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When talking about flamenco, three legs or bases are cited: cante, touch and dance. The fourth is often forgotten, perhaps unintentionally, the flamenco lyrics or couplet, the poetic, lyrical base. Without it, the flamenco, especially the cante And then the dance, they wouldn't make much sense, never better said. Singers don't just crow, shout, sing, or perform their melismas or vocal extensions, but they say something, they express issues related to life as a whole. They communicate universal themes from literature and art, such as love and heartbreak in all its facets and audiences, death, reflections on our personal and social human essence, problems of labor exploitation, humor, religion, etc.
There is a need for new literature. And, to achieve this, there are means to do so: ballads, popular or traditional poetry, Sephardic and Andalusian poetry, songbooks, popular or author's songs, classical or author's poetry, etc. I published an article on this need and its solutions or sources in the magazine Demophilus of the Machado Foundation and another on the protein capacity of bulería in The muse and the duende, who directed José L. Navarro, to whom we owe so much in the flamencoAnd in September 2024, at the invitation of the Professor of Literature at the University of Seville Francisco J. Escobar Borrego, our beloved guitarist and composer Paco Escobar, I gave an unpublished lecture on the subject that I now bring to you in several installments.
I believe that, as I did in the same article, a good way to approach the issue in a dynamic and more accessible way is to ask ourselves various questions and, to the best of my ability and knowledge, which I will never exhaustively describe here, to provide answers based on the research I have been doing on this subject for some time. In 2009, I published Poetics and didactics of flamenco, in the Seville publishing house Signature, and there, in one of its sections, he listed the contributions of flamenco versions by cultured poets. Since then, many more works have been published, fortunately, which enriches the flamenco both literary and musical. An expanded, revised, and updated reissue will be released in 2025, which has taken me months of work, believe me, at the publishing house. Renacimiento, with the title Learning flamencoAn interdisciplinary view of the letters of the cante. Happy, of course, to contribute something to the teaching, dissemination and enjoyment of flamenco through his lyrics, always linked to music, to cante.
Let's start, then, with the questions and modest answers, which you can, of course, disagree with in whole or in part, and I would be delighted and grateful to receive these contributions in the comments or otherwise.
–How do you call this relationship or topic?
Cult or author's poetry versioned flamenco, flamenco versions of cultured poets, classical poetry, music poems flamencos, canonical poetry or poetry by canonical authors (Florian Homann), flamenco lyric poetry (perhaps redundant), classics (in the sense that they are not lyricists), etc. You see, but with cultured or author poetry I already understand myself, and I think many people do.
But what criteria do we use to define them? What is cultured or authorial poetry? Would ballads and popular and traditional poetry be included? Probably not, although I do so with ballads in my book. Poetics and didactics of flamenco. What to call the result: cantes for a palo determined, songs for a palo determined, songs simply, personal creations…? How do we see an album like that of Mayte Martín a Manuel Alcantara, made by a Flemish artist, but not so flamenco perhaps, without being a true musical gem in any case? And what do we do with covers like the popular songs of García LorcaMany questions, and that's good, because it's the beginning of reflection, which is positive as long as it's open and justified. I take an open approach and, at the same time, I would go on to distinguish some contributions that have little to do with flamenco of those who, in some way, do have it.
Here you can enjoy this poem by Manuel Alcántara, titled By the small sea of the port, in the voice of Mayte Martín.
- Why do these versions arise?
I think they arise from the need for new lyrics, a desire for novelty, musical creativity in having to adapt, gain prestige, reach out to wider audiences... The same thing happens in other musical fields, such as rock, pop, ballads, etc. For example, the magnificent poem Words for Julia, Jose Augustin Goytisolo, whose version of Paco Ibanez Many artists sing the song, including some rock groups like The Suaves, And flamenco, although few, strangely (Rosalia, The Red Queen, Soleá Morente and Alfredo Lagos by bulería by soleá…).
Let's listen to one of these versions of Words for Julia, Rosalía's:
–Who seeks whom with greater abundance?
El flamenco to cultured poetry, although it has always been nourished by the popular, the traditional. Like what we call intertextuality, let us remember the legend The sale of the cats by Bécquer, inspired by a flamenco couplet –In the chariot of the dead / she passed by here, / she had a hand out, / by it I recognized her– or Juan Valera's sonnet based on a seguiriya. We see it, first the seguiriya:
When I die
look what I order you
that with the braid of your black hair
tie my hands.
Below is the sonnet:
It is my desire to live always with you,
hear your sweet and gifted accent,
look into your eyes, breathe your breath,
without rival of my happiness, nor witness.
I can't do so much good, Rojana,
Kill me, then, and end my torment;
but seeing me die, for a moment
put your lip to your friend's lip.
Thinking about this happiness that awaits me,
if my tears and my prayers are not in vain,
I am glad to die hoping.
What supreme delight I would feel
If my hands were tied when I died
with a braid of your black hair!
I'm sure you liked the seguiriya more, right? At least I did, to be honest.
- What does he gain? flamenco as lyric poetry and as music, and what about cultured poetry? Is there symbiosis, mutual benefit?
El flamenco He gains what he seeks: new lyrics, novelty, prestige, reaching wider audiences, musical creativity... and, to a large extent, he achieves it.
Classic poetry also gains the prestige of a special art, a new approach to the written text, new audiences who might not otherwise reach those texts, and the setting of its works to music. The latter is already abundant in other musical fields such as popular song, singer-songwriter song, copla, rock, modern song, etc., as can be seen in the magnificent blog Multimedia poetry anthology de Angel Ricardo Puente Pérez –where, by the way, many of the versions are missing flamenco– or in another where there are many of them flamenco, poem and song, essential blog of José C. Cárdenas.
Rosalía Pérez González, in his article «Classical poetry alive in the flamenco: the 'Romance of the Bitter' by García Lorca and Camarón", in Journal of Modern Languages (2013, no. 19, pp. 591–600), argues that the flamenco It is not only a vehicle for popular poetic memory, but today it largely transmits to the contemporary public – tending to read fewer books, but consuming more music – what is understood by classical and cultured poetry, and with this oral dissemination of canonical literature it becomes a vehicle for Hispanic cultural identity in general. This researcher, also convinced that the cante It has a great power in transmitting collective memory, mentioning several advantages of poetry staged: "The musical version emphasizes the rhythm of the poem, gains in drama, facilitates its memorization, creates an environment conducive to its reception... but above all it gains an audience by making the poems more attractive and accessible" (p. 596).
–What difficulties do flamenco versions present?
Of all kinds, both literary, whether metrical or stylistic, as well as linguistic and, of course, musical. The degree of difficulty varies according to the poem being adapted, the greater the difficulty the further the cultured poem is from the peculiar meter, theme and language of flamenco lyrics. For example, a sonnet, metrically, has nothing to do with the meter of flamenco, but there are several versions of sonnets by artists flamencos such as The rain de Borges by The Goatherd or another of Gongora by Enrique Morente. Or the series of Alexandrian serventesios (14A 14 B 14 A 14 B) of the poem Picture de Antonio Machado who sings Calixto Sanchez on his album dedicated entirely to the poet. See the text and version.
My childhood are memories of a patio in Seville,
and a clear orchard where the lemon tree ripens;
my youth, twenty years in the lands of Castile;
My story, some cases that I don't want to remember.
Neither a Mañara seducer, nor a Bradomín have I been
—you already know my clumsy sartorial arrangement—,
but I received the arrow that Cupid assigned me,
and I loved as much of them as hospitable.
There are in my veins drops of Jacobin blood,
but my verse springs from a serene spring;
and, more than an ordinary man who knows his doctrine,
I am, in the good sense of the word, good.
I adore beauty, and in modern aesthetics
I cut the old roses from the Ronsard garden;
but I do not love the trappings of current cosmetics,
nor am I one of those new gay-twittering birds.
I disdain the romances of hollow tenors
and the chorus of crickets that sing to the moon.
I stop to distinguish the voices from the echoes,
and I only hear, among the voices, one.
Am I classic or romantic? I don't know. leave would like
my verse, as the captain leaves his sword:
famous for the virile hand that wielded it,
not by the learned trade of the prized smith.
I talk to the man who always goes with me
—whoever speaks only hopes to speak to God one day—;
My soliloquy is a conversation with that good friend
who taught me the secret of philanthropy.
And after all, I owe you nothing; You owe me what I have written.
I go to my work, with my money I pay
the suit that covers me and the mansion I inhabit,
the bread that feeds me and the bed where I lie.
And when the day of the last journey arrives,
and the ship that will never return is about to depart,
you will find me on board lightly baggage,
almost naked, like the children of the sea.
I remember that at the presentation of the work dedicated to Machado, together with Manolo Franco, explained the difficulty in adapting the alexandrines to the meter of the sevillana, but it seems that they achieved it with flying colors.
- When do these relationships, these versions, begin?
In the 20th century, with versions of Lorca's poetry by artists such as Pastora Pavón with the Lorqueñas, by bulerías, 1930s; then Pepe Albaicin, Pepe Marchenaas the the four muleteers in the film Martingale from 1940; Enrique Montoya with several songs by Lorca in 1964 or poems by Antonio Machado in 1969; etc.
- How does it develop, when is it most abundant, and why?
It took off in the 1960s and 1970s and has been very common ever since. For example, during the Transition years, before and shortly after the death of dictator Franco in the 1970s and 1980s, there were many versions of artists. flamencocommitted ones, who also seek authors with a profile of denunciation, social, such as García Lorca, Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, even if it was because the Franco regime prohibited or repressed them.
Florian Homann, in his thesis and later book Cante flamenco and cultural memory, Iberoamericana / Vervuert, Madrid / Frankfurt am Main, 2021, writes that Enrique Morente can be considered the first cantaor with a recital in Granada in 1970, in which he covered two poems by the poet of Orihuela, The boy Yuntero y Olive trees, a palos flamencos. The title of the next album released by hispavoxit's Homenaje Flamenco to Miguel Hernández, from 1971, in which you can find, in the first three of seven canteIn total, the versions of three poems by Hernández.
Carmen González Sánchez, also in a thesis defended in 2016, The reception of Miguel Hernández in flamenco music, is another case study of this matter. The observation made by researcher González Sánchez (p. 205) about the “great interest in recovering and making present the voice of poets who for ideological reasons had been silenced” exactly at this time can be placed in the context of the fight against oblivion, as stated with respect to the cultures of remembrance. Faced with the rejection of new letters, “the poems of these authors became highly attractive for use as a poetic basis for cante, effectively thanks to having been consciously forgotten by the previous regime.”
- Why palos Is it common to make these versions? Are there different versions of the same poem with palos different?
For many palos and styles, depending on the theme and language and its function, and not just the usual ones for adaptations of all kinds such as bulerías, tangos or rumbas. In the case of Onion Nanas From Miguel Hernández, we see, for example, malagueña and abandolao by Morente in 1971, soleá por bulería by Rosemary of Saint John in 2000, festive atmosphere of Elche Niño in 2013 ...
Let's see the version of Onion Nanas from the maestro Enrique Morente, with Perico el del Lunar from his album Homenaje a Miguel Hernández, an album that is already a classic:
Florian Homann comments that Carmen Linares performs the peculiar experiment of singing the same poem from the collection Songbook and ballads of absences according to three different flamenco styles. On the one hand, it extracts the first two stanzas from The sun, the rose and the child and does it for teahouses on your disk The moon in the river of 1991, mixing them with traditional couplets and fragments of poems by other writers such as Antonio Machado – see González Sánchez, cit., pp. 169 to 171. On the other hand, it presents a version of the same poetic base once again. tonas in his show for the biennial of Flamenco of Sevilla from 2011 and again by fandangos from Huelva in the album The FlamencoThey sing to Miguel Hernández: For Freedom.
Another very curious collage is the one made by the singer Calixto Sánchez, mixing verses from different poets teahouses under the title Let me go from his album Walking the path.
We'll continue discussing this topic that fascinates us, wondering if there are more male artists than female artists doing these versions, if their ethnicity influences them, predominant metric forms, poets from what century and style, languages and literary genres, etc. Are you going to miss it? ♦
