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Posts: 16281
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Tangos Argentinos y Flamencos (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
What I disagreed with was your statement early on in this thread that Argentine tango and flamenco (flamenco as a broad genre, not just flamenco "tango,") have "a lot in common." When you say "us" who do you mean?
Interestingly I might not have cared or noticed the deeper connections back in 2018, but my perspective is quite different now. From only a guitar perspective the Cumparsita thing is clearly connected to Farruca as we now do it. Farruca connects to flamenco cante and palos via the Tangos de Malaga cantes. The rhythmic phrasing is clearly expressing the 8 count dancer concepts including (and this is crucial as a correlation) the llamada (Dm-Am-F-E-Am) and cierre (stop on count 7 as a punctuated 6-7, rest on 8 then continue or perhaps this IS the end on 7 rather than the downbeat as nearly all other musical styles would do). All this suggests a common ancestor in terms of origins.
My research has turned up a very general situation of Renaissance relics called “motets” or “Flemish style motets” that are likely the blue prints of these types of song forms, formally realized via the poetry as either octosyllabic or whatever, giving rise to the mathematic skeleton and a cantus firmus or primary melody that attaches to the poem. The polyphonic voices give rise to “chord structure” that harmonizes this cantus firmus, and in particular if intabulated for lute or guitar, would be literal chord voicings which might even contain this main melody. The origin of this cumparista/tangos de Malaga whatever it is, reveals the hard cadence or “clauslula” of mode 1 or 2 (dorian or hypodorian) in the Llamada phrase Dm, Am, E resolve to Am. The cantus firmus would be descending here D-C-B-A final on A. So that is what I would look for musically as a start and then, because this is ubiquitous for this mode in the Renaissance, look for other clues that correlate to either specific cantes or this Cumparsita piece (FED..CBA, G#A, is very striking for example). The clausula ending before the downbeat is inherent to many motets of that time.
The instrumental versions of motets are given various names like “fantasia”, but specifically the “Tientos” of Mudarra and Fuenllana have note by note commonality with our por medio key of the same name for mode 1. Also overlap with “Romances” of the time, a term we still have in our flamenco lexicon. I don’t think this is coincidence but rather pointing to how the popular culture has preserved these relics for a long time and the colonial Spain influence has created these pockets of Ida y Vuelta preservation and evolution. So lots of correlation IMO of the two genres is the bottom line.
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