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Posts: 14797
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Steelhead)
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The problem with the term "micro-intervals", and the reason many scholars prefer "neutral intervals," is that it implies that intervals smaller than a minor second are used, which they aren't e.g., in Arab, Turkish, or Persian music. Hence the neutral third scale degree (let's say E-half-flat, from tonic C) is there, but would never be used in conjunction with E natural or E flat.
But the whole point is to change what the “minor second” sounds like. That is how they can distinguish between two makams that otherwise share the same notes. Perhaps the proper term should be “tempered interval” as it might be adjusted a little flat or sharp of “equal” tempered. Neutral implies “colorless”. And I find it hard to believe there are no exercises that use both notes in conjunction in order to train the ear to distinguish them exactly.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to devilhand)
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quote: And you are dismissing whatever I have posted that you don't agree with based on my nationality.
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Based on your citation.
I posted a lengthy quote from Howsons book and you say:
quote:
A person from UK will always give a biased opinion about India. No wonder Gerald Howson is from UK too.
So please explain how you think I am giving a "biased opinion about India", and why you think any/all "person from UK will always give a biased opinion about India"?
If you had read it and understood it you would have seen that a substantial part of the Howson quote was actually from a Spanish book....
For the record I thought it was an interesting twist on the generally accepted story of Gypsies/Roma people coming from North India, and the material from Los "Gitanos, el flamenco y los flamencos" by Rafael Lafuente may or may not be a "fairytale", but either way it doesn't contradict that.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Ricardo)
This is an instrumental track from the Atlantis soundtrack. I'm not sure if it's sitar or not. Sounds like music from another time. Harmonically and melodically very interesting. Could you give us a briew overview of it? I hope flamenco has some elements from it.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Ricardo)
this video shows oppari, an indian mourning song. seguiriyas comes from plañideras, also a mourning song. indian music is so diverse and you can hear some indian scales and vocal techniques in flamenco.
at 26:10 el lebrijano tells a story of being in india and hearing a singer on the street singing something that sounded like a tona de triana.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to rombsix)
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ORIGINAL: rombsix
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I thought you didn’t like rumba?
I said it thousand times. Rumba is not flamenco. Because the right hand technique is different. Also the guitar on which a rumba is played is different as well. We all know the real flamenco guitar is not a cut-away. Rumba is preferably played on a cut-away, mostly amplified. If a flamenco guitar player has a cut-away in his guitar collection this player wants to play rumba on it.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Ricardo)
There have been genetic surveys in the last ten years that have tracked genetic lines of people from India to Iberia- both southern and northern routes, and many stops and settling along the way. I haven’t looked at in a long time, might be worthwhile if it’s your topic.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Ricardo)
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Rumba is flamenco
Yes.
I also think there is confusion for some people because rumba, like sevillanas, and to some extent fandangos de Huelva, exists both inside and outside flamenco.
There are some artists and groups who play only rumba or only sevillanas and these artists/groups are not flamenco.
But at the same time both forms are performed by flamenco artists and then these forms are flamenco.
Maybe we can think of a Venn diagram, with a "flamenco" circle and a "rumba" circle and an overlapping segment where rumba is flamenco.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
There have been genetic surveys in the last ten years that have tracked genetic lines of people from India to Iberia
There are at least two issues going on, maybe more....
One is the origin of the people, and the other is the origin of the music and dance. I think people confuse the two and mush everything together.
Contemporary artists from different cultures creating nice fusion performances is not the same as academic proof of origins. There are similarities and differences. And many of the similarities are shared by many cultures. That doesn't detract from the artistic meeting and creation, but artists finding common ground or creating together is not the same thing as saying one thing comes directly from the other.
In "Performing al-Andalus" Jonathan Holt Shannon (himself an oud player) talks about the way the idea of shared heritage is not so simple as it may appear and is often presented: he points out that much of that music that is said to come from the mediaeval al-Andalus period was composed in the C19th.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
ere are at least two issues going on, maybe more....
One is the origin of the people, and the other is the origin of the music and dance. I think people confuse the two and mush everything together.
Contemporary artists from different cultures creating nice fusion performances is not the same as academic proof of origins. There are similarities and differences. And many of the similarities are shared by many cultures. That doesn't detract from the artistic meeting and creation, but artists finding common ground or creating together is not the same thing as saying one thing comes directly from the other.
In "Performing al-Andalus" Jonathan Holt Shannon (himself an oud player) talks about the way the idea of shared heritage is not so simple as it may appear and is often presented: he points out that much of that music that is said to come from the mediaeval al-Andalus period was composed in the C19th.
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to mark indigo)
Exactly. Perhaps worth remembering in this discussion is just how wide the scope of Rom music is. When we find some similarity to Indian music that we find striking, it is worth considering that this aspect of flamenco may not exist at all in other forms of Rom music. Of course, that doesn't dismiss the possibility of some continuity between Indian music and flamenco, but it does complicate the picture a bit.
An overall glance at Rom music shows just how much it relies on local genres. In fact, some of the "problem" with movies like Latcho Drom is that for quite a few of the songs represented, locals may not recognise those tunes as Rom at all, but just part of their local culture.
I don't know enough about Indian music to opine on this, but I'd imagine one crucial question is how much do we actually know of that music at the time when the Roma supposedly left there. Because if you have a wide, well-substantiated corpus, then it's possible to find causal links even if those characteristics aren't shared by any of the other descendants of that music. In linguistics, this is basically what we have with Latin and its descendants. But if you don't have such a corpus, then that exercise becomes much more difficult. And in fact what you end up doing is the exact opposite: you try to recreate a theoretical common origin by working on the similarities of all the supposed descendants. This is basically what we have with Indo-European Languages and PIE (the proto-Indo-European kind, not the apple kind). In the latter case, you can still reach certain conclusions, which is why, despite PIE still being technically theoretical, it's still pretty clear that Basque and the Uralic languages (like Finnish, Hungarian or Estonian) aren't related to PIE. But the level of analysis here is much broader than what we're talking about when we're comparing flamenco to Indian music. It'd be a level of analysis that would quite possibly find almost every kind of Western music to be related to Indian music, so it wouldn't be much help for trying to distinguish Rom music as uniquely influenced by Indian music as compared to all other forms of music encountered on their migration paths.
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to mark indigo)
quote:
There are at least two issues going on, maybe more....One is the origin of the people, and the other is the origin of the music and dance. I think people confuse the two and mush everything together.
You are spot on, Mark, and this was addressed in the Original Poster's (Andresito) comment in March 2009. In fact, the OP used the subject, "Flamenco Originally Came from India," as a so-called "trueism" believed by those who don't know in order to knock it down with his comment below:
"I have read of more than one person saying this. A bit like saying 'Italian food originally came from China' or 'jazz originally came from Africa'." (Marco Polo bringing noodles from China to Italy and American slaves singing work songs.)
There was an interesting exchange that ended the thread at the end of March 2009. The thread was resurrected in November 2020, and we have much the same discussion again. The Roma drifted all over from India, and to say that the Gitano of Andalusia are the inheritors of Indian music that was some sort of proto-flamenco doesn't cut it.
I am not an expert on the Roma, but in two of my Foreign Service assignments I have come into contact with them. While assigned to the US Embassy in Bulgaria, I met some Roma in Bulgaria whose culture was absolutely suppressed by the Communist government. But I also traveled to Greece frequently, and there were caravans of Roma that one would encounter, particularly in northern Greece. And while assigned to our Embassy in Santiago, Chile, I met some Roma outside the seaport of Valparaiso.
In each case, Greece and Chile, the Roma maintained a distinct style of dress and culture, but also had adapted into the larger culture, speaking Greek and Spanish respectively. They played their own music but also could play Greek and Chilean music. In neither case would anyone remotely suggest that they brought elements of Greek and Chilean music from India via their forebears. I would suggest the same holds for flamenco among the Gitano of Andalusia.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Flamenco originally came from India (in reply to Ricardo)
All the above.
Some additional thoughts: 1) Dom rather than Roma, were historically granted passage into and through Spain, via a letter requesting such (sec.XII?) and, as such, our Gitanos are not bluffing as to Egyptian origins (still a sizable population of Domari there...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom_people
2) The Lute is still called an Oud in many latinic languages. (Ziryab etc.)
3) As David Bruce points out, the tuning of a modern guitar influences open-string chords that one would not, perhaps, just pull out of ones hindquarters, perhaps, on piano, por exemplo. Was this by design on a functional instrument largely tuned in 4ths? I think not. I See this as a kind of evidence of "hey that interval sounds awesome and makes me feel like singing the sagas..." ad-hoc profit-taking after the fact.
4) Romantic feelings can inspire "it must have been aliens" type mythology when art is REALLY GOOD. This can give rise to desires for ancient origins for what is basically an emotional "framework" from the last few centuries that contextualize elements (all very important elements!) that all have connections to other music, as they would, being the product of human cultures, particularly combined in one time and place. The particular mood invoked by Rock n Roll is very much part-and-parcel to late 20th century occidental youthful rebellion and the modern primitivist reaction to the post-war boom in the US and the existentialist crisis having gutted traditional answers, etc....
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