Free Download –> “La Senda Del Abuelo” [mp3]
. . . Gnawledge con la colaboración especial de
Mohammed Dominguez (darbuka)
Afro DZ Ak (trumpet)
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. Music already speaks for itself, all you have to do is listen. So, before I swandove into the deep world of flamencología, I eased myself into the rather enjoyable trabajo of listening to the flamencœuvre of classic LPs.
But because my teacher was biased, all my educational listening material centered around the legendary families of Granada flamenco: the Habichuelas, the Morentes, the Heredias, the Mayas and the Carmonas. Not global music, local music.
You don’t really need to know that Granada was a Muslim city for 800 years, or that Gypsies and Muslims shared songs in the Andalusian mountains, where they lived together as fugitives from Ferdinand and Isabella’s new Spain.
Even if we didn’t have history books, you could still just hear the Arab influence in flamenco. The Granada guitar evokes the tambre of the Arab laúd. The way a flamenco singer wails and warbles his voice sounds a lot like the Islamic adhān, the melismatic call to prayer.
But you shouldn’t always trust your ears. Or the books. So we decided to dissect, study, and then remisconstruct a flamenco song indigenous to Granada, as performed by local hero Juan Habichuela.
To highlight the Arab roots of Granada flamenco, we remixed Habichuela’s guitar with Arab percussion played by Mohammed Dominguez, a Muslim drummer from Venezuelan who immigrated to Granada and plays darbuka with the Al-Tarab ensemble.
Juan Habichuela (b. 1930) is the patriarch of a family legacy of flamenco artists based in Sacromonte, the Gypsy neighborhood in the hills above Granada.
Considered the most talented living guitarist in the subtle art of accompanying flamenco singers, Juan Habichuela has recorded almost every important cantaor since 1960, including Manolo Caracol, Antonio Mairena, Camarón, Enrique Morente and Fosforito [video below].
According to Juan Habichuela, “An accompanying guitarist should never abuse his position for exhibitionism. That should be left for when you record a solo album,” which he never did until he was 40 years deep into his professional career. His 1999 debut solo album De la Zambra al Duende is beautiful, worth buying, and includes 2 great vocab words in the title.
With the colaboración especial of Granada flamenco singer Marina Herédia, the song “Coge la Senda” is one of the many jewels from Juan Habichuela’s third and (supposedly) final album Una Guitarra en Granada, which won the Spanish Grammy Award for Best Flamenco Album in 2008. Juan Habichuela explains that “Coge la Senda” is based on a “pure Granada tango that my Aunt Marina used to sing.”
According to the flamencologists, “there’s a wide range of the tangos interpreted by the Gypsies of Sacromonte which have their true origins in the zambras of the moriscas.” Our song “La Senda Del Abuelo” is an exploration of the zambra and other Arab influences on flamenco. The song is dedicated to legendary guitarist Juan Habichuela, to whom Granada owes considerable gratitude.
“La tradición del arabesco de la Alhambra, complicado y de pequeño ámbito, pesa en todos los grandes artistas de aquella tierra” Federico García Lorca
La Historia de las Zambras
In 1469, the marriage of Isabel de Castilla y Fernando de Aragón provided the politcal foundation for modern Spain. With the united military power of the two largest Christian kingdoms in Northern Spain, the reyes catolicos reinitiated the (Re)conquista of Al-Andalus.
For the last 200 years, the once-mighty Muslim Empire in Spain had been whittled down to nothing but the Nazarí Kingdom of Granada, the last refuge for Muslims in Spain, and as a result, one of the most populated cities in Europe.
Boabdil, the last Nazarí King, signed the surrender of Granada in 1492, bringing the an end to 800 years of Muslim rule in Spain. Also in 1492, the Edict of Granada demanded the conversion or expulsion of all Sephardic Jews. In the terms of surrender for Granada, Ferdinand and Isabella guaranteed religious freedom for all Muslims who decided to stay in Spain:
- “Que sus mezquitas y las fundaciones religiosas que tuvieran que ver con ellos, debían permanecer como estaban en tiempos del Islam.”
For the first few years after the fall of Granada, there was a relative peace between Christians and Muslims, while Hernando de Talavera, the new archbishop of Granada, tried to win converts through peaceful means. Nevertheless, the convivencia did’t last long before deteriorating into a violent struggle.
In 1499, Francisco Cisneros, the future Inquisitor General of Spain, initiated the public burning of thousands of Arab books in the Plaza Bib-Rambla, starting with the Korans and continuing with historical manuscripts from the Granada library. the subsequent public uprising in the Muslim neighborhood of Albaicín then procoked the Pragmática of 1502, which ordered the conversion or expulsion of all Muslims, breaking the terms of the surrender of Granada signed nby Ferdinand and Isabella, which guaranteed the religious tolerance for Granada’s Muslim population.
To avoid expulsion, the majority of Muslims opted for conversion to Christianity. If the new converts, known as moriscos, only spoke Arabic and didn’t understand Spanish, the Church baptized them as Fernando if he was a man and Isabel for women.
Danza Morisca en Granada (1529) by Christoph Weiditz
During the reign of Carlos V (1516–1556), the Spanish King adopted a relatively flexible position with regard to the moriscos, allowing them to conserve their customs which made no reference to Islam. As a result, the moriscos continued to celebrate their zambras, secular celebrations with Arab music and dance.
In 1566, King Felipe II prohibited all ceremonies with Muslim origins, including the zambras: “Que en boda, velaciones y fiestas semejantes, siguieran las costumbres cristianas, abriendo ventanas y puertas, sin hacer zambras, ni leilas, con instrumentos y cantares moriscos, aunque estos no fueran contrarios al cristianismo.” Felipe II’s decree also outlawed closing the front door of moriscos’ homes at night, required all moriscos to learn Spanish within three years, and banned all traditional Arab dress, in particular the woman’s veil. The Pragmática was met with a new uprining in the Albaicín on Christmas Eve 1568, a revolt which eventually led Felipe III in 1609 to expell all 275,000 moriscos in Granada.
“Fue un momento malísimo, aunque digan lo contrario en la escuela. Se perdieron una civilización admirable, una poesía, una astronomía, una arquitectura y una delicadeza única en el mundo, para dar paso a una ciudad pobre, acobardada; a una tierra «de chavico» donde se agita actualmente la peor burguesía de España” Federico García Lorca
Authors such as George Borrow and Blas Infante have written extensively about how many of the moriscos fled to the Alpujaras, the mountain range above Granada, where they joined tribes of Gypsies in order to hide from the Spanish Inquisition.
Originally from Punjab, a region between Pakistan and northern India, Gypsies arrived in Spain in the 15th century after crossing the Middle East, Europe and North Africa.
The first album from flamenco singer Juan Peña “El Lebrijano” Persecución (1976) is based on the dramatic work of Spanish poet Félix Grande, which narrates the persecution of the Gypsies from their arrival to the Iberian Peninsula unti the Real Decreto of Carlos III, which legally recognized Spanish Gypsies in 1783.
Amongst the numerous proposals for the etymology of the word “flamenco”, one the more popular proposes that it comes from the Arabic expression “felag mengu”, which means significa “fugitive peasants” in reference to the moriscos who fled from the Inquisition by hiding within Gypsy communties in Andalusia.
[the truth is there remains much disagreement about the etymology of "flamenco." Some trace its birth to Gypsies who arrived in Andalusia from Flanders (known as "Flamenco" in Spanish), while other propositions connect it to word "flame" in reference to the fiery energy of the music and dance.]
The generally agreed upon birthdate for flamenco is the mid 19th century.Various books from that period propose the idea that flamenco was influenced by Moorish music, including Richard Ford’s “Las Cosas de España” (1831) and Serafín Estébanez Calderón’s Escenas Andaluzas (1847).
Today, the Gitanos still celebrate the traditional zambra, 400 years after Moriscos were expelled from Spain. The modern Gypsy interpretation celebrated in the caves of Sacromonte is composed of three flamenco dances (la alboreá, la cachucha y la mosca) which symbolize three moments from a a Gitano wedding.
In the 1960s, flamenco singer Manolo Caracol developed a style of musical theater modelled after the Gypsy zambra, for which “an exotic, Moorish military atmosphere was created.”
Confusingly, even to flameco musicians, there is also a palo called the zambra, which has nothing to do with Gitano wedding parties. Popularized by the guitarist Sabicas, the zambra palo is indiginous to Granada, a peculiar variation on the tango characterized by heavy cadences and slow rhythms. With the sixth string tuned down a half-step (aka “dropped d”), the flamenco guitar of the zambra can evoke the tambre of the Arab laud.
Blas Vega: “A Nuestra música no debe nada esencial a los árabes ni a los moros, quienes quizá no hicieran más que reformar algunos rasgos ornamentales comunes al sistema oriental y al persa, de donde proviene el suyo árabe. Los moros, por consiguiente, fueron los influidos.”
Largely as result of major changes in Catholic Church doctrine after Vatican II (1962-1965), the Spanish government passed its a law guaranteeing the right to religious freedom in 1967. A year later, Madrid’s first synogue was inaugurated; it wasn’t until 2003 that Granada opened its first mosque in the last 500 years.
In the new Consitution of 1978, which installed democracy in Spain after 28 years of military dictatorship, complete religious freedom is gauranteed. Though Catholicism remains the overwhelming status quo, Islam has become the second largest religion in Spain. Largely as a resuly of immigration from North Africa, there are now 1 million Muslims living in Spain.
A recent increase of illegal immigration into the Canary Islands and the involvement of Islamic terrorists in the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings have increased cultural and religious tensions at a time when Spain’s young democracy is working to build a peaceful pluralist society. Following the M-11 attacks, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero delivered a major speech to the United Nations in which he advocated an “alliance of civilizations” to prevent escalating religious conflicts.
We’re still working on it.