Summer in compás: the festivals

I just finished reading about the extensive course program offered by this website which just got under way. Without going into details or making this a promotional text, the variety of detailed topics and expert instructors associated with it is extraordinary, check it out for yourselves. Six decades of my life swimming in the vast sea of flamenco, and I feel like a beginner learning to count to twelve. "Come on, come on," says the imaginary friend renting a little room in my head, "it can't be that bad," flashing one of his ironic smiles.

I suppose at this point, I have to stick with the flamenco I absorbed through the first natural channels available to me: in singing, the wise Elena Marbella, a disciple of Antonio Chaqueta, along with the richness of the Hispavox anthology, not to overlook my guitar maestro, Mario Escudero. Then there were those gatherings with friends, weddings held in lean times with a banquet of potato chips and beans, the informal parties at Pepe’s Morón place, featuring a cast that often included Anzonini, Miguel Funi, or the divine Fernanda, and, maybe even one of the Gastor guitarists, perhaps Diego himself, or one of his nephews. “Enough of that useless sentimental stuff!” (says the inner voice fueled by neurons worn out by cheap red wine). I’ve got my flamenco, and everyone else, each individual has his or her own as well. As I write these words, the summer season of the big flamenco festivals that began to appear in the nineteen-fifties is being prepared. And what a jolly idea, this year’s Gazpacho Andaluz de Morón whose first edition took place in 1963, will be a tribute to the Potaje Gitano de Utrera (1957), the younger brother will honor the elder, as a way of celebrating the birth of a format inspired in the Newport Jazz Festival which, according to the late flamenco journalist Alfonso Eduardo Pérez Orozco, caught the attention of Antonio Mairena who copied the organization for a similar type of event for flamenco.

«The inner voice starts nagging again: so what do people want, to applaud the performance of others, or clap along with the flamenco beat? These are two very different functions: flamenco as spectacle or as participation expressing the human condition»

The first humble festivals, with relatively few artists and a small audience, managed to stir up interest in more and more programs of this type, and the long hot summers of southern Spain filled with the best singing, dancing and guitar-playing, while also providing a more generous source of income than what had been the norm until then in back-room gatherings, small local salons and roadside inns. The Reunión de Cante Jondo of La Puebla de Cazalla, the Caracolá Lebrijana, the Festival de Cante Grande de Ronda, the Festival de Casabermeja, el Festival de Cante Jondo de Antonio Mairena, the Festival de Cante Grande “Fosforito” and the Fiesta de la Bulería among many others, steered us away from the fandango craze, as was the will of the great Mairena, and cultivated popular interest in the repertoire of western Andalusia based primarily on soleá, siguiriya, tonás and bulerias.

In the heyday of those early festivals, there were usually no "academic sessions", lectures, or exhibitions in the days leading up to a single-performance event. And this is not to criticize. I believe that single-day festivals can still be a viable alternative format for people from out of town who can't stay overnight or simply want to experience flamenco without getting into intellectual complexities.

The inner voice starts nagging again: “So what do people want, to applaud the performance of others, or clap along with the flamenco beat?” These are two very different functions: flamenco as spectacle or as participation expressing the human condition.

Happy summer!