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El Cante: Flamenco: A Guide for the Perplexed
| Article
# : |
20682 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
5,155 Words |
| Author
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Paul Shalmy
Paul Shalmy is an American writer living in the Spanish
province of Serville. Part of his twenty years there has been
spent with the Andalusian Gypsies. |
An old flamenco singer had a wealthy friend who loved his singing. This gentleman came to visit as often as he could. He would ply the singer with food and drink, and the two of them would talk till dawn about the mysteries of the music they loved. Sometimes the singer would sing, but mostly he talked and confided in his friend everything that he knew about flamenco singing. As the old man was poor and his friend wealthy and a gentleman, the friend always found a way to leave behind a little money.
One night the old man, feeling death near, said to his friend, "I'm not long for this world. Since you've been a loyal and generous admirer and love the art of flamenco and spared no effort to get to the truth of it, I must tell you something: Everything I've told you these past thirty years about flamenco singing is a lie."
The next evening the gentlemen dropped by his club for a drink. He gathered his friends round and recounted the story, relishing every detail. Eyes winked with delight, and stomachs heaved with laughter. The gentleman and his friends were laughing at the fineness of the singer's mischief, a time-honored form of recreation in that land. But their mirth did not blind them to the profundity of the old man's game, the relevance of his remark to his own delicate moment and a lifetime spent singing flamenco. In the words of one of the verses:
En este mundo todo es mentira No hay mas verdad que la muerte No hay quien me contradiga. In this world everything's a lie The only truth is death No one can contradict me.
Such life is in Lower Andalusia. Such are the truths of flamenco.
An Andalusian Art
Flamenco is an Andalusian art. This fact is sometimes given lip service but rarely it's due. More often people are prone to refer to it as "the musical expression of the Spanish soul." If flamenco gives expression to anything beyond what the singer, for instance, is singing in the song, verse-by-verse, at the moment of the singing, it is to the culture of the Andalusian people. It is their soul music.
Andalusia, Spain's Deep South, comprises the eight southernmost provinces of the Iberian Peninsula: Seville, Cadiz, Huelva, Cordoba, Malaga, Granada, Almeria, and Jaen. What distinguishes it culturally from the rest of the country
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