Revised Preface May 23, 2002
This article was written for a grad class in Ethnomusicology I had the pleasure of taking under Dr. Anthony Seegar during my years at Indiana University-Bloomington. The piece represents what I could uncover about flamenco in the course of a semester in 1987, when it was still considered a rather obscure ethnic musical form. In the years since writing this, flamenco has evolved and grown wonderfully, becoming a significant influence on contemporary music, greatly influencing the entire latin movement we see and hear today, and spawning a genre of its own: nuevo-flamenco.
As the world continues to spin, I continue to aspire to my own realization of “living flamenco”. As I mention in the piece, I consider flamenco to be the apex of guitar playing, and the challenge of playing the style with some degree of authenticity and panache is one that will occupy my practice time for the rest of my life.
I really enjoyed the research. I hope you enjoy your reading.
BTW, I got an A. =o)
~~~ Jeff Foster
- Recommended listening: La Barrosa by Paco de Lucia (1987): [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.stringdancer.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/La_Barrosa.mp3″]
Introduction
What if our lives were lived with immediacy and passion; with wine, dancing, and music-making everyday; with no thought of ambition, acquisition, or high-finance, but with careful attention to the cognition of truth, beauty, spirit, joy, and the nature of suffering? Involved as we are with our late-twentieth century, North American quest for houses, pools, cars, high-tech accouterments and bulging bank accounts, we may sometimes wearily sit down (in the hot tub) after an exhausting day at work (where we suffer from paper cuts and stale coffee) and wonder about a life better-lived. Who has not, I wonder, dreamed of being a Gypsy; nomadic, proud, free; running, to the sound of savage guitars, around the fringes of society. I think this is a most common feeling in our age, or any age which finds itself in one way or another suckling the hard-pressed teat of civilization. Perhaps we know that our possesive ways do not constitute the path to happiness. In our quiet awareness that real freedom is to be found within our mind and body and not in our portfolios, we turn for recreation to sources which can feed this dying spring within us, which can reinforce in us a feeling of connectedness with the Earth, with nature, with the fundamental impulses of humanity throughout time.
This is what I hear in Flamenco, the music of Andulucia, southern Spain. When I listen to Sabicas, the renowned Spanish guitarist, play his Campina Cordobesa (Serrana), I hear virtuosity, yes, but I also hear the beauty of the simple life extolled. I see the farmlands through which the caravans would travel, and the smoke of the night-time fires, with wine, music, dance, and joyful shouts of ‘ole!’ Perhaps this is a highly romanticized vision, but it appeals to me as an American deeply involved with my appointment calendar. And I suspect that for the Gypsies, who embraced romance and passion (and the art of flamenco) above all else, this is what they would hear as well.
This paper is concerned primarily with the history of the gypsies, and of the guitar and its role in flamenco music. Details regarding the technique of playing the guitar, or of song or dance, all of which require much elaboration, are not focused upon here. It is hoped that a sense of the difficult traditional gypsy life will adequately presented, and a clear connection drawn between their personal hardship and the nature of their musical expression.
Origins of the Spanish Guitar
To find the beginning of the history of flamenco is to look for the origins of humankind, of their ancient musical forms, and especially to look into the development of the primary tool of flamenco (outside of voice and dance) – the guitar. The latter is no easy task, and one cannot aspire to lay to rest continued speculations. As D.E. Pohren states in Lives and Legends of Flamenco (Society of Spanish Studies, 1964) regarding the origins of the guitar, ”In truth, the family tree of stringed instruments is as vague as civilization’s early history.” (p.254)
In any event, we can start with the Bible, which contains a reference to ‘the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe’ (”His [Jabal’s] brother’s name was Jubal, the first musician-the inventor of the harp and flute.” Genesis 4:21/Living Bible Version).1 In The Flamenco Guitar by David George (Society of Spanish Studies, 1964), it is suggested that ”the guitar was played in Egypt long before the gypsies or the wandering children of Israel made their way through the Red Sea.”2
Preceeding Jubal are bas-reliefs (as of 1964 housed in the Netherland’s Leiden Museum) discovered in the tomb of one of the Kings of Thebes from the Eleventh and Twelfth Egyptian Dynasties (3762-3702 BC) where a figure-eight shaped body, with a neck resembling a guitar, can be clearly seen. The Phoenicians, colonizing the Mediteranean around 1000 BC, possibly brought this guitar from Trye to Tarshish, the ancient city located near the mouth of the Guadalquivir in Lower Andalucia.3
The cithara romana (also known as the kithara asiria), a sort of Latin zither, existed from the time of Christ (during Roman occupation of Seville) to around the sixth century, when the fall of the Spanish Roman Empire saw the cithara fall into disuse.4 The invading Visigoth’s (200-300 AD) attempted to revive old Roman culture in the peninsula, and this period saw the development of the guitarra latina, an instrument resembling a small Spanish guitar, with four courses of strings (four sets of double strings) apparently derived from the guitarra romana.5
During this time in the Middle East, the kithara asiria was evolving. The Cantigas of King Alfonso el Sabio (the Wise), thirteenth century illuminated manuscripts housed in the library of El Escorial, contain illustrations of the guitarra latina. They also contain pictures of the guitarra morisca, descended more directly from the Graeco-Assyrian zither, and introduced into Spain during the eighth century Moorish invasion. It was a three-stringed, oval-shaped similar to the Moorish laud, or lute. It is speculated that the idea of four single-strings, as opposed to four sets of double-strings, is the principle characteristic of the Moorish instrument to be incorporated into the design of the Latin version. These two instruments, the guitarra latina and guitarra morisca, coexisted from 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492. But the flat-bottomed Latin version eventually came to dominate. This is the predecessor of the Spanish guitar we know today.
In the sixteenth century a fifth string had appeared, though, as might be expected, the identity of the innovator is open to dispute. Most authorities claim that the Persian prince, poet, and musician, Hassan Ali Ben Nali Zyriab (AKA “the Blackbird”), sent in the ninth century by the Caliph of Baghdad to the Caliph of Cordoba, Abderramann II to teach stringed instruments, is the inventor of the fifth string. Others prefer to credit Vicente Espinel (1570) as the innovator, though evidence would suggest that he merely popularized its use. With this development the Spaniards finally claimed the guitar as their own, and the guitarra latina was christened ‘the Spanish Guitar’.
Two centuries later, the sixth and (as far as the Flamenco guitar is concerned) final string was added. 6 This is generally credited to the monk Padre Basilio (aka Miguel Garcia), an excellent classical guitarist and instructor of King Carlos IV, Queen Maria Luisa, and the famous concert artist, Dionisio Aguado (Pohren, Lives and Legends… p.255).
In 1799, Frederico Moretti published his book on the six-string guitar, marking the end of the competition between the guitarra latina and the guitarra morisca. From this point in time, ”the epoch of the modern six-string Spanish guitar began, the lute was consigned to Europe or the convent or the drawing rooms of the ninas bien, the ‘the king of instruments’ dominated the musical scene.” (George, p.27)
David George sums up his history of the guitar thusly:
- For five thousand years and probably more the guitar has been cultivated by an immense variety of people. It was carried by the troubador from India, Persia, Pakistan, and Egypt, through the Pillars of Hercules to the shores of Tarshish. The names of the guitarists are lost, as are the names of the guitarerros. So are most of the names of the troubadors who sang of love and joy and sorrow in a hundred forgotten languages. (p.29)
And with this original poem (p.30):
The Gypsy Troubador
Where do you come from troubador,
Guitarista gitano?
- I come, my lady, from Andalucia,
The land of the green, green lemon.
Why are you sad, troubador?
Why are your songs so painful?
- I have left a little calli behind,
Under the bridge of Triana.
Do not lament, O troubador,
Are there not other women?
- I took her down to the river,
Under a gypsy moon.
I covered her with a mantle of mint.
I crowned her with lillies and jasmine.
Do you not have other songs?
Mas alegre? Mas chico?
- I took her down to the Guadalquiver.
The grass was wet with stars.
But they followed us with lanterns and knives.
The willows let go of their leaves.
How handsome you are, O troubador,
With your red sash and green satin!
- The horns of the moon gored the darkness.
Six shadows fell on the shore.
The horns of the moon pierced the mantle of mint.
And stained the lillies and jasmine.
What green eyes you have, troubadour.
How bewitching and dangerous!
- They left their knives by the Guadalquiver.
The willows wept in the water.
They came in their carts from Cordoba
They came from Cadiz and Jerez.
The Beginnings of Flamenco
Contrary to popular belief, the gypsies in fact were not the sole creators of Flamenco, ”that most difficult of arts” (Andreas Segovia). In his book The Art of Flamenco (Editorial Jerez Industrial, 1962), Donn E. Pohren succinctly presents the results of his many years as a flamencologist researching the origins and background of the art:
[Flamenco] has been traced, through numerous theories and much stimulated guesswork, to such diffuse countries as Morocco, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Israel, and to the East and Far East in general. Theoreticians claim a strong Byzantine influence…. Particularly prevalent are the Arabic, Indian, Jewish, and Byzantine influences, which is natural enough, as these cultures have all played an important part in Spain’s development. Regardless of its origin, however, credit has to be given to the gypsies, flamenco’s main perpetuators and interpreters, and the Andaluces of southern Spain, for the development of flamenco to the position it holds today as one of the world’s most intricate and moving arts. (p. 39)
Pohren asserts that the generally accepted view of when the gypsies came to Andalucia is traced to their persecution and expulsion from India by the horsemen of Tamerlane in 1400. Their route is placed through East Asia, where they ”eventually told fortunes and stole their way across Russia, the Slavic countries, Germany, and France, leaving many tribes along the way, until the remaining tribes finally arrived in Barcelona around the year 1447…” (p.39) .
At least one historian, Jose Carlos de Luna, maintains that many centuries prior to this, Gypsies (dubbed gitanos de la betica) had migrated from India or even further East, to Andalucia by way of Mesopotamia and Egypt, through North Africa, and on across the Straight of Gibraltar. Later scholars have backed the theory of an earlier migration through the study of linquistics. Speculations on the Gypsy migrations led nineteenth century philologists August F. Pott and Franz Xavier von Miklosich to note that, about 1000 AD, the Aryan dialects of India were changing into the forms heard today on the subcontinent. Romany, the lanquage of the Gypsies (who call themselves Rom – ”a man of our own race”’) in Europe, contained some, but not all of these changes (Gypsies: Wanderers of the World; Bart McDowell, National Geographic Special Publications, 1970, p.22). They concluded that Gypsies must have left India about a thousand years ago.
In any event, it is known that as the Christians were reclaiming Andalucia from the Moors, who had ruled for 700 years, gypsies were making their way to southern Spain, to finally arrive just after the Christian triumph, and immediately prior to the first voyage of Columbus. In Spain, the Christians established a policy of peaceful co-existence with all existing cultures. This included the gypsies for a brief period, until the dawn of the sixteenth century, when it was determined that Spain should rid itself of ‘undesirable elements’.
Ferdinand and Isabella, in January, 1499, passed laws ordering the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews, followed by orders that gypsies without useful employment (given their vagabond lifestyle, this meant essentially all gypsies) take to the road and proceed out of the country. Those who did not obey the rulings were treated to severe persecution (e.g. banishment, whipping, mutilation of the ears, or lifelong slavery). This decree was the first of over a hundred such measures enacted over the next three hundred years which condemned gypsies (often for no other offence than by merely being found traveling through a town; using their own language or dress; or allegations of cannibalism concocted by superstitious or malicious individuals).7
Thus it was that these three disparate cultures, Jewish, Arabic, and Gypsy, ”found themselves united against a common foe – the hated Christians.” (Pohren, Art of Flamenco, p.40). They banded together, joined shortly by Christian fugitives and dissenters, taking refuge in the mountains and, when in need of food and provisions, raided Christian communities and caravans. It is at this point in history, when these persecuted peoples pooled their ancient traditions and influences, their religious and folk music, together with the ”fiery gypsy temperament and genius for improvisation” (Pohren, p.40) that we find the beginnings of the Flamenco musical form taking shape.
The origins of the term ‘flamenco’, while open to dispute, is probably most credibly traced to the mispronunciation of the Arabic words ‘felag’ and ‘mengu’, which means ”fugitive peasant”. Arabic was a common language in Andalusia at that point in time, and this term (felag-mengu) was most likely borrowed and used to refer to all the persecuted people hiding in the mountains. Eventually the Spanish use of the term became ‘flamenco’, until the fugitives themselves took it as their cultural identity and, by extension, the name of their music.
Pohren writes:
The main form of flamenco at that time, the cante jondo, expressed the suffering of these outlawed people, who through the years were condemned to serve in the galleys, in chain gangs, and in the Spanish army in America, were prohibited to talk their own language, and who, during one prolonged period [referred to above], suffered the death penalty, often by torture, for just belonging to a wandering or outlawed band. Somehow their spirit remained unbroken, and their mode of expression – their flamenco – developed to magnificent heights during the centuries, culminating in the Cafe Cantante period of the last century. (Art of Flamenco p.41)
The Golden Age of Flamenco
Spain indeed embraced the guitar as had no other country. While the guitar enjoyed some favor in Italy, France, Germany, and other countries, the Spanish aristocracy enthusiastically accepted the instrument as their own. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in fact, the guitar was their instrument of choice, with several prominent classical composers writing for guitar, and with the acceptance, appreciation, and support of royalty.
In the 1700’s, however, the popularity of the guitar declined, due in part to changing musical tastes which turned to the emerging violin’s brilliant sound and emotive power, and also as a result of the guitar coming to be associated more and more with the gypsies. ”It’s habitat was no longer the concert stage or the royal court but the lowly street-corner cafe. The concert guitarist had put it down; the ‘vulgar’ guitarist picked it up.”(George, p.27)
But tastes evolved once more, and in the early 1800’s the flamenco guitar again began attracting some attention. As the world started to hear and appreciate the intricate music of the gypsies, guitarists too started to develop. Flamenco had, prior to 1835-42, been a peasant art. The cante, or song, was traditionally sung without accompaniment (other than palmas {hand-claps}, or beating on tables), the guitar considered subordinate to the singer of the cante, an enhancement but not essential. Also, few gypsies could afford an instrument until it became professionally profitable for them as artists. The early style of playing is often considered ‘primitive’ in the sense that few flourishes and embellishments were used, and most guitarists knew only the cantes and bailes (dances) of his particular region of Andalucia.
Around 1842 the first cafe cantantes opened (in Seville, the Calle de Lombardo), and the Golden Age of Flamenco had begun. For the first time dancers, singers, and guitarists were brought together in a professional setting, and the guitarists had the opportunity to learn and accompany all the diverse, difficult styles of song and dance from other regions. Naturally, this intense learning experience, sharpened by hours and hours of performing in the cafes, refined and developed the guitar playing of the young artista flamencos immensely. The audience, which did not always understand the singing, could always relate to the sounds of the guitar. Soon the guitarists were inventing all sorts of crowd-pleasing techniques with which they asserted themselves for the attention of the audience. 8 This was the arrival of the flamenco guitar soloist.
The crowds loved the excitement that these burgeoning maestros produced, as did the cafe owners, obviously. The soloists were paid more, and the competition became even more fierce for the relatively few solo chairs available. But as the competition heated up and the solo guitarists resorted more and more to virtuosic tricks and flash, their playing became more commercialized, consciously designed to give the public what it wanted: more entertainment and less of the ‘depressive’ music that is the soul of flamenco. George writes, ”…as he became a soloist, he became less and less flamenco – less jondo [deep] in the traditional sense….Divorced from the cante it became a sophisticated spectacle of technique and virtuosity, devoid of that primitive, earthy feeling essential to flamenco.” (p.28)
By 1910, the Golden Age was waning. The cafes cantantes closed down, and the artistes flamencos were back on the road, this time not in rag-tag caravans but in slick concert attractions, replete with entourage. The production values increased dramatically, large-stage presentations were the rage, and flamenco, the home-made music of fugitive peasants, became a tourist attraction for Spain.
Nonetheless, it should be recognized that all music which captures the imagination of a larger public (particularly in this century, with the proliferation of mass media means for dissemination and promotion) falls prey to commercialization and exploitation. The decline of the original context and concept of flamenco should not harden the modern music lover to the enjoyment and cultural enrichment which can be derived from hearing a solo guitar, one of the most beautiful of instruments, being well-played. In the midst of gross commercialization, it is also true that many artists – guitarists, singers, and dancers alike – are researching and returning to the source of flamenco as much as possible, attempting to recapture the depth and duende (the indescribable soul or essence) of flamenco. Some of the modern Andalucian performers, such as Paco de Lucia and Paco Pena, are playing truly amazing guitar, and should not be summarily dismissed if they do not live in caves and suffer persecution as did the creators of their art form. Any art form must grow and evolve to survive, however much to the dismay of the old aficionados. The gypsies gave us one of the most intricate, difficult, and beautiful folk arts the world has ever known, and its survival as an art form is dependent on the further growth and development of the artists who continue to explore it.
The music of the gypsies was originally an expression of sadness, of pain and suffering, of persecution. An old cantaora known as Tia Anica la Pirinaca once said, ”Cuando canto a gusto me sabe la boca a sangre” (”When I sing as I like, I have a taste of blood in the mouth”).9 The Spanish are sometimes accused of possessing a morbid personality, obsessed with death and suffering. But it is this very depth of human emotion which they cherish that brings the fire to their art, the passion to everything they do and say.10 It is this emotional content that is the very core of flamenco.
Conclusion
A traditional flamenco juerga (party) is a combination of singing (cante), dancing (baile), and guitar playing (toque), with rhythm accentuation and recitation (jaleo). Dinner and wine begin the evening, which will usually erupt into light-hearted playing, singing and dancing in the early morning hours. More wine lubricate the throats and hearts of the gypsies.
Eventually the mood mellows, and the guitar begins a slow, melancholy tune, such as a Siguiriyas, and as the duende deepens, a singer starts to sing, with great emotion and a sense of tragedy. Weeping may be heard, as the ”sluggish, persistent call of the Soleares (loneliness) …began, and the despondency deepened…a barefoot girl was dancing…in a tortuous way…in the superb manner that the moment demanded…a pureness of dance that somehow had the effect of exulting the crowd, while at the same time intensifying their desolation.” (Pohren, Art of…p.43). This is the culmination of flamenco, the perfect moment when all the elements are ”combined in a rare purity of expression.” (ibid) Eventually, the guitar strumming dies at the right moment. ”We were all very quiet, completely entranced, a little ashamed of our raw emotions, and yet savoring the impact of the experience that we knew would rarely be repeated….Further performing was impossible. Everything had been said.” (ibid)
From the point of view of a guitarist, flamenco music, harmonically simple, rhythmically complex, and emotionally charged, is perhaps the apex of guitar playing. The traditional, jondo style (such as Diego del Gastor and Manitas de Plata) is rich with earthy passion, while the more modern players (such as Paco de Lucia) are not afraid to mix the traditional music with elements of jazz, with which flamenco shares the emphasis on improvisation.
And particularly, the technique involved in flamenco is formidable indeed. While the left hand is required to perform lightning-fast arpeggios and scalar runs, it is the right, plucking, hand which really gets a workout. The rest-strokes of the fingers (a hammering technique, usually utilizing the index and middle fingers in fast scalar passages called falsetas; hardly a ‘rest-ful’ technique!) is most difficult to do quickly and fluidly. The rapid ‘strumming’, rasgueado (a complex technique requiring complete independence of each of the right-hand’s digits), is a mind-boggling system of rhythmic attacks upon the strings that only the most dedicated guitarist will ever master. It is found that, even within the traditional restraints of form which flamenco places upon the guitarist, the boundaries of possible improvisational approaches to the music are infinite. All this, of course, only addresses the issue of technique. The deep emotional content/impact of good flamenco makes very special demands upon the guitarist, and only the very gifted artist can respond with the kind of life-commitment necessary to excel at the music.
It is sometimes asserted by purists (often from Spain, and generally from Andalucia), that in order to play true flamenco one must be gypsy ‘on all four sides’ (pure-blooded). Otherwise, one cannot know the life that spawns the music. 11 This argument exhibits a fair degree of ethnocentricity to which the proud gypsies are prone. It is natural to feel, after centuries of persecution, that those who are descended from your grandfather’s enemies have no natural empathy for, or right to, the music which dried his tears. I cannot argue with this sentiment — though I feel that the enlightened view is to see the desire of ‘outsiders’ to absorb a traditional music form as one way of bridging the ancient gaps of enmity.
It is odd how things turn. The present author is himself predominantly of German descent, his ancestors having come to America about two hundred years ago. During WW II, proportionately more gypsies than Jews were massacred by the Nazi’s. And today I listen to and love the sound of the flamenco guitar, and feel for the gypsies a great compassion. I practice my flamenco, and aspire to do the form some degree of justice one day. I may not be gypsy, but I play, like the old gypsy singer Manolito El de Maria said when asked why he sang, ”Because I remember what I have lived.”12
Copyright 1987 Jeff Foster. All Rights Reserved.
NOTES
1. One theory has it that gypsies descended from Cain, marked and doomed to wander as fugitives and vagabonds. One of Cain’s children took two wives: “The name of one was Adah and the name of the other Zillah.” (Genesis 4:19) “Adah bore Jabal, who was the father of such as dwell in tents.” (4:20) His brother’s name was Jubal, the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe” (4:21) And “Zillah, she also bore Tubalcain, an instructor of every artifice in brass and iron.” (4:22). Tents, harps, brass, and iron; ancient gypsy trademarks. Perhaps the gypsies are correct when they say that they invented everything, including the Spanish guitar! (Ref. The Flamenco Guitar, David George 1969, The Society of Spanish Studies-Madrid p.98)
2. ibid. Also, the Babylonian excavations of Bismaya have uncovered perhaps the oldest record of musical instruments. A vase shard of lapis lazuli (c.4000 BC) depict musicians playing a five-string harp and a seven-string lyre. Later records (3200-2400) show Egyptian singers, dancers, and guitarists in performance. And in La Guitarra y los Guitarristas Jose de Azpiazu asserts that the ancestor of the instrument is from Egypt circa 1000 BC. (p.98)
3. ibid. p.25.
4. Pohren speculates that Hindu musicians could have introduced the kithar asiria to Spain while visiting Cadiz before the coming of the Romans, perhaps during the reign of the Greeks, from 500-250 BC. (Lives and Legends of Flamenco, p. 254)
5. Saint Isadore of Seville described this instrument in Book III of Etymologies (c. 600 AD). David George records in his notes: “Carved on a stone tomb in Normandy is a guitarra latina dated around the eighth century. Another is carved on the portico of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, dated 1888. The troubadours of Provence and elsewhere, who were frequent guests at Moorishjuergas when Andalucia was “the European Baghdad”, had a great many stringed instruments to choose from. One writer mentions 112 different kinds, among them the cistern, the cither, the cittern, the gaifar, the guiterna, the gittern, the gythorn, the cistola, the citale, and something called the cetera. The guitarra morisca was well distributed in France and Lombardy during the eighth century under the name of guiterne mouresque. The guitarra latina was known to the court of Henry VIII as the Spanish guitar. The Archpriest of Hita, in his fourteenth century Libro del Buen Amor, mentions these two instruments. (p.96)
6. While the Flamenco guitar always has six strings, its cousin, the Classic guitar, will occasionally deviate, with seven, eight, or ten strings. Not to be confused is the modern twelve-string guitar, which is a six-course instrument (six sets of double-strings) tuned similarly to the standard six-string guitar.
Structurally similar regarding the body shape, neck dimensions, and choice of top woods (spruce), there are subtle yet significant differences between the two instruments. The Flamenco guitar is lighter, made of cypress for the back and sides, whereas the Classic is made generally of rosewood or maple. The bridge of the Flamenco lies closer to the top than the CLassic, with an inclination toward the fingerboard absent on the Classic, flamenco players preferring a faster, more fluid action to the stiffer, darker tone of the Classic. Both instruments are strung with nylon strings (formerly gut), though the tension is lighter on the Flamenco set, again facilitating a quick action. Traditionally, friction peg tuning, similar to the system employed by the viol string family, is used on the Flamenco, though this is changing as younger players opt for the easier tuning provided by the use of machine tuners like those used on the Classic for years. The Flamenco guitar is characterized by a distinctive, bright, percussive timbre appropriate for the intense rhythmic approach of the music. The Classic is darker, deeper, and more balanced, able to produce the wide range of tone necessary for concert classical music.
7. Felix Grande (Flamenco…a taste of blood in the mouth. UNESCO- Courier, Oct.’84, p.31) elaborates on the absurd nature of the persecution that hounded the heels of the gypsies:
One law forced them to live in small towns, another forbade them to live in small towns. One law reguired them to live among non-gypsies, another reguired them to keep away from non-gypsies. They were liable to prosecution if they bought or sold livestock at fairs….One edict condemned them to be transported to America, another refused them permission to travel there. One law sought to separate male from female gypsies in order to ensure the extinction of this “infamous race”. Another decreed that their children should be taken away from them and placed in institutions. Yet another allowed gypsies to be hunted down even inside churches; this was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the reign of Phillip V, when even a non-gypsy parricide could find temporary asylum in a place of worship. This law was an exact replica of a measure adopted earlier in the United Kingdom. Several laws allowed constables to shoot gypsies on sight if they were caught outside of the quarters assigned to them. This persistent campaign lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. It was then that the first flamenco songs were heard in Andalucia.
8. This strikes me as resoundingly similar to the motivation behind the development of rock and roll guitar playing a century later!
9. “Flamenco…a taste of blood in the mouth”. by Felix Grande. UNESCO Courier-Oct. ’84, p.31.
10. A state of being which resembles that of the people of Africa, which gave birth in North America to the blues, another music conceived in the suffering of the people (again, perhaps not so coincidentally, by white Christians), and possessing (originally) the same sort of raw emotional power which authentic flamenco displays. We also see, through the commercialization of the blues and the pandering of blues artists to the tastes of an audience enamoured of the sound-form of the blues but not necessarily the ‘depressing’ lyric-content, the same kind of ‘watering-down’ of the intrinsic and fundamental emotionality of the music.
”The jondo [profound or deep] flamenco is the means by which a manic-depressive society expresses its black moods. Serious and melancholy, it is comparable, emotionally, with the authentic blues of the Negros of the southern United States.” (Pohren, Art of… p.43-4)
11. Again, a correlation: it sounds like the attitude of many blues enthusiasts.
12. Grande, …a taste of blood in the mouth, p.31.
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