaWhen Poland said, “Oh, I’m dying to dance seguidillas with heelwork!” There are the bolero dancers tapping their heels, for those who think this entire repertoire was danced in slippers, nothing could be further from the truth. That’s what happens when we rely on iconographic sources for everything related to the clothing of pre-Columbian artists.flamencos.
What is certain is that the flamenco footwork was appreciated by locals and visitors alike. Just look at the grand finale of... Blas de Laserna (no date) titled The role of Raboso, in which the Sevillian singer Mariana Raboso sings Upon seeing the foreigners dance the fandango, a dandy, they will dance the heelwork on top of a bell towerThis confirms once again how the 18th-century dance fandango (not to be confused with the 19th and 20th-century fandango, longer and more melodic, as opposed to the older, shorter, and danceable one) was danced. In the anonymous tonadilla The Tale of Saint Peter's Street, sang the woman from Murcia Manuela Guerrero"A lovely lady, gentlemen, from a certain neighborhood, sang these seguidillas at a fandango… it's impossible that there's anything more charming than the tapping of heels, it's the salt of Spain and the delight of Spaniards and the whole world." Of course! All this was sung before the ideologues of provincial memory made their best efforts to conveniently reduce everything that smacks of Spanishness to Murcian, Andalusian, Galician, Basque, or Catalan. No, in the end, all we'll have left is the Prado Museum. But let's continue, I'm getting sidetracked.
"Of course! All this was being sung before the ideologues of provincial memory went to great lengths to ensure that everything that smacks of Spanishness is conveniently reduced to Murcian, Andalusian, Galician, Basque, or Catalan. No, in the end, all we'll have left is the Prado Museum."
It was the public who were truly thrilled by the antics of their divas. Actresses and singers whose fans would go to their homes to find them, and, walking up Ave María, across Atocha and along Matute, arrive at the theaters of La Cruz, on the street of the same name, and El Príncipe, carrying them on their shoulders right to the door, as if they were bullfighters exiting through the main gate. The then-famous singer, my namesake Faustina Silva, in the anonymous tune Winter has arrived In 1778, he stated that "my patio likes a tap of heels, more than trills," criticizing the Italian-style warbling that so excited the upper classes of the time, who were crazy about the opera that was performed a few meters away, in the Caños del Peral, now the Royal Theater.
If you've made it this far, patient reader of old references, here are two more. The first, from 1790, I found in The lying tutor, whose lyrics I transcribe exactly as they appear in the score: «Catalina and Jucepillo, with tambourine and rattles, to amuse their cousin, the two sang happily. Shake it, cousin, shake it, for all the black people dance the cumbé, go the heel-tapping, it's very beautiful, it's a dance from Angola (achi). You can see it, elelé, for the cumbé, elelé, for the cumbé…». Here we have the cumbé and paracumbé dance, a dance of black people with heel-tapping.
And I've saved for last a reference featuring someone who was a paragon of grandeur, a real character like few others, and queen of the salt flats. I'm referring to María Antonia Fernández 'La Caramba'From Motril, who, after passing through Zaragoza, sang and danced for several seasons in the theaters of Cádiz, a necessary stop before reaching the Madrid court for any artist who wanted to make a career in the competitive world of comedians. She was surely the most celebrated of the tonadilleras until she retired to a convent, where she spent the last years of her life. To announce the tonadilla The nobleman's fright, of the most flamenco of the composers, the Barcelona native Pablo EsteveShe addresses her audience, singing: “To sing musketeers, my little tune to the law, I come dressed as a Maja, from head to toe, I come cheerful, I come salty, I come raw, I come cheeky, and ready to dance a zapateo that will bring joy.” Here we have not only the action of tapping heels in a fandango, but the zapateo as a genre. A solo of feet that could be the premonition of what decades later would become the famous zapateado of Cádiz, which would ultimately be the basis of the zapateo. flamenco.
Let this brief article serve as a humble defense of the authentic, to see if finally, even though these heel-tappings of that "Goyaesque" era may sound distant in time, we can manage to extol these majas, mothers of the bolero dancers and grandmothers of the flamenco dancers, who are, in the end, the same thing: singing and dancing artists who spearheaded a movement of identity exaltation against the French and Italian fashions imposed by the Bourbon court, which sought to sweep away the entire legacy of the golden Habsburg dynasty of the 17th century, when they reigned supreme. Lope, Tirso, Cervantes, Velázquez and CalderónAlthough, since we're in Spain, some will say odd, and others even. See you at the next station. ♦
