Second installment of this small series that I am dedicating to those parameters of music that are the “culprits” of how the music sounds. flamenco, what is it that makes us identify what we hear as flamenco, the sound atmosphere, the aesthetics of the genre, which makes us able to say yes to this, no to that. Today we are going to refer to the harmony of the guitar and by extension of any instrument that can produce two or more sounds simultaneously, that is polyphonic, the basis of harmonic construction in music. This is not the first time I have spoken about these issues in this forum. A bare rope that gives me ExpoFlamenco, but it is never enough to insist, hoping that they are of your liking and interest, dear readers.
As we will see in a next installment, when we refer to rhythm and beat, as we will also be able to observe in the melodic field, the flamencos, specifically guitarists, have a very solid ally to make the difference with other genres of music on the harmonic level. I am referring to Mi mode, the so-called Phrygian mode, also called (ugly) Greater Phrygian (a word that in mathematics refers to “a preorder in vectors of real numbers” but in music I'm afraid it doesn't exist), which others call Phrygian-flamenco, and which I personally prefer to call, simply and plainly, way flamenco, to make ourselves understood. A unique way of harmonizing some melodies, those Phrygian ones, providing them with the necessary support to reach the precise and precious artistic category that we identify as genuine from the cante and the touch flamencos.
«The guitarists ended up forging a harmonic system for the flamenco "Drinking from the past, updating it and projecting it into the future to provide those new musics with the necessary and adequate harmonic support, ad hoc, and which was also the one that made the difference, the one that defined the hallmark of flamenco music"
The origin of the mode flamenco, as a harmonic, non-melodic mode, was probably configured starting from what is known as Andalusian cadence, which is a semi-cadence, that is, a cadence that starts from the minor tonic, A, to rest on the dominant, E, through the seventh degree, G, and the sixth, F, resulting in the well-known A-G-F-E. If we invert this cadence and start on the E and take it as the tonic, as the first degree, we already have the starting point of a new harmonic system, inherited from those dance basses such as the “Guárdame las vacas” or romanesca, the folías, jácaras and the instrumental and danceable fandango of the 18th century, basses that in different ways used to a greater or lesser extent this cadence that was called Andalusian. In short, the guitarists ended up forging a harmonic system for the flamenco drinking, as always happens, from the past, updating it and projecting it into the future to provide those new musics with the necessary and adequate harmonic support, ad hoc, and which was also the one that made the difference, the one that defined the hallmark of flamenco music. One of the parameters of the music that has contributed the most to the cause, that of forging a genre with own identity, nature, character, genuine idiosyncrasy and style.
This configuration was probably contributed to by the "romantic" tendency to provide the flamenco of the appropriate oriental aroma and that, altering the third degree, from G natural to G sharp, not only marked the sensitive of A minor (G sharp) but also, as the North American musicologist pointed out decades ago Peter Manuel, simulated the fusion of the medieval Phrygian mode, the hexachord Do-Si-La-Sol-Fa-Mi with the Arabic maqam known as Hijaz, which is precisely based on the tetrachord La-Sol#-Fa-Mi.
Another weapons of “mass flamencoization” within the harmonic parameter They achieve it flamencothrough the chords. The guitarists flamencoThey have built a template of “house brand” chords (and which never appear in those books arrogantly and ostentatiously titled “10.000 guitar chords”), and which are in a certain way the true responsible for giving flamenco music a unique, personal and non-transferable color, providing them with a characteristic exoticism that manages to “sound flamenco” without any effort or show of any kind. A feat typical of thoughtful theorists of modern harmony. And how do they achieve it? Well, with a simple trick (of art and skill?), a trick, a ruse, which is based on nothing more and nothing less than leaving one or more strings open. For example, one of the most successful chords in this sense is the first degree of the taranta tone, a chord that leaves the first notes in the air while the drones step on the F# (the fundamental) on the sixth string, doubled on the fourth, and the C# (the fifth degree of that chord) on the fifth string, leaving the three first notes “free”: the G (ninth), the B (fourth) and the E (minor seventh), that's nothing, thus achieving a chord more typical of a Debussy, Ravel, Albéniz or Falla that of a “professional scraper” with no more studies of harmony than his own intuition, inherited from a caste full of musicality, as they have always been and are the flamencos.
«The guitarists flamencoThey have built a template of “house brand” chords that are in a certain way the true responsible for giving flamenco music a unique, personal and non-transferable color, providing them with a characteristic exoticism that manages to “sound flamenco"without effort or show of any kind"
To spice up the harmonic discourse with dissonant notes, foreign to the natural chord, is a sign of the clear intention on the part of these barber-style guitarists to make their music a language full of oriental aromas in keeping (never better said) with the general aesthetics of the discourse. jondo. A natural selection process typical of someone who knows what he is doing (again, never better said). The open strings provoke a series of very appropriate dissonances, thus constructing a harmonic syntax for the truly miraculous sonanta. Then come the forays of renowned masters such as the generation of Serranito, Sanlúcar and Paco, with borrowings from genres such as bossa nova and jazz mainly, with its inverted chords and its tireless search for a language appropriate to the perspectives of a new century, opening paths for a new era of art. flamenco from the guitar. Nowadays, the left hand has crossed the rubicon of harmony and enjoys a health that is admired by guitarists of all cultures and latitudes.
The right hand has to do with rhythm and we will discuss that in a future article, because as the Great Chief Paco said, “the left hand is the one that creates, the one that makes music, and the right hand is the one that executes.”
→ See the first installment of this series here.
