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tf10music -> RE: Least favourite palos? (Dec. 10 2023 4:03:57)
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The main thing is the term “crystallized” is basically replacing “originated”, ie, flamenco did not really EXIST before that time, and passes through a membrane that involves NON-gypsies before being considered “a thing”. That means, whatever the gypsies might have done before this (even if music called “flamenco”, based on the likely incorrect assumption that the term is applied due to some interchangeability between terms “gitano andaluz” and “flamenco” as people), is NOT to be considered flamenco proper. They contribute only ingredients to the melting pot, which also includes ingrediants of Andalusian folk, and whatever constitutes THAT as ingredients that came before (Roman, Greek, Moorish, Jew, etc.)…anything other than India/Gypsy I mean.
Here you are really getting at a philosophical problem: what are the conditions under which becoming can be realized? The answer to that question in the context of flamenco will probably vary depending on the way one answers that question generally. With respect to music, I do think there is a difference between origin and crystallization. Clyde Woods, in his writing on blues and the great migration, talks about the blues epistemology: the idea that blues is a socially mediated mode of approaching or knowing the world that can inhere in many different formal structures, and in genres ranging from variants of 'traditional' blues to gospel, soul, jazz, etc. When elements of this fluid way of knowing are codified (often by external observers or by methods of inscription like musical notation or recording technologies), that is when the crystallization occurs. It strikes me that these instances of codification also serve as evidence of a formal structure in situations where such evidence would otherwise not exist. In reading the letras, I do feel like there is a flamenco epistemology. Does this flamenco epistemology predate the formal structures of the music? I don't know. I mean, there are letras that have been attributed to some very early figures, but I don't think there's a way of definitively proving that provenance.
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That is a good question. The simple answer is we read about El Fillo and Planeta, humans that have been linked both orally and via public records to the family heritage of the understood FLAMENCO tradition…ie, it is a tradition that is quite OLD. But is it fair to call it “flamenco music” that they were actually doing, if they did not call it that explicitly for another 15 years? That is the main “mystery” about the whole thing. I used to think it all in vain to consider what was happening before audio recordings since even today people don’t understand what they are watching in performances unless they have done a deep dive and immersion to understand the system and language of the genre. Hence “mixed reviews” don’t tell us what actually happened on the stage. Lopez and Ocon changed my opinion completely. There are infact “snap shots in time” that need to be carefully considered with no bias. But, now it is too late.
You are very precise in your distinctions, and I appreciate that. Personally, I am much looser, simply because my area of scholarly interest is different than yours: I am interested in the subjectivity (the ways of knowing, anxieties, etc) that propagates and is propagated by flamenco culture. The music is very important to that, but if the subjectivity either predates or postdates the juncture at which the music becomes recognizably flamenco music, then for my purposes a more holistic approach makes a lot more sense. For your purposes, I do see why these delineations are important, and I like the 'snap shots in time approach,' because it acknowledges that you are running up against a tension between written and oral record/modes of knowledge preservation and that there are only going to be fleeting opportunities to retrieve insight before everything gets absorbed back into the various competing narratives.
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This statement gets at the very heart of all the misconceptions that surround the genre, that I myself went in “believing” until, 20 years later, I notice these misconception had been systematically removed, one by one, as I immersed myself inside, while being “objective” by contextualizing the whole thing based on my outsider understanding of music in general. “Cultural milieu” is the first nonsensical thing people don’t really carefully consider before regurgitating the concept. The music of flamenco is NOT folk music…at ALL. It is almost like the polar opposite, hence art music genres tend more to commune with her. It IS folk music only SUPERFICIALLY because non academics excel at it, and working classes preserve it in the home. But once you try to learn it, it is not folk music at all. Otherwise there would never have been this push by certain intellectuals to have it included in University. Think about it carefully for just a moment.
Here is the true problem. If folk music of andalucia is an ingredient, and you toss it into a big soup pot (cultural milieu that is music specific), along with Arabic, Greek, Roman, India/gypsy, you stir it up and then out pours FLAMENCO the genre. Makes sense? Not when you go to learn a palo and realize there is FORMAL STRUCTURE. This suggests quite matter of factly and plainly, that this music is not some random mix mash up of ingredients, rather that it has a very clear and specific ORIGIN or model, upon which it is based, that not only gave birth to it, but is adhered to as religious cannon enforced by various aficionados and THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES. At every turn of an attempt to change the formal structure of the palos, there is a great and strong push back to preserve the tradition. That all suggests a VERY specific origin, not a random mix up of various elements. Hate to say, but I have learned this after YEARS of immersion, believing the entire time the opposite. It is wrong. What flamenco is, is something that Gitanos mostly, from andalucia exclusively, have picked up and preserved or guarded VERY closely, and still do. Not only preserve, but enjoy to CREATE WITHIN the specific guarded parameters. It is only a mystery of “when”, and more specifically “What it was” originally. If it were a mere creation by some individuals, what is all the special treatment and fraternal type indoctrination (I had to go through myself) really about???
What is folk music and what isn't folk music? Usually, the answer to that question is determined by the upper classes of any given society. I agree that by many definitions, flamenco doesn't sit easily in that category due to the scholarly apparatus that has been built up around it. But you are misunderstanding the intellectual history of the academic fascination with flamenco in the Spanish upper classes. There was a push-and-pull between treating flamenco as lower class 'folk' music and treating it as music that belonged to the upper class and was being 'degraded' by its lower class and Gitano performers. These kinds of anxieties track with the general intellectual climate of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Western Europe and North America. Of course, none of this has to do with the real history of the music as music; this is an ideological history, but it's important if we want to comprehend the place that flamenco occupies.
With respect to the music itself, the question then becomes: to what degree is the insistence on strict formal structure endemic to the art itself and to what degree has it been influenced by the discourses surrounding the art? Of course flamenco isn't a random mishmash of elements (though I certainly wouldn't deny that it incorporates elements from many different sources), but I do think you are falling into a formalist trap here. Strict adherence to a form does not mean that the form predates the strict adherence; traditions change even as people adhere to them as if they have always remained the same. This doesn't mean that there ISN'T a formal origin point, but it does mean that you are making some general assumptions about how history works that aren't necessarily true.
What is undoubtedly true is this: quote:
What flamenco is, is something that Gitanos mostly, from andalucia exclusively, have picked up and preserved or guarded VERY closely, and still do. Not only preserve, but enjoy to CREATE WITHIN the specific guarded parameters. When I say "cultural milieu," this is what I mean.
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Neither approach is explaining the CLEAR formal structure of the song forms, as I talked about above. There are general type claims that don’t address specific features of the art form that turn out to be THE IMPORTANT FEATURES when you actually start doing it in a matter “correctly” enough to pay your bills (rubber meets the road), or at least acceptable levels that show understanding to both payo and gitano artists. Further, when they talk about “race” they fail to address (as is typical) two facts.
1. Gitanos that do flamenco are not the same ones that wander in a caravan and steal chickens. Those are the persecuted ones, as they live outside of society. They do ZERO flamenco anything. The ones that do flamenco are working class, going shoulder to shoulder with payos at the same jobs. BUT are still distinct from them, might have arranged marriage or speak Calo, etc. 2. Unlike other gitano groups, the Andalusian gitanos are not opposed to mixing racially. This is odd and specific in the bigger picture, and is going hand in hand with flamenco culture. The fact some of these writers tip toeing into the subject don’t make that clear up front, means I don’t take their conclusions seriously AT ALL.
Leblon is pretty good, pro gitano, but again fails to make the distinction of the those two above facts, and therefore leaves us with misleading info. He considers n.2 only slightly in the case of how the heck gitanos that do flamenco have these noble names from spanish aristocracy. Racial mixing did happen, but more important, the nobles were padrinos for these “flamenco gitanos”. Lots of significant stuff right there, but we have to keep hearing about oppressed chicken thieves, skin color, and clothing styles.
Yeah, I agree in broad terms with much of what you're saying here. I think Goldberg oversimplifies the racialization of the Gitanos in Spain. I am skeptical that many contemporary academics conceive of the flamenco-playing Gitanos as itinerant chicken thieves, though -- any scholar worth their salt will know that the Gitanos who do/did flamenco are the ones who were sedentarized (partially by force and partially out of convenience) in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in spots where there was regular contact and mixture with payos. Most do not deal with this social history properly, though: either you see a class-reductionism (Steingress et al) or a focus on gitanidad in isolation without a genuine acknowledgement of the mixed underclass in which the Gitanos operated.
The involvement of nobles/señoritos with flamenco families/performers is an interesting topic that definitely hasn't been explored enough. I remember Timothy Mitchell's book "Flamenco Deep Song" (regrettable title aside) having a useful discussion of that stuff, but it really felt like more of a starting point than anything else. When I'm back in Spain, I'll have to ask some friends about this and see if there's any family knowledge about it.
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