The (alleged) antiquity of the cantes

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How traditional music dissolved in the flamenco

Lucas López, Mairena's ambassador in Almería (I)

Prejudices are a weapon of destruction that we could call massive if it weren't because it really isn't that big of a deal. If we talk about flamencoIn the end, everything usually ends up in a more or less friendly discussion, chatovino, which, with a few exceptions, does not usually go beyond an exclamation point with the essential vein swollen in the neck. Pure theater.

I've been saying it, in the flamenco We are all potential flamencologists and we defend our opinions regardless of whether we are right or not. The point is to practice that widespread sport of “but were you there, boy?”, as a countryman told me one day in a more than defiant tone in the very Cádiz peña the large Juan Villar: but did you know Adela the Jacket? To which I replied rolling my eyes: “I will never forget those evenings at the house of the Mozart in Salzburg”. Wow! Now it turns out that to talk about Antonio Mairena You must have cleaned the table in a bar where you once drank some wine. I remember a secretary I had when I ran the label Deutsche Grammophone that after a meal with Plácido Domingo He spoke to me about opera as if he had spent half his life enjoying that blessed “total work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk, in German). It is not enough to have lunch with a genius like the Madrid tenor to know the intricacies of the art of opera. Verdi. No. Just as it is not enough to drink Sanlúcar, El Puerto and Jerez to know if tientos were older than malagueña.

I repeat it at every step: music, like matter, is neither created nor destroyed, it only transforms. Everything is a product of evolution and nothing remains inert, it always advances. Although the spirit of art flamenco He is conservative, the truth is that his reality is progressive (the pseudo-political simile is worth it). And one who loves the historical perspective of musical genres and is always aware of how the material from which music is made has been transformed over time, taking into account the natural evolution of styles. flamencothrough the versions that artists make of the many variants that each one knows, recreating at every step those melodies, their accompaniments, their forms and ways in continuous growth, projecting themselves in time and space, updating themselves at every step, beat by beat, verse by verse. The poet said it: “the road is made by walking.” And I always do what Don Antonio says.

"The flamenco It is a romantic genre from the 19th century, made with the elements of that era, a child of its time and, yes, heir to an ancient musical tradition that crystallized two centuries ago and that today proudly parades through every corner of the world.

And now let's get to the heart of the matter that brings us here today: if we talk about the antiquity of the styles of the genre flamenco, what came first, the chicken or the egg? We could say that it is the million dollar question. But history, although inexact science if there ever was one, has a method and the results that emerge from the research that we carry out among those of us who like to leave our eyes in front of the papers and patiently listen to the recordings that the great masters recorded for more than a century, show a path that, with greater or lesser success, is being glimpsed after these investigations and, together, day by day the path traveled is illuminated and we manage to have a clearer idea of ​​what happened, beyond novels and the various occurrences that have been marking with prejudices what we can call "official history of the flamenco”. For example, there are Many fans are convinced that the tonás are the oldest styles, that in the beginning was the cante without guitar. It is not difficult to fall into the temptation to believe that this was the case, that before the cantes they had their accompaniment, they were made without the sonanta, forgetting that the guitar is much older than the cante as we know it today.

If flamenco, and on that we can agree, begins its journey with the “cante “to listen to” in the first decades of the 19th century, the guitar, whether four, five or the modern six-string, is at least two centuries older. Another thing is that the tunes, melodies on which the so-called tonás were composed, namely, martinetes, debla, pregones, lullabies, old light songs, romances and tonás themselves, are of notable antiquity, but the crux of the matter is: when were they sung in the manner jondo, in the flamenco way? The other day a good friend on the networks asked me if the soleá with the knock of knuckles on the bar of a tavern was not older than the soleá on guitar, supporting his theory that the natural practice of those cantes does not require an instrument and is still sung in many places today, at gatherings of friends, in a small room, especially when there is no guitar or someone who knows how to play it. In these cases, people do not stop singing, making a sound with their hands. palmas deaf people can sing in all styles, like I sing the great malagueña of Chacon in the shower (to get me out of Spain, by the way). Not all that glitters is gold. We tend to think that the flamenco, like all musical genres, evolve from the simple to the elaborate and, in theory, if not in practice, a simpler one is cante without a guitar than with it, forgetting that many melodies, to give an example of one of the oldest styles in the repertoire jondo, the nominated pole of Tobalo, its tune, its melody, is conceived to be supported by the harmony provided by the bajañí, essential in the poles, cañas, solares and seguiriyas, serranas and malagueñas, tangos and cantiñas.

On one occasion, a great master of the cante He told me, walking through the Jewish quarter of Cordoba: Faustino, here in the 12th century, seguiriyas were already being sung. I was flabbergasted. But the Castilian language did not even exist and, as far as I know, it is sung in that language. In Andalusian. And of course the guitar did not yet exist. It is completely impossible that in that distant century soleares, serranas or la media granaína were already sung. flamenco It is a romantic genre from the 19th century, made with the elements of that era, a child of its time and, yes, heir to an ancient musical tradition that crystallized two centuries ago and that today proudly parades through every corner of the world.