Transnational Flamenco

Exchange and the Individual in British and Spanish Flamenco Culture

Tenley Martin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030371999
• Print ISBN:
  9783030371982
• Subtopic: Musique

This book provides insight into how flamenco travels, the forms it assumes in new locales, and the reciprocal effects on the original scene. 

Utilising a postnational approach to cultural identity, Martin explores the role of non-native culture brokers in cultural transmission. This concept, referred to as 'cosmopolitan human hubs', builds on Kiwan and Meinhof's 'hubs' theory of network migration to move cultural migration and globalisation studies forwards. Martin outlines a post-globalisation flamenco culture through analysis of ethnographic research carried out in the UK, Sevilla and Madrid. Insight into these glocal scenes characterises flamenco as a historically globalized art complex, represented in various hubs around the world.

This alternative approach to music migration and globalisation studies will be of interest to students and scholars across leisure studies, musicology, sociology and anthropology.

 

© The Author(s) 2020

T. MartinTransnational FlamencoLeisure Studies in a Global Erahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37199-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Tenley Martin¹

(1)

School of Film, Music and Performing Art, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

Tenley Martin

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1.1 A Distinctly British Flamenco Evening

Alicia’s long bata de cola¹ swung in a wide arc, narrowly missing both the audience and the rest of her cuadro—a tocaor , Adrian, and cantaor, Edu. She was dancing a spirited alegrías choreographed specifically to accentuate the movement of the long train of her bata dress.² The trio performed with a style that somehow appeared both practiced and improvised. This exemplifies the essence of flamenco—an art complex that relies on a knowledge of the compás specific to the palo being performed, with the performers improvising around that style.³ Alicia’s trio demonstrated this characteristic, seamlessly moving through temporal and stylistic changes without verbal communication. The small audience, who were seated on metal folding chairs, sat enraptured throughout the performance, only clapping at the end of each ‘piece’—apart from my friend Nancy and I who quietly clapped compás along with Adrian’s guitar accompaniment (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Bata de Cola in Sevilla

Alicia performed several dances throughout the hour-long espectáculo, ⁴interspersed with solo guitar and cante to allow time for the bailora’s ⁵costume changes. Alicia finished the performance to a standing ovation from the tightly packed audience. Turning to Nancy (a local flamenco teacher), Alicia beckoned her onto the stage for the fin de fiesta . This began with the tocaor playing a few compás of bulerías ⁶and a short solo followed by an improvised letra from Edu. Then it was Nancy’s turn. She danced several improvised pataitas ⁷of bulerías while Alicia clapped palmas. She had not, of course, come prepared with a routine and was wearing trainers instead of proper flamenco shoes, but that is the intrigue of fin de fiesta —spontaneity. After Nancy finished dancing, Alicia moved to centre stage and ‘announced’ her intent to begin with a series of frenzied but metrical zapateado. ⁸She danced several pataitas to the enthusiastic, but unmetered clapping of the audience. Alicia finished with another complex, rhythmical llamada ⁹which announced the cierre ¹⁰to the rest of the cuadro, who continued playing as she danced out of the room.

The raucous cheers of the small audience echoed off the walls of the cramped attic room, which was located not in a cosy tavern in flamenco’s perceived ancestral homeland of sunny Andalucía , but in the tiny Derbyshire town of Wirksworth on a rainy October night. This was the first time I witnessed a fin de fiesta in the UK. The improvised ending to a flamenco show, so archetypal in local Andalucían espectáculos, is usually overlooked in UK performances. The erosion of the organised line between structured performance and polite audience into a spontaneous display of unified flamenco is typically outside of the British comfort zone.

Alicia and I had been corresponding via email for several months and she had invited me to the Coach House Studios that evening while she was on tour in the UK, visiting from Sevilla. She is, however, not Spanish, but British, from London. Alicia moved to Sevilla at the age of 20 to study flamenco and had never looked back. We had arranged to meet at a nearby pub after the show so she could tell me a bit about life as a foreign flamenco dancer in Sevilla. Over the course of our conversation, I learned that Alicia made her home in Sevilla as a student and aspiring flamenco professional. She has remained primarily because of the belief that the most complete way to understand the dance was to immerse herself in all its aspects: song (cante), dance (baile), guitar (toque), rhythm (compás ), and the audience participation (palmas and jaleo ). While it is possible to learn these elements outside of Andalucía, Alicia surmises that there is something about being in Sevilla that makes sense of flamenco. Everything you do, wherever you play flamenco, it is totally in context with everything around you; the climate, the smell, the mentality, the dialect, and the people. This is known as the aire and does not exist outside of Andalucía—a feeling that is corroborated by other informants for this study. In towns in Andalucía, such as the flamenco hotspot of Sevilla, all four flamenco elements, as well as aire , are of equal importance and a necessary part of the whole. These elements, in the minds of aficionados , are intrinsic to the development and execution of the dance. However, these are factors often overlooked when the music culture is transported abroad and thus when it travels it becomes an interpretation or adaptation of the original. Foreign aficionados , like Alicia, move to Spain for this level of understanding.

Over the years, Alicia has journeyed from the status of student to aspiring professional. The difficulties associated with this process, specifically within Sevilla, will be discussed at length later in this book. Alicia now visits the UK several times a year as a performer and workshop technician, often in collaboration with a flamenco cuadro formed of two other British-turned-Spanish dancers, a Franco-Anglo tocaor , and Sevillana cantaora¹¹ (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2

A fin de fiesta with ex-pats at Sala Garufa (Sevilla)

Alicia described the ex-pat flamencos of Sevilla as a large, loosely associated community existing alongside the Sevilla scene having, like her, moved to the city to immerse themselves in the flamenco lifestyle and take classes. They often had issues being taken seriously and gaining acceptance within the native flamenco scene, especially on a professional level. Although gradually a few foreigners were making a name for themselves, which was helping the overall status of the foreign flamenco community. She offered to tell me their stories and introduce me to the community’s subculture should I wish to visit her in Sevilla. I was intrigued, as previous field research in Sevilla had not uncovered an ex-pat flamenco scene below the predominant tourist façade. My conversation with Alicia that evening not only introduced an intriguing layer to the Sevillano flamenco community but also inspired thoughts regarding identity and conflicts that occur between ex-pat and local performers.

The experience described above exemplifies how flamenco has travelled and been reinterpreted in the UK, which is one of many international manifestations of this art form. Throughout my research and participation in flamenco culture (since 2010), friends, acquaintances, and academics alike would often incredulously query the existence of a flamenco scene in the UK and, following on from an affirmative, how it is manifested here. While perhaps the persistence of a locally specific music culture outside of its imagined homeland is surprising to some, it is hardly unheard of. In the case of flamenco, not only does it have a following in many countries, its globality is a feature that keeps the scene alive in Spain. In this book, I explore how a global flamenco culture has been formed and what that might tell us about how a music culture propagates in the increasingly interconnected reality of the twenty-first century. In doing so, I will explore theories surrounding globalisation, transnationalism, cultural migration, and the importance of the individual in cultural transmission. Flamenco makes for a unique example of local-gone-global concept because of its development abroad in emulation of the original scene and its rejection as a national identity at home. However, once abroad, it has also had to adapt to the new locality. This is described by sociologist Roland Robertson as the concept of glocalisation. It is a term adapted from the Japanese business notion of dochakuka which involves the ‘tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global basis […] to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets’ (Robertson 1995, p. 28). In flamenco, this glocalisation represents a certain erosion of national and regional boundaries to create an intertwining, global identity, instead of national and regional cohesion. These glocalised scenes are created and maintained primarily through individual cultural brokers. This book describes, broadly, the story about how flamenco impacts the lives of these cosmopolitan hubs —non-native culture brokers who are the centre of local scenes—and how they influence its development and maintenance both at home and in Spain. Through an examination of flamenco’s global pathways, this book provides insight into the individual’s role in the appropriation and transmission of music cultures and the impact this method of cultural migration has on the perception of rhythmically and socially complex musical cultures outside of their places of origin.

1.2 What Is Flamenco?

Most people, when they consider flamenco, would envision a dark-haired, mysterious dancer wearing a polka-dot dress stamping about with castanets. It is an image that has been fed to the general public by Hollywood, tourism campaigns, and the nationalist regime of Franco, among others. While a more detailed explanation of the art complex and its history is explored in subsequent chapters, in brief, ‘flamenco’ describes a music, a dance, a singing style, a variety of song styles called palos, and a surrounding culture. A typical performance in Andalucía will consist of a singer (cantaor/a), guitarist (tocaor /a), and dance (bailor/a). Oftentimes the ensemble (cuadro) includes a percussive element such as clapping (palmas) or the cajón (a wooden box drum).

Flamenco originated primarily in Andalucía (with influences from other parts of Southern Spain) around the eighteenth century, coagulating local folk styles such as fandangos and siguiriyas. While popularly assumed to be Gitano music, it is a melding of many cultures that passed through Southern Spain, including Gitanos, Spanish, Jewish, Moors, nineteenth-century Romantic composers, and Latin American. In this way, flamenco developed from a series of transcultural interactions. Due to internal migration and tourist interest, the art complex now is practiced, at the very least in a touristic capacity, throughout Spain.

Outside of Spain, flamenco manifests in a variety of different ways, primarily focused around the guitarist and dancer. In the UK, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. An Introduction to Flamenco and Globalisation
• 3. Sevilla: Local Scenes and Ex-Pat Communities
• 4. Madrid: The Consummate Professional Scene
• 5. Flamenca Britannica: One Foot in Andalucía
• 6. Connected by the Compás: An Analysis of Cultural Transmission and Links Between Spain and the UK
• Back Matter