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srshea -> RE: Do You Speak Spanish? (Dec. 4 2008 9:48:11)
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Obviously, the deeper your understanding of Spanish language and Andalucian culture is, the deeper your understanding of flamenco will be, but I would say that language fluency is certainly not a prerequisite to enjoying or thoughtfully appreciating flamenco. There are scores of opera fans out there who probably don’t know more that three or four words of Italian, and they get along alright.
The argument that you need to know Spanish to truly appreciate flamenco, taken to one extreme, becomes something along the lines of “Well, if you can’t speak Spanish you’ll never really be able to appreciate cante, so don’t bother.”, which certainly has an unfortunate effect if it discourages people from exploring and listening to flamenco as broadly as they might otherwise.
If you can get a hold of those, unfortunately rare, cds that have the letras in both Spanish and English, then you’re set: you can listen and follow along and cross-compare the Spanish and English and actually get an understanding of what’s being said. But even if you only have the letras in Spanish I think it can still be really interesting and instructive to read along as you listen and see HOW the words are sung, see how certain lines or words are repeated and mixed around, see how certain syllables are stretched or shortened or elided from verse to verse. Even without understanding the content of the lyrics you can still get a satisfying and edifying listening experience in paying attention to the form and the style and the structure of the way letras are sung. A lot of letras are really short, often just a verse or two of four or five short lines, and it’s really interesting to see how such a small handful of words are dealt out through a five, or ten minute performance.
And of course you can still just listen to cante without doing any of this, without understanding a word of what’s being said, and still enjoy and be moved by it.
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