The origins of flamenco

The origins of flamenco are lost in history. That does not stop the cognoscenti, a passionate, opinionated and nit-picking bunch, from spending much time disagreeing on them. The Romans were said to be fascinated by the dancing girls of Cádiz, though they predate flamenco and gypsies girls – by centuries. Records show gypsy dancers from Triana being hired for parties in the 1740s though they were also deemed as pre-flamenco. Early nineteen century travellers would watch fandangos being danced. Mi preferred version of the story is of a series of musical forms brought by the gypsies in their exodus from India and their slow crossing, over several centuries, of the Middle East and Europe. They crossed the Pyrenees into Spain in the fifteenth century. They were noted musicians whose services could be bought for weddings and celebrations. Spanish culture was itself a melting pot at the time, with Arab, and Jewish music adding to a stock of romances, traditional poetry, occasionally set to music. Flamenco, it seems, emerged from this stew over the centuries- appearing in a recognisable form in the early nineteenth century. The rhythms inherited from all sides, be they the metre of medieval poetry or the beat of Indian music, created what is , at times, an extraordinary difficult structure. It is not , and never has been, a purely gypsy music. Some of the best exponents have no gipsy blood at all in them. Gypsies, however, have always been at its centre.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers

From Triana the gipsy singers and dancers would be called across the river for the parties of wealthy señoritos and bullfighters. They would come, too, to the popular cafés cantantes of the late nineteenth century, in the twentieth century, to the tablaos, the tourists shows. Then they were dispatched back across the bridge to their own side of town. Spaniards as a whole have never learned to love their gypsies – who are estimated to number 650.000. Even today polls show that many would rather not live beside them.
There are gypsies left in Triana, but nothing like there used to be. The melody has gone. Las Tres Mil was an excuse for a huge real-state scam. The gypsies were lured away from their forges and houses in the Cava de Los Gitanos and the chabolas on the edges of Triana.
They were promised brand new modern housing. Orders were issued for the demolition of their old homes, many with shared patios that acted as the centre of social, and cultural, life. The Cava of the civilians, the payo non-gipsy part of Triana, remained relatively untouched. Gleaming new blocks – their unimaginative name of “The three Thousand Homes” a giveaway to the bureaucratic nature of the project – way to the south of the city would keep them happy. It would also keep them out of sight and by extension, out of mind.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Perched on the west bank

Perched on the west bank of the broad River Guadalquivir, their original barrio of Triana looks across its murky waters at old Seville. From its riverside cafes you look out at the splendours of the gold tower, the white walls of the Maestranza bull ring, the palm lined Walk Cristóbal Colón and a city skyline crowned by the twelfth century minaret turned cathedral bell tower, the Giralda,. For several hundred years this was a part of Seville’ docklands. It was famous for his artisans. Their reputation spread, in the wake of the Spanish galleons, across the New World. Fifty years, or a century ago, this would also have been the place to look for the raw substance of flamenco. Thóphile Gautier, the French Romantic, came across a group of gypsies camped out beside a bubbling cauldron. ‘Beside this impoverished heart was seated a gypsie with her hook nosed, tanned and bronze profile, naked to the waist, a proof that she was completely devoid of coquetry…This state of nudity is nor uncommon, and shocks no one, ’he said.
In the 1950s, flamenco was still part of his everyday life. “In the afternoon one could hear the tune of bulerias and tangos ( two flamenco styles or palos) coming from a cluster of houses. A baptism, a wedding, a request for a woman’s hand in marriage, a son returned from military service, a woman who had just won the lottery… any event set the tribe into action, Triana still had melody,’ recalls Ricardo Pachón, a flamenco producer who grew up there.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet