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On this occasion I am referring to the one that is undoubtedly the hallmark of what flamenco For a large majority of listeners, I am talking about the rhythm and beat, rhythm and meter, which, although in Spanish music theory are the same thing, due to my German education I prefer to differentiate them. Meter is the beat, the parameter that divides time into parts separated by the accents in charge of indicating whether a beat is binary, ternary or based on amalgamating both meters and thus achieving a longer one, in the case of flamenco of twelve beats, the most characteristic. On the other hand, the rhythm is based on the different figures of duration that we perform over a certain meter.
As I say, el flamenco has in the beat and the rhythm its best ally to make the difference between this genre and any other. It is true that each type of music has differentiating elements, timbric, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic, which are those that draw with the sound an aesthetic of its own, but as I say the rhythm flamenco is surely the one that best defines it. How does it do it? Let's see.
The ternary compass, the most characteristic of traditional Spanish music (and Andalusian music too), is shown in the flamenco through a rhythmic pattern that we call “abandolao”, a term that is usually focused on the Malaga fandangos but that corresponds to the pattern of the spanish bolero, nothing more and nothing less. The different dynamics (the intensity of sound with which this pattern is marked) or the musical time, the speed at which it is executed, will be what indicate the different ways of interpreting it. In the verdiales it is usually done very quickly, in the fandangos of Huelva slower, in the sevillanas too, in the fandangos of Lucena it is usually even more slow, as in the older rondeñas and malagueñas. Same pattern although with different “tempos” and dynamics. This pattern is also split to achieve styles such as the soleá, which I will discuss later. We can affirm that on the bolero or abandolao pattern the flamencos have built a good part of their rhythm, there is no style in the flamenco that, in one way or another, the blessed "sparrow-sparrow-pot-bellied" does not appear to them, which is like the teacher Louis of Cordoba He told me many years ago that the rhythmic pattern abandolao is vocalized. In the palilleo of the fandangos of Huelva it is duplicated by cutting the second, while in the sevillanas it is done the other way around, the first is cut to make the second whole. In www.flamencopolis.com You can view it in sheet music and hear what I'm saying.
«The meter is the beat, the parameter that divides time into parts separated by the accents in charge of indicating whether a beat is binary, ternary or based on amalgamating both meters and thus achieving another longer one, in the case of flamenco The most characteristic twelve-beat rhythm is based on the different figures of duration that we perform over a certain meter.
The binary pattern arrived at flamenco by the sea-ocean, Atlantic musical culture, from Africa via Cuba to land in Cadiz towards the first decade of the 19th century, reaching the zarzuelas in the form of mischievous songs, fully integrating into the foot choirs of the Cadiz carnival and take the name of TANGO, building a powerful rhythmic pattern where there are, also called habanera. That pattern would enter the flamenco when the artists decided to play the Cadiz tango in between and pausing time to achieve the most jondo of the tangos, the call of the tientos. Once there, the binary beat season was opened for the flamenco and today it is in excellent health in a very wide repertoire of local tangos, Cadiz, Triana, Granada, Malaga, Extremadura, in the version in major mode that we call garrotín and the corresponding one in minor mode, the farruca. It also supports rumbas, milongas, vidalitas, Colombianas and even the taranto, which is also done on a binary beat and habanera rhythm whose more technical name is “anfíbraco”.
But the beat that undoubtedly makes the difference and sounds to our ears like the most characteristic, on which the flamencos his music, it is the twelve-stroke one, which is constructed by amalgamating two types of meter: a binary and a ternary beat, for the soleá, cantiñas and peteneras, and a ternary and another binary beat, for seguiriyas and guajiras. The first was already known in historical dances such as the zarabanda and some types of jácaras, in the petenera huasteca that landed in Cádiz around 1824, as a Veracruz dance and song, Mexican already then, and that sixty years later would become cante because of the adaptive power that they have flamencos to absorb everything that sounds around him to apply it to the “melos” flamenco.
With a video In my work a few years ago I was able to show how the rhythmic pattern of the soleá could be obtained by combining a binary pattern of jota with a ternary pattern of bolero or abandolao.
Miracles of fusion which is the mother of music, and also of flamenco. Hence, when the hackneyed end came out, flamenco-fusion, I would exclaim without hesitation: “Excuse the redundancy.”
In the seguiriyas (and also in the guajiras) the tables were turned and what was an ancient metric of amalgamating a binary beat with a ternary one, became an alternation of a ternary and a binary one, with their corresponding headless rhythms.
And what is headless rhythmic? Well, another of the most characteristic elements of rhythm flamenco, based on the tendency to leave the first beat of the measure in silence. In the soleá it corresponds to the last two of the dance count 7-8-9-10-1-2, and in the seguiriya at the final 5th beat which is actually the first beat. In the watches you can better appreciate what I say: see and listen to the one I designed for the joys and the Seguiriya.
Of course, the syncopations and the offbeats, which, although not being genuine elements, flamencos, are very characteristic of the rhythm of the genre. The flamenco It is syncopated music where the offbeat was the order of the day.
And these are, roughly speaking, the rhythmic and metric elements that characterize our genre of music, and that When we hear them, we immediately say “this sounds flamenco".
