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I am reading these days a very interesting book entitled How the world created the West, 4000 years of history, from the English Josephine Quinn, teacher of the University of OxfordMany ideas in this book caught my attention, such as the headings at the top, various quotes from Joice y Rushdie. From the first, this eloquent idea: “Our civilization is an immense fabric in which very different elements are mixed, in which Nordic rapacity coexists with Roman law, and the new bourgeois cultures with the remains of a Syriac religion. In such a fabric, it makes no sense to look for a thread that has remained pure, virgin and uninfluenced by other nearby threads.” And from the Anglo-American author of Satanic verses, this other one: “It is with mixtures and jumbles, with a little of this and a little of that, that novelty appears in the world.” If both headings we apply them to flamenco It gives us a lot to think about regarding the controversial origin of the genre.
However, what I bring here today is the idea that the author raises about the evolution of cultural manifestations, proposing a metaphor which comes to replace the classic family tree, which has been so abused by the flamencology, by a vine, and immediately thought of what I have been calling for a few years now the Musical System of the Flamenco, that Surely many of you know it as the “style map of Galician,” which is me. The author puts it this way: “Instead of a tree, a vine that has been branching out and intertwining its stems for a long time,” referring to history. I have always thought that it was not appropriate to see the history of Galician. flamenco like a tree, but rather like a garden, which is what I have captured, or have tried to capture, in my aforementioned System, where I see the different styles on a plane with arrows that make some styles interact with others, and when reading what the English historian says, I think that More than a garden, it is actually a vine since, come to think of it, the different styles of the flamenco They are united by the elements they share with each other, which are precisely those that make up the aesthetics of this genre of music and that make us recognize it as flamenco when we hear it, precisely because the different styles of the flamenco They share elements with the same aesthetic, since the interaction between some styles and others is given because they borrow elements from each other. The soleá has the same rhythm as the cantiñas, and if we speed up that same rhythm we obtain the one typical of the bulerías por soleá, and if we speed it up even more, we achieve the characteristic air of the bulerías. That is to say, there is a twelve-beat rhythm with a very specific distribution of accents that is shared between different styles of the flamenco. And so it is with the harmony of the fandangos which, with very specific local variations, are based on the same harmonic scheme, a chain of chords common to all fandangos, of course with some exceptions, since, as I have pointed out at some point in this forum, the exception is the rule flamenco, that is, we cannot consider in any case that there is an element that is done in a fixed way in the flamenco, there will always be some style or variant that will blow up any rule we want to consider immutable.
"This is how I think most of the styles of music have emerged." flamenco, through the different ways that artists have reinterpreted the different cantes. That is to say, we cannot think about the evolution of the flamenco in a linear way, starting from a trunk and branches that diversify forming the styles, but rather in a vine where the various elements that form the music of the flamenco, intertwining their stems»
Furthermore, the various elements that the styles share in turn mutate into others, that is to say, there are elements that come from others, such as the tanguillo, which is a 6/8, that is to say, a binary time signature with ternary subdivision (each of the two parts of that binary time signature is subdivided into three), while the tangos are made in a 2/4 time signature, binary with binary subdivision (each of its parts is divided into two), and if we mix both time signatures, that is to say, the first part is subdivided into three and the second into two, we obtain a pattern that is often found in the tientos, in the farruca, in the Mariana, styles halfway between 6/8 and 2/4. I understand that it is a somewhat technical question, but I invite you to visit the time signature section of flamencopolis.com where can you Listen to what I say with examples and also see the specific scores of what I am referring to.. Hence, the origin of the American tango probably in 6/8 became binarized to end up being 2/4, since over time it ended up mutating.
We see then how a metric element, in this case a type of time signature, is transformed creating a new rhythmic pattern. And this occurs in many styles of flamenco, melodies that share different styles, even some very distant from each other, specific melodic elements, motifs, even small cells. I mentioned in an article a few weeks ago how some variations share not only a recognizable melody, but even a very small cell of three or four notes, ascending, descending, or arpeggiated, forming a melodic pattern, which we also find in a seguiriya, a soleá, a taranta, a minera, a specific tango, or in alegrías. And in all of these styles and some of their variations, the aforementioned motif appears, melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic. And all this demonstrates how styles interact with each other to form the genre.
We must think of a time when few styles were sung, the serrana, the rondeña, the seguidillas del sentir, the caña, the polo, the songs “por alegre”, and how after the explosion of the genre in the cafés cantantes, it was necessary to obtain more variety, more richness, which was precisely what led to the flamenco became what it is today. I remember once a scholar of the flamenco He told me that when the professionalization of the flamenco began its decline, and I told him: man, in my opinion It's the other way around, the flamenco It is born when it becomes professional, when healthy competition between artists encourages the creation of new variants of the cantes, the creation of new stylesIf we briefly analyze the discography of the flamenco We see how styles have emerged due to the need of artists to show variety, quality and their own personality, the desire to leave their own mark, and this was what generated the stylistic richness we enjoy today, thanks to the diversification of styles.
And that's how I think most of the styles of music have emerged. flamenco, through the different ways that artists have reinterpreted the different canteYes, that is to say, we cannot think about the evolution of the flamenco in a linear way, starting from a trunk and branches that diversify forming the styles, but rather in a vine where the various elements that form the music of the flamenco, intertwining their stems, As Josephine Quinn tells us in her book about How the world created the West, not to mention how the world “invented” the West.
