Written by Isabelle Shaw
The community of ‘los Gitanos’ plays a central role in the history of flamenco song and dance. Though flamenco dancing reached peak popularity in Spanish culture in the postmodern era, it has held a vast, often overlooked, history with ‘los Gitanos’ since the Medieval period. While recent scholars, such as Giles Tremlett in his book Ghosts of Spain, approach the cultural history of flamenco dancing by exposing the hidden roots of flamenco as widely associated with the historically marginalised groups ‘los Gitanos,’ due to current social discrimination of their community, many Spanish people choose to ignore their relevance to this popular custom.
Flamenco in Modern-Day Spain
Flamenco is a popular style of artistic expression in Spain. The two most prominent styles of flamenco dancing are ‘Bulerías’ and ‘Tango,’ but there are numerous other ‘palos’ included in this art form. In regard to the musical component of flamenco, modern culture has expanded traditional flamenco to include flamenquillo —or easing listening— flamenco-rock and flamenco-pop. This has allowed flamenco to surge in popularity in recent decades since it has reached a wider, more international audience. Well-known flamenco songs include rumbas, tanguillos, and alegrías but those known by flamenco experts such as Siguiryas and soleas are more difficult songs. This tradition is also adopted in Latin America; for example, the Milongas, tangos, and guijiras are popular musical forms. Flamenco music is created not artificially but derives from a long-standing tradition of ‘tocando palmas,’ clapping hands and stomping feet to create a percussion rhythm. This represents how Flamenco music is extremely communal and helps connect Latin people in their communities. This rhythm finds its origin not in Spain, but in medieval poetry and some historians speculate the beat of ancient Indian music.
Flamenco dancing includes many steps and incorporates the whole body; it forces dancers to move their arms and upper torso and includes choreography of fingers as well. That being said, the male-female role in flamenco dancing is distinguished by men focusing on footwork, whereas women focus on their torsos. Most significantly, this custom takes centre stage in Andalucía, where it is regularly played at ‘romerias’, or festival pilgrimages. Flamenco dancing is so popular because it is highly emotive: Spanish people describe how the flamenco is driven by both pena and alegría—pain and happiness—and many flamenco singers describe how their flamenco singing is led by ‘la gana’, the urge, without which they do not sing. However, the culture of flamenco and ‘los Gitanos’ is interconnected since traditional perspectives claim that only ‘los Gitanos’ can access the ‘duende’ force of flamenco.
Origins of flamenco and ‘los Gitanos’
The evidence of flamenco music and the involvement of ‘los Gitanos’ is limited by historians being forced to rely on oral histories from ‘los Gitanos.’ The origins of flamenco include a myriad of legends based on accounts of ‘los Gitanos’ families passed down through generations. Nevertheless, these oral history accounts are still useful in emphasising the cultural history of flamenco that is definitively linked to ‘los Gitanos.’ Tremlett in Ghosts of Spain notes that ‘los Gitanos’ legends argue that flamenco derives from the Roma community being fascinated by dancing girls in Cadiz and adopting this themselves. However, he also recognises those other accounts that suggest that ‘los Gitanos’ brought back the style of music from India to Spain after being exiled and forced to travel across the Middle East and Europe in the fifteenth-century. Here, oral history sources describe that ‘los Gitanos’ culturally mixed with Sephardic Jewish people and Muslim communities to produce the present-day flamenco style.
Tremlett outlines how accounts assert that after being expelled from society by Isabella and Ferdinand in 1499, these communities were threatened with slavery and transportation to the New World. He highlights the discrimination of the ‘los Gitanos’ as ostracised from Medieval Spanish society during the inquisitorial period. However, accounts describe how these ‘gitanos’ brought back ‘palos de ida y vuelta’ of flamenco from the Americas when returning to the old Spanish empire.
Flamenco dancing has been repressed in the past to limit the culture of ‘los gitanos’ and forced them to lose their cultural identity. For example, Tremlett denotes how in 1745, nine thousand ‘Gitanos’ were incarcerated by Fernardo VI, and many were threatened with ‘la carcelera’ to limit their caló, way of life. In the eighteenth-century flamenco was used for baptisms, weddings, requests for marriage and sons returning from military dancing. However, Fernando viewed ‘los Gitanos’ as a threat and tried to dismantle their community by repressing their culture.
Nevertheless, flamenco culture persisted with the introduction of guitar and ‘palo seco’ as instruments. In the nineteenth century, it seeped into wider Spanish culture with travellers being fascinated by the fandango dancing, and it was used popularly as entertainment in the late nineteenth century. Tourism furthered this culture as ‘tablaos’ were created in the 20th century for flamenco shows to entertain travellers. In the 1930s Mississippi, the flamenco was mixed with blues style, reaching international fame. By 1950, flamenco had reached peak popularity in many different cultures globally. In the 1960s, the Triana Gitanos moved to ‘Las Tres Mil Viviendas’ with ‘chabolistas’; due to the social discrimination of ‘los Gitanos’, they were moved to be separated from the rest of the town. Here, the modern urban sound of flamenco was created. It found new prominence in prison, such as ‘El Concurso de Cante de Sistemas Penitenciario’, showing how flamenco culture has evolved throughout history used in many different scenarios.
‘Los Gitanos’ flamenco singers and dancers
Tremlett focuses on the fact that while flamenco has been expanded, ‘los gitanos’ have always been at the centre. He uses examples of famous gitano singers and dancers to prove that, despite being accepted in popular culture as a Spanish tradition, there is a rich history of flamenco connected with ‘los Gitanos’ that should not be overlooked. These include Raimundo Amador who consolidated the flamenco-blues subculture with his popular song ‘En la Esquina de Las Vegas.’ As well, José Jiménez should be highlighted as a flamenco dancer known as ‘el Bobote who travels across the world to spread the flamenco custom and gitano culture on a more diverse level. Camaró de Isla is extremely famous for making flamenco popular in the 1960s and 1970s with his first album ‘Soy gitano’; he represents flamenco singers as proud of their identity and tries to push forward the fact that flamenco is historically a custom of ‘los Gitanos.’ His ‘cante jondo’, a deep song, established his fame and is best known for spurring such emotion that people in crowds rip their shirts off. Sevillian artists group La niña de los peines morphed styles of flamenco to create las Bamberas, or Lorqueñas — they were extremely popular and are significant in the history of flamenco since their records in 1999 were named an Asset of Cultural Interest in Andalusian Heritage. It is important to note the role of both women and men in the cultural history of flamenco, since Lola Flores was extremely popular from the 1940s onwards, and she pushed the importance of flamenco creating her own company called Zambra.
It is evident that recent historians should follow the example of Tremlett to further research into the overlooked history of flamenco — one which is intrinsically linked to ‘los Gitanos’.
Bibliography
Andaluz, El Palacio. “Best Flamenco Singers in Spain.” El Palacio Andaluz, April 23, 2020. https://elflamencoensevilla.com/en/best-flamenco-singers/.
Bennahum, Ninotchka Devorah. “Flamenco | Music and Dance.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, January 21, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/art/flamenco.
Giles Tremlett. Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain and Its Silent Past. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008.
Featured image credit: “Los Gitanos” by Dance Photographer – Brendan Lally is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Retrospect Journal 