Flamenco

Andalusian song, guitar and dance, driven by twelve-beat cycles and deep emotion.

Related

ModernRhythmClassical GuitarCastanets

Flamenco is the song, guitar, dance and handclaps of Andalusia, binding performers and listeners through twelve-beat cycles and deep feeling.

Origins and era

From the late eighteenth century into the nineteenth, Roma, Moorish and Jewish communities in Andalusia combined song, dance and guitar into flamenco. From the 1860s cafes cantantes gave it a paid stage. Records and opera flamenca widened its audience. Paco de Lucia and Camaron de la Isla took nuevo flamenco worldwide, and UNESCO listed it in 2010.

What you hear

Start with compas. Solea and bulerias run in twelve-beat cycles with accents in different places, grouping as 3 plus 3 plus 2 plus 2. Guitar uses rasgueado, picado and tremolo, and harmony often lands on a Phrygian cadence. Singing carries microtones and a torn timbre, handclaps and jaleo belong to the rhythm, and dancers' feet answer the guitar.

Key figures

Paco de Lucia made the guitar a solo voice, Camaron de la Isla pushed song to its limit, and Tomatito continued the guitar line. Carmen Amaya and Antonio Gades took dance into film and theatre, while Enrique Morente set it beside rock and jazz.

Lineage

Andalusian folk song, Roma music, Moorish and Latin American rhythm feed in; nuevo flamenco, flamenco jazz and fusion pop come out. Dance and song share one stage.

Common misunderstandings

Flamenco is not only guitar music, since song and dance are central. Nor is it Spain's national music, as other folk traditions exist outside Andalusia. The cajon is not ancient; it entered flamenco only in the 1970s.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Flamenco（Oxford University Press），用于核对帕洛与年代
• Timothy Mitchell, Flamenco Deep Song（Yale University Press, 1994），用于核对歌唱、舞蹈与社会背景

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.