Download MP3 –> “Flamencología“
. . . con la colaboración especial de Juan Habichuela, nieto [guitar]
When rivers come together, the current runs strong. People from around the world come to visit Granada, and many of them never leave. Of the 16 musicians who collaborated on this project, 15 of them decided to move to Granada from their original hometowns in Cadiz, Pamplona, Morocco, England, Japan, etc. The songs we recorded explore their paths of immigration and document their point of confluence in Granada, Spain.
Juan Habichuela is the exception the rule, the only Granada native who participated in our recording experiment. Born in 1988, Juan is part of the 5th generation of flamenco guitarists in his illustrious family history. His great-great-grandfather was one of the first professional flamenco guitarists in Granada and his grandfather is still widely considered the world’s best guitarist for accompanying flamenco singers.
Juan Habichuela lives in El Sacromonte, the old Gitano neighborhood in the hills above Granada. In addition practicing 8 hours every day [for real] and recording with some of the biggest names in flamenco (Pitingo, Enrique Morente y más), Juan also plays guitar on the weekends at an old cave in Sacromonte that’s been converted into a flamenco venue called La Buleria, a bar owned by his father. I was introduced to Juan by his uncle Juan Miguel Carmona, a flamenco luthier who rented me a room above his guitar workshop where I lived for 9 months during my Fulbright project and recorded Granada Doaba.
We recorded two songs with Juan, one traditional and the other fusion. For the album’s introduction, Juan composed a type of flamenco song [vocab word: palo] called a zapateado, which explores the history of Spanish guitar from Baroque classical music to the modern style of nuevo flamenco. The other song we recorded - “La Lengua Del Rió” - well, that’s another story…
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Chapter One : El Zapateado
Flamenco Folk Songs vs Classical Art Music
(( false dichotomies in dancemusic )) by canyon cody
Ni la música sería lo que es,
ni la orquesta moderna sonaría como suena
de no haber existido la influencia del cante jondo.
[Manuel de Falla]
The guitar was born in Spain, but its evolution extends back to the dawn of woman. Primitive stringed instruments were plucked by Babylonian and Egyptian musicians more then 4,000 years ago. The ancient Greek lyre was transformed by Romans and Arabs during the Middle Ages, producing the 2 grandfathers of the guitar: the cithara (which entered Spain with the Romans in the 6th century) and the ‘ud (which was introduced to Andalusia by the Muslims in the 9th century).
After 8 centuries as the primary instrument in the hispano-arab culture of Al-Andalus, the ‘ud evolved into the European lute and became the most important stringed instrument for the Renaissance composers of classical music, but in Spain the vihuela was preferred instead, in part as a reaction against the lute’s Arab legacy and historic connections to Islam following the Christian reconquest and Inquisition.
The 8th century musical manuscripts Las Cantigas de Santa María depict another stringed instrument from medieval Spain: the guitar. In contrast to the vihuela and lute, which were considered aristocratic instruments, the guitar was used by the lower class as an everyday instrument for accompanying popular songs and folkloric dances such as the jota aragonesa, the fandango, the zarabanda, and the zapateado.
When popular dances attracted the attention of the court, many composers took advantage of these [lower-class] cultural legacies as raw melodic or rhythmic material for constructing their classical compositions. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) - an Italian composer who worked in the Spanish royal court for the last 28 years of his life - incorporated into his sonatas many elements of popular Andalusian music which he had heard during his time in the southern Spanish city of Seville. His works demonstrate a convincing similarity with certain types of modern flamenco songs — or “palos” – particularly the saeta (K490), the bulería (K492), the tango gaditano (K450) and the peternera (K502) .
These similarities are convincing evidence that flamenco music’s gestation period extends back far beyond the genre’s generally accepted birth date of the mid 1800s.
In 1674, the Spanish Baroque composer Gaspar Sanz published his Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, a guitar tutorial which contained 90 adaptations of popular songs and dances from the era. His transcriptions of the zarabanda and the canario [video above] demonstrate certain rhythmic similarities to modern flamenco, particularly the asymmetrical intervals of the accented beats [3+3+2+2+2] of modern palos such as the guajiras and peteneras. [más info]
The canario dance originally comes form the guanches, the Berber people who inhabited the Canary Islands before the Spanish conquest, which happened at the end of the 15th century just after the Christian reconquista of Granada. Imported the Spain from colonial Africa, the canario dance became popular in the royal court of Spain and eventually evolved into the zapateado.
Here we’ve got the first appearance of the musical concept of ida y vuelta — which means “to go and return” or “roundtrip.” The effects of Spanish colonialism are explored further in the chapter “Calabazar de Sagua“
In 1880, the virtuoso Spanish violinist Pablo Sarasate composed a version of the zapateado as part of his Opus 23/2 [video above, plus sheet music].
From outside of Spain, other classical also began to turn their ears towards Spanish folklore for inspiration in their work, including the French Ravel, Debussy, Chabrier + Bizet and the Russians Glinka + Rimsky-Korsakov.
Sounds a bit like Paul Simon, the American musician who traveled to South Africa to incorporate foreign rhythms into his album Graceland.
In 1846, Glinka traveled to Andalusia, where (according to his letters) he found “the gypsy dances with the Olé… where the best Spanish singers sing in an Oriental style, while they dance extraordinarily, appearing to listen to three different rhythms; the song in one place, the guitar in another, while the clapping and foot stomping seem to move independently form the music.”
Spanish composers such as Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados y Joaquín Turina also incorporated aspects of folkloric Spanish music into their classical peices. While in Granada, the Spanish classical guitarist, Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) wrote his famous tremolo “Recuerdos de la Alhambra.”
Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) incorporated a zapateado into his Tres Piezas Españolas. [video above]. In 1960, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis reinterpreted Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez on his album Sketches of Spain.
***Curious Tangent: The most oft-heard song in the world — the default ringtone for Nokie mobile phones — was taken from a piece by Tárrega called Gran Vals (listen @ 20 seconds).
La guitarra es una montaña con dos vertientes.
Una es la flamenca; la otra, la clásica.
Ambas igualmente admirables.
[Andrés Segovia]
Andrés Segovia (1893-1987) - the father of the modern classical guitar - was born in Salobreña (Spain) but moved at a young age to Granada, where he began to play the guitar: “Busqué la compañía de los mejores tocadores de flamenco, y poco a poco tuve que imponerme la áspera tarea de desaprender lo que me enseñaron.” Segovia even played in the infamous Concurso de Cante Jondo in 1922, though the future star failed to impress the critics:”La tarde musical la terminó Segovia con unas soleares que gustaron mucho, pero este genio no nació para tocar flamenco.” [más info]
Celedonio Romero (1913-1996) was one of the first classical guitarist to incorporate elements of flamenco into his style of playing. In the video above, his song Pepe Romero interprets the zapateado.
Ramón Montoya (1880 -1949) is considered the founding father of the modern flamenco guitar. In traditional flamenco, the guitar was relegated to a supporting role, primarily there to accompany the singer. Montoya was the first to record a solo guitar album, Arte clásico flamenco, an appropriate title since he was also the first to incorporate arpeggio and four-fingered tremolo into flamenco from classical music.
Sabicas (1912 - 1990) was born in Pamplona but moved to America in 1936 as exile during the Spanish Civil War. With the flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, Sabicas played a major role in popularizing flamenco outside of Spain. In the video above, Sabicas plays Zapateado en Re.
“Ves un zapateao de hace cuarenta años y te puede dar risa. Quiero decir, no me da risa hablar de genios que ha habido, pero técnicamente se ha evolucionado. Es natural, habrá que ir hacia delante.” José Manuel Gamboa
In 1972 Paco de Lucía began his seminal album El Duende Flamenco with “La Percusion Flamenca” — a zapateado accompanied by a full orchestra. Three years later, Paco de Lucía returned to the song without the orchestra on his live album En Vivo desde el Teatro Real. The video above of Paco played the zapateado comes from the TV documentary Rito y Geografía del Cante.
Repeated Andrés Segovia experience at the Concurso de Cante Jondo, but in reverse, Paco De Lucía was severely criticized for his interpretation of the classical music of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1978). Years later, his version of Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” (1991) provoked classical guitarist Narcisco Yepes’ strongest criticism: “Es terrible. No se puede soportar. Paco de Lucía, que es un guitarrista flamenco fenomenal, no tiene técnica para tocar ese concierto. Es un sonido tan horrible, tan feo, tan pequeñito, tan fuera de lugar que es una lástima que se lo hayan hecho estudiar. Una verdadera pena.”
Amongst the newer interpretations of the zapateado, the most impressive include Vincente Amigo (”Vivencias imaginadas” y “Oriente Mediterraneo“), Jeronimo Maya (”Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart“), y my personal favorite, the zapateado by Granada-native Miguel Ochando.