Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain by William Washabaugh

Author:William Washabaugh [Washabaugh, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781317134862
Google: gH0GDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-15T03:21:45+00:00

Figure 7.1 Centerfold of the booklet that accompanies the CD ‘Flamenco por Andalucía, España y la humanidad’

After listening to these tracks, one might reasonably conclude that this 2005 recording is an unsurprising example of regional patriotism. It consists of predictably intense expressions of regional pride by people whose interests were suppressed for 40 years. However, two features of this recording distinguish it from most other anthem-projects while simultaneously anchoring it solidly in the historical tradition of flamenco. The first is the heavy role played by lyrics. The second is the solo rendition of the anthem.

First, this anthem is more solidly anchored in its lyrics than most anthems. It is certainly more deeply invested in lyrics than the Spanish national anthem, La Marcha Real, which, for most of its life, has been an instrumental anthem with no lyrics at all. And it is more profoundly dependent on its lyrics than most anthems with distinctive melodies, the instant recognizability of which is significant in itself, for example the Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner. Unlike these other anthems, the Andalusian anthem, especially in this recording, places special emphasis on the lyrics.42

The flamenco singers who recorded the tracks for this project rendered the lyrics in the distinctively reverential manner characteristic of the flamenco style. Typically flamenco singers internalize lyrics, creatively reworking them, making them their own so that they become newly inspirational. Accordingly, some cantaores on the CD revised the order of the words in the anthem. Others adjusted timing and emphasis, or they reshaped the words through melismas, sometimes to the point of rendering the words almost incomprehensible, all so as to draw out the otherwise hidden force of the poetry. These singers operated with a distinctively Andalusian inclination to see something in poetry other than the logic of reason. For them, the lyrics are just the launch pads for the poetic process. It is the singers who produce the real lift-off by creatively manipulating the words, always with explosive force. It is not difficult to ferret out the source of this Andalusian aesthetic. It sprang out of late-nineteenth-century krausism, with its heavy emphasis on poetic arts. And it thrived in the wake of Demófilo’s emphasis on ‘poetas del pueblo’ as the heart and soul of the flamenco style.

The second distinguishing feature of this flamenco anthem is its solo singing. Almost all the tracks present the anthem in one individual’s voice. It could hardly be otherwise since cante flamenco has been described, definitively and seemingly conclusively, as monody, song in solo; and it has been described so not only by flamencologists in Spain, but by ethnomusicologists looking at Spanish music from the outside.43 Cante, a melismatic song style, is difficult to even imagine in a choral format.

The solo anthem is especially interesting because elsewhere anthems are normally apt for choral expressions. Indeed, a choral rendition is desirable, if not essential, for almost all other European anthems, because such singing creates what Philip Bohlman described as a ‘unisonal’ enactment of the nation.44 But the flamenco anthem is non-unisonal.

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