In the beginning there was the rhythm or compás. But people didn’t know what to do with this toy, so the duendes, flamenco spirits, in their wisdom, invented flamenco so the people could sing, dance and make music together without getting their cables crossed.
Along the way there came into being basic forms…soleá, siguiriya, tangos, cante de levante, bulerías rhythm that proved to be a great invention due to its unlimited flexibility that works well with any musical key, any tempo, and any type of voice or dance movement.
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“The more things change, the more they stay the same” declared French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849, somewhat before any primitive singer would emit the “dark sounds” as Manuel Torre called them. The title of this article, “From the small clubs to the big theaters”, falls short. The small clubs or tablaos, were not the beginning by any means. The tablao was the birth that gave way to small format shows at cafés cantante more or less polished and perfected.
It’s a format still in circulation now, while at the same time much new work may seem avant-garde, or even risky. A few years ago I wrote that it was dishonest and condescending to present these modern works as flamenco, then defending the initiative as “freedom of expression”. Good theater perhaps, but far removed from what I understood as the flamenco feeling.
But little by little, and thanks to the wide open perspective of the Festival de Jerez whose thirtieth anniversary we’re celebrating, I’ve managed to assimilate with no tantrum great creators such as Israel Galván, Rocío Molina and Olga Pericet among many others. I continue to enjoy traditional flamenco in all of its ramifications, but the shows of the Festival transport one to another mental landscape.
Another change of format that passed nearly unnoticed is the disappearance of nightclubs. If social clubs, peñas, are for only a selected few, and are focused on singing, and tablaos highlight dance for tourists, nightclubs were a happy medium between both. While only a few big cities like Madrid, Barcelona or Seville were able to sustain the tablaos, nightclubs were scattered all over Spain offering a varied program with popular singers, humorists, a live orchestra for salon dancing in addition to high-quality flamenco enjoyed with cocktails or dinner.
And thus arrived the big format. Around the nineteen-fifties large dance companies, such as those of Antonio, Pilar López or Carmen Amaya, always led by a major star whose name would be enough to draw theatre-goers.
In these three decades of the Festival de Jerez, this unstoppable development has been reflected with the important difference that new companies are not necessarily led by well-known stars. Thanks in part to this unique event devoted to flamenco dance, young emerging artists begin to chalk up successful large format debuts early on in their careers.
