GERHARD STEINGRESS
HONDURA AND DELIRIO:
LESSONS FROM THE FLAMENCO-REBETIKA MEETING HELD IN
by Gerhard Steingress [
I. The ethnicitarian bias of
Orientalism
On the occasion of the previous Hydra Conference
in 2004, I was invited to talk about the sociological similarities between
Andalusian flamenco and Greek-oriental rebetika. In that case I tried to
emphasize a series of social and cultural elements and tendencies that
characterised both musical styles since their appearance towards the end of the
19th and the first decades of the 20th century. The phenomenology I offered by
then was based on two main elements or processes.
– The first element refers to the transition
from traditional agrarian to urban society and its social and cultural
consequences. These consisted mainly in the rise of a modern social class
structure and culture with its ethnic peculiarities, that means, the emergence
of a certainly marginalised subcultural and suburban underground with its
peculiar related life style, poetry and music. Due to the social dynamics
induced by social mobility, migration and ethnic entanglement, these music
styles not only received the influence of different regional musical
traditions, they also became the expression of a peculiar idiosyncrasy of the
new lower class urban environment, mainly represented by the taverns, cafes,
prisons and brothels, where tradition and nostalgic sentiments were melted with
the traumatic experience of cultural eradication and social exclusion as
consequences of modernization. The social and cultural changes led to the
forced and precipitated de-territorialisation and de-traditionalisation of the
musical heritage and these became important factors what to the social
construction of flamenco and rebetika as new musical genres refers to.
– The second
element I mentioned last year refers to the ethnicitarian, that means,
identity-making aspects of both music styles: “Unlike the traditional ethnic
culture resigned to be a ‘natural’, ritualized expression of the everyday’s
life of the popular classes, modern ethnicitarian music-styles turned into an
element of symbolic identity-construction of the lower classes within a society
exposed to social change and mobility.”
It is
surprising to what extent certain of these music styles became related with
nationalism and the identification either with the Orient or the Occident. What
to the amanedhes as the most distinguished style of the café-aman songs
refers to, Gail Holst has underlined the importance of this song-style in the
debates on the “double descended” character of Greekness since the 19th century
(Holst, 1998: 113-115). In the case of flamenco, it was quite similar
(Steingress, 1998a, 1998b). From today’s perspective we could say, that neither
flamenco nor rebetika are still identified exclusively with its lower-class
origin. They became part of each of their representative national culture that
emerged as the consequence of modern self-identity, as it was constructed in
spite of the projective view of the cultural “others”. [1] As highly emotional
loaded national music-styles both flamenco and rebetika became objects of
artistic interpretation. Notwithstanding, this peculiar ideological peculiarity
is not only an effect of the efforts that artists and intellectuals have made
in order to dignify the former marginalised music-styles, ascribed to
delinquents, scamps, pimps, or simply gypsies and Turks as the idealized
“others”. It is not only the appearance of modern mass culture, music industry,
leisure society and the trend towards democratic cultural standards and habits
in music. Both music-styles refer to a common musical evolution, to a shared
social and cultural context.
But, are
these similarities really related to the historical, cultural and musicological
connections of both implicated music-styles, or are we simple victims of a
series of false conclusions as the consequence of a mere spontaneous and
“epidermic” impression, our listening to the Greek-oriental rebetika and
Andalusian flamenco has seduced us? [2] There is no doubt that on this
subjective level any affirmative or negative evaluation of its similarities
must be admitted. For that reason it is necessary to strengthen our comparative
analysis by a more elaborated and abstract proceeding that takes into account
the complexity of these music-styles. That means, in spite of a point of view
based on the semblance of rebetika and flamenco, we have to strengthen the
scientific aspect in order to contrast our subjective perception as it is
determined by our more or less qualified musical experience and to replace the
intuitive understanding by an objective examination that bears in mind the
complex character of musical influences and cultural conditions, both
music-styles have been exposed to in their evolution. [3]
As the
consequence of these circumstances, our hypothesis says, that even if on the
subjective level of perception both music-styles may be associated by any
occidental listener as “oriental-ones”, the scientific analysis might lead to
the contrary in the sense that even if the structures of the mentioned
music-styles are based on the same repertoire of the Byzantine liturgy, this
would not bring about necessarily a similar melodic outward shape. Quite as
well it has to be taken into account that the influences of the Arabic,
Moresque or Ottoman repertoires might be based on similar musical structures,
but at the same time demonstrate important differences.
Hence, the
musical and semantic complexity of what is commonly called “Byzantine” and
“Oriental” does not allow its unreflected application to the analysis of
rebetika and flamenco. For that reason, our comparative proceeding claims for a
structural analysis of “Oriental” style music from a historical and
geographical point of view.
Independently of the multiple musical influences
from “outside”, flamenco and rebetika represent musical traditions deeply and
firmly established in the historical musical traditions of the
First – Music always is an individual and local aesthetic
and cultural expression of what men feel and think independently of the place
they live. In the case of rebetika and flamenco, this universal dimension is
narrowly related with the historical and cultural background of the
French
ethnomusicologist Bernard Lortat-Jacob, from the University of Paris-Sorbonne,
writes that albeit the reasonable doubt referring to any Mediterranean
identity, there do exist some singular characteristics of what he calls
“Mediterranean voice”, that is, first, the strength of the voice close to the
cry; second, the nasalisation which allows its harmonic enrichment and the
hoarse, broken voice without any over-exertion; third, the capacity of an
extensive ornamentation and melismata; and, fourth, the register that allows to
strengthen the voice until close to its rupture (Léothaud/ Lortat, 2002: 11-12).
And, as Holst-Warhaft remembers, rebetika singers use to start their songs with
an improvised introduction, the taximia (Holst-Warhaft, 1994: 2), the
same like in flamenco. From this point of view, rebetika and flamenco could be
considered two singular voices sharing the same techniques, voices that sound
from both extreme parts of the Mediterranean, two manifestations of the grief,
the pain and the sorrow, but also those of happiness and delirious excitation;
in other words: a vital sensuality that always – as far as we know – has
characterised popular music. The following two songs are good examples:
Manolo Caracol: Cuando yo me muera (siguiriya)
“Whenever I’ll dy,
do it for my sake
and with the plaits of your
dark hair
tie my hands together.”
Rita Abadzi: Gazeli Nevá Sabáh (amané)
“Let each man stop and think
of how the hour of death grows
near,
into the deep black earth he’ll
sink;
his name will disappear.”
Insert Illustration:
Manolo Caracol (1910-1973).
Famous cantaor from Sevilla. As a child, he participated in the Concurso de
Cante Jondo in
That means that the common background of Mediterranean
culture consists in its capacity do express in a very sensual way the vital
experience of men, at the same time as it is the place of the aesthetic
construction of that experience by means of musical fusion. For that reason,
the musical encounter in
Insert Illustration:
Rita Abadzi (1913-1969). Famous
rebetissa
Second – Both music-styles share a series of structural
characteristics that invite to its comparative analysis within the frame-work
of Mediterranean culture and the social change that enabled the transformation
of the type of traditional, agrarian society into modern, urban and industrial
society. Both music-styles were the results of fusion, and its musical
peculiarities and ideological connotations within the culture of the
Nation-State in order to respond to the need for cultural identity permitted
its aesthetic diversification as local manifestations with a high degree of
universal value and recognition. Today we can say: neither flamenco nor
rebetika are only and exclusive national manifestations since they became part
of the global musical patrimony shared by an international audience. Today,
both music-styles belong to a legacy firmly established in their own culture,
but due to their universal expressiveness they represent an artistic link of
social and cultural connection that demonstrates the still existing and
resisting capacity of integration of the Mediterranean culture in the era of
globalization. For the moment, flamenco has been able to preserve its musical
descent marked by the influence of early Christian, Jewish and Arabic music, of
the so called “música andalusí”, that emerged all these musical traditions
spread all over the Mediterranean, from Morocco to Israel, due to the
continuing expulsion of the Muslim and Jewish population of Andalusia between
1492 and the first decades of the 17th century. As we see also in the case of
the Smyrnaic school of rebetika, in many cases the historic tragedies of man
produce non-intended cultural effects, and the History of the Mediterranean is
full of them.
Well,
resuming our argument of transcultural hybridisation of ethnic music styles,
the
The second
combination of flamencos and rebetes consisted of the performance of two stars:
Mariza Koch and Enrique Morente. Independently of their incredible capacity as
singers, and despite of their strong personality, they were not able to
synthesize their music and voices. But the musical parallelism they
demonstrated did allow a comparative view of both styles, and when Enrique
Morente finished his part with a combination of saeta and toná,
accompanied by Niño Josele, which in this case changed his guitar for a
bouzouki, the entire Auditorio Manuel de Falla, situated right beside the
Alhambra, was stirred by an incredible tension that made the goose-pimples
grow.
Now, the encounter was organised in
In order to
understand the significance of the event in 1922, we must understand the
cultural and ideological background of the attempt to reveal the origins of
what was considered the soul of the Andalusian music. Towards the end of the
19th century, and particularly after the loss of
To be brief:
In my investigations I applied the so called Byzantine-hypothesis, but one
thing is to insist on the important influence of the Byzantine music in cante flamenco
and the other is to demonstrate how byzantine music, that means, a music-style
that flourished between the 4th and 11th century, influenced in Spanish
flamenco, that appeared in the second half of the 19th century. It was a
problem, I would say, of the missing link between both traditions in music.
Insert Illustration:
Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922).
Spanish composer and musicologist.
The point of view of Pedrell, Falla and Turina
seems not to be wrong, but sudden. Let me quote the essential part of their
hypothesis: Pedrell considers the personalized version of the popular song as
the quintessence of modern composition, as it is expressed in the Lied
and the romanzas as manifestations of the lyrical national drama. He
also insists in the importance of the harmonization of the former ancient music
of the Greek and Roman liturgy, represented particularly by the canto llano,
with its diatonic and chromatic oriental origins. With respect to these, he
wrote in his famous Cancionero Musical Español: “The fact that in Spain
persists in certain folk songs the musical orientalism is the consequence of
the deep-rooted influences in our nation of the very ancient byzantine civilization
which was assimilated by the Spanish Church since it became Christian until the
11th century, when the proper Roman liturgy was introduced.” (Pedrell, 1958)
This influence is manifest above all in its enharmonic structure, the lack of
metric rhythm and a rich modulation, reinforced later on by the influence of
the Arab and Moorish music, and converted after the 15th century by the Gypsies
in the emblematic siguiriya. It was Falla who continued in this sense,
saying that the elements of the chant of Byzantine liturgy are still present in
the siguiriya as the most essential style of cante jondo.
Well, we must
take into account, that –similar like in the case of Greekness and its relation
with the Turkish influence– the search for a new Spanish identity had very
important ideological and political implications: to defend the
Byzantine-thesis against those who claimed an Arabic and/or Jewish origin of
cante jondo as the supposed soul of the Andalusian music, was to defend the
Christian character of Spain against those (for example, Blas Infante) who were
dreaming of a kind of New Andalusia (that included even the Northern Maghreb),
reconstructed with the help of its multicultural elements ascribed in a
romantic manner to the ancient Al-Andalus that had definitely disappeared in
1492 after the conquest of Granada. To accept the Byzantine origin of cante
jondo meant to accept the Christian or even Catholic character of the Spanish
culture and geography.
Falla and the
other musicologists could not and would not deny the importance of the
influence of the Muslim and Hebrew elements in Spanish cante jondo, but they
only accepted them as additional influences, as intervening variables that
transformed the original model in the sense of its diversification until the
Spanish gypsies, they said, made themselves familiar with this “oriental” music
and transformed it to their own one, the cante gitano. Concluding:
Pedrell and Falla offered an evolutionist explication of cante jondo as a kind
of historical acumulation in Andalusian music that began with the Byzantine
chant and ended with the gypsy-siguiriya.
Well, the
“Byzantine-hypothesis” – independently of its ideological background – is
commonly accepted today by part of the experts, and there is no peculiar reason
to reject it. But there are doubts:
First: the term “Byzantine music” or “Byzantine chant” is
very inexact and puffy as it refers to a widely unknown because undocumented
music that existed in different forms between the 4th and the 11th century,
when the Roman liturgy was definitely imposed in
Second: There was not only one Byzantine liturgy that served
as a general musical pattern of chanting in the Christian hemisphere. The
Byzantine chant was, thus, only one peculiar style within a broad spectrum of
Early Christian chant. In
There is no
doubt that the existence of the Mozarabic chant helped much to conserve the
former traditions of the early, oriental Christian liturgy [6][1] due to the relative isolation of the Christian
community in Muslim Spain, and it only became substituted towards the end of
the 11th century, when the Gregorian chant was finally introduced into the
Southern parts of Spain in accordance with the roll-back strategy of the
Catholic Kings. In other words: in many parts of Spain, the chants of the early
Christian liturgy, fused with the music from the Maghreb and Masreq, became the
musical basis of the secularized popular music that was preserved until the
19th century when it became the object of the reinterpretation and reinvention
of the musical heritage. This was the moment, when cante flamenco was born as a
modern urban music-style, as it was the smyrnaica and rebetika in
Third: the “Byzantine-hypothesis” only can be considered as
an explanatory model if it is possible to find the missing link, that is to
explain the evolution of it into the cante jondo. It seems reasonable,
that the same doubts can be formulated with respect to the Byzantine character
of the Greek-Oriental rebetika. In the case of the smyrnaica, the songs
of Smyrna (Izmir), it is evident that the music of Byzantium received multiple
influences, mainly form the Turkish (ottoman) music, but also from other music
styles from the Near East and even Western Europe. It seems also quite obvious
that the music related with
I shall demonstrate this in the case of flamenco
and with the help of some musical examples that allow to follow the steps of
hybridisation as they were based on different musical influences, until the
most essential expression in flamenco: the siguiriya [9].
In order to
demonstrate the Byzantine influence in cante jondo, my point of departure is
the peculiar situation of
As Anton
Mayer wrote in his History of Music, these liturgies were sung by the
chorus using the original simple melodies. Only the priests acted like
solo-singers enriching the melodic line with colourful ornamental figures.
Later, the blind singers and finally the cantaores in flamenco would
make use of this technique of virtuosity and, in this way, maintain the
tradition. Now, we have to take into account the following facts: in
Let me demonstrate my hypothesis of the
Byzantine origin of cante jondo in the secularization of the former Mozarabic
chant with the help of a short musical demonstration. [11]
First step: The primitive saeta. This early form
of today’s modern, popular urban saeta, as it is sung during the
processions of the Holy Week, especially in
It is the primitive saeta
which preserved these musical traditions, and the most surprising fact is, that
there still exists some examples of this music in today's Semana Santa. Not in
the city of
My opinion
is, that during the period between the 17th and 19th century this primitive,
popular religious saeta, originated in the early Christian liturgy and
the Byzantine chant, became the musical structure of the toná, which is
one important base of cante jondo, that is: flamenco.
Second step: The
toná. Now, let me show that there really exists a clear relation between
the evolution of the traditional and popular, urban saeta on the one
side, and the toná and its derivations on the other side – that means,
the “carceleras”, “martinetes” and the “siguiriya”. For that reason, I will
also try to demonstrate that the supposedly “mysterious origin” of
flamenco-music is not “mysterious” at all, once given up the persuasive but
erroneous hypothesis of Molina/Mairena of the “hermetic period”, the “gypsies
home” or “camp-fire parties”.
My central hypothesis with
regard to the toná is, that it was the main result of the transformation
of the traditional saeta, as it was sung by the friars and monks during
their processions and missions of penitence, into a popular kind of song used
by the plain people during the Holy Week in order to express their deepest
religious feelings in view of the statues of Mary and Jesus carried through the
streets.
In the case of the primitive,
traditional saeta we still recognize not only its narrow cultural and
aesthetic relation with the old romance-style of the “blind singers”, but
particularly its proximity to the tonás and derivations, especially the
“carceleras”. In other words: the “toná flamenca” and especially the
“carcel-eras” seem to be derivations and artistic re-elaborations of the
traditional saeta, whose religious contents related to the passionate
devotion of the Holy Week were replaced by profane ones, expressing mens pain
and sorrow in a hostile society. With respect to the transformation of the
religious saeta into the mournful “carcelera”, it was Emilio
Lafuente y Alcántara which gave us an impressive description of the Holy Week
in Archidona in the years before 1865 in his collection of popular songs. He
writes:
“In
Archidona, my home-town, during the Holy Week almost five processions pass
through the streets near the jail where they stop for a moment so that the
prisoners can see it. There is always one of them who, with sonorous and most
sorrowful music, would sing three or four saetas dedicated to the
Passion of Christ, and I remember having heard them before in different
occasions.” [14]
Another contemporary observer, Benito Mas y Prat
(1846-1892), gave us some examples of such a “jail-house-song” in the mode of a
saeta:
“Pressed
against the bars of the jail,
when the one
from
I shouted at
him: Jesus of my soul!
and
immediately I was free of guilt.” [15]
As we can see, both flamenco and rebetika share a very
peculiar characteristic: the songs are based on the lyrical Me that
expresses individual attitudes, feelings and sentiments towards other persons,
situations and facts – they are highly biographical but in an abstract way.
Nevertheless, in the case of the amané, sung by Rita Abadzi (see above),
the kind of lyrics remembers of that of the primitive saeta: it is an
almost philosophical, at least a moralizing reflection on death, more
appropriate of religious penitence.
Third step: Derivations from the primitive saeta:
We have to distinguish between the earlier saeta
carcelera and the tonás with a religious content at the one hand, and
the latter carcelera flamenca and the tonás in general, at the
other one. In the case of the carcelera flamenca (also called
“martinete” = song of the blacksmith), the religious background has disappeared
and been substituted by the lament of the prisoner and his personal tragedy. In
the case of the tonás flamencas, there only has been conserved few of
them an only one of them demonstrates its connection with the religious content
of the saeta, like for example the following one, called the “toná of
Christ”, taken out of the “Magna Antología del Cante Flamenco”:
“Oh, Father
of the souls
and servant
of Christ,
pillar of our
and tree of
Others, like the one ascribed to the legendary
figure of Tío Luis el de la Juliana, the supposed first cantaor in
flamenco-history (beginning of the 19th century), expresses the tragedy of
human existence:
“I am like
that good old man
that is left
on the street;
I won’t pick
a quarrel with anybody,
and let
nobody do so with me.”
The first toná is full of religious
ardour and hope, the second one is a manifestation of abandonment and solitude,
both sung in the same “Byzantine” style...
Another
derivation from the primitive saeta is the saeta aflamencada,
that is, the saeta that is interpreted in the way of the flamenco-songs.
The difference is astonishing and demonstrates the evolution of Andalusian
music since the Medieval, although in both cases we are confronted with the
same musical tradition: whilst the first one maintain the psalmodic, monotonous
technique that claims for a precise repetition of the basic model, the second
one allows a rich and flourishing melismatic interpretation and high degree of
virtuosity of the flamenco singer.
The Spanish musical tradition is rich of
romances an popular songs from the rural area (villancicos), which in
many cases are based on the plain-chant. Whilst the mostly epic romances are
sung like psalms, that is, without musical accompaniment and in a one-tone
style, many of the rural folk-songs are interpreted with melismatic
flourishing. This is the case, for example, of the thresh-song (canto de
trilla), the song of the shepherd in
The fourth step: The siguiriya.
The siguiriya is considered today as the
most emblematic style within cante jondo and narrowly related to the
world and idiosyncrasy of the Andalusian gypsies. Beside that, Falla insisted
in its value as the most important and essential manifestation of Andalusian
cante jondo, that is, as the result of the historical evolution of the
traditional music of the region and the influences that its primitive music has
been exposed to along its history. Actually, its repertoire has become very
differentiated in accordance to its geographical origin. One of them is the
so-called “siguiriya from Triana”, the famous former gypsy quarter of
“What a pain
I have in my
heart,
everybody has
a door where to knock
only me found
them closed.
Why don’t you
give
a charity to
the poor,
do it for
God’s sake, the beggar comes
sick for
love.
Another, very famous example of siguiriya is one
ascribed to Antonio Chacón, called “Always at the corners” (sung by Enrique
Morente), whose words are:
“Always at
the corners
I find you
crying,
I won’t have
freedom in my life
if I treat
you badly.”
Now, in the case of the Spanish cante jondo,
I think, I have given some reasonable arguments which allow to establish an
explanatory model of musical evolution from the peculiar kind of early
Christian music to modern, oriental-like singing. As in the case of rebetika,
in flamenco the resort to the gypsies and their supposed gypsy-songs justified
the re-orientalisation of the folk-song-repertoire in view of the growing
demand by the music-industry and/or the necessity of a reconstruction of the
cultural identity of
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NOTES
1. Ed Emery, in his “Introduction” to the
English translation of Elias Petropoulos Songs of the Greek Underworld. The
Rebetika Tradition (Emery 2000), speaks of
2. It is not difficult to “discover” the
Phrygian mode and the melismatic character of many rebetika and flamenco songs.
But, are these elements really exclusive in oriental music?
3. With respect to some methodological
clarifications, I would like to express my gratitude to the musicologist Georg
Fredo Erber with whom I maintained a very productive correspondence on that matter
during this year.
4. In Social Sciences, this coincidence of
the global and the local has become called “glocalization” (see Robertson,
1994; also 1998). Nederveen Pieterse, referring himself to the plural character
of globalization, speaks of “global melange” (Nederveen, 1998).
5. From musta'rib, (“would-be
Arab”).
6. Its denomination still is ambiguous:
“Andalusian music”, “Arabic-Andalusian music”, “Arabic-Muslim music”,
“Hispano-Arabic music” (see Poché, 1997: 13-26).
7. The first document of Spanish liturgical
music is the Libellus Orationem, written in west-gothic codes probably
towards the end of the 7th century in
8. For the rebetika, Holst-Warhaft (2001)
has shown, to what extent the revival of the rebetika, introduced to it mainly
by Vassilis Tsitsanis during the 1940s and '50s, was due to its orientalisation
in combination with the emphasis of the exotic and erotic female imaginary:
“Whatever is oriental about such songs is carefully distanced from reality”
(ibid.: 3). As she writes, the following nostalgia for the old rebetika songs
was a reaction against this ephemeral distortion by the so-called
archondorebetiko (elafrolaiko) and favoured the Turko-gypsy-style
rebetiko, considered as a “true” manifestation of the Eastern rebetika
tradition. The same happened in the case of flamenco: after the years of the
so-called flamenco-opera (a kind of commercialized, “light” version of flamenco
made for the growing mass-consumption), in the 1950s a serious effort was made,
mainly by Antonio Mairena, to reinvent “pure” flamenco or “gypsy-flamenco” (“cante
gitano”). As we can see, the mostly female, erotic interpretation of the
Orient was substituted by its more male, tough “gypsy” version, with (see
Washabaugh 1996: also Steingress 1993: 96-98).
9. The term siguiriya is a
linguistic derivation from seguidilla, a very popular style of the Spanish
choral dance. During the 19th century, it became adopted to a peculiar
song-style ascribed to the Andalusian gypsies and considered the most
emblematic manifestation of “cante gitano” (“gypsy-chant”). Notwithstanding,
their musical and poetic background is very different and the denomination
quite casual. The metric form of the siguiriya seems to be a derivation
of the medieval romances and normally consists of four verses of six syllables,
except the third one which has eleven syllabus (6,6,5+6,6). Its mostly tragic
content is sung in Dorian mode with a very expressive, painful voice, with
melodic freedom and rhythmic accompaniment. That is why Hugo Schuchardt, in
1881, considered it in its origins as a kind of funeral song (span.:”plañidera”,
“endecha”) (Schuchardt, 1990: 81), and Hipólito Rossy described it as a
“lament without metric rhythm - similar to the toná, the martinete
and other chants ad libitum” (Rossy, 1966: 161). In general, the siguiriya
has much of the characteristics of the amané in the rebetika tradition.
10 This distinction needs to be specified,
as it is also well known that the Hellenic culture expanded across the whole
region of
11. Each one of the following musical
examples can be listened, using the links introduced in the scheme at the end
of this article.
12. This affirmation is also accepted by
Edwar MacDowell: “The hymns sung by the Christians were mainly Hebrew temple
songs, strangely changed into an uncouth imitation of the ancient Greek drama
or worship of Dionysus” (MacDowell, 1912: 95-96).
13. This kind of recitation is based on one
tone and indicates the punctuations of the verses by a raising or lowering of
the voice (see Naumann, 1908: 29).
14. Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara: Cancionero
popular. Colección escogida de seguidillas y coplas. Vol I, “Seguidillas”,
Madrid, 1865, pp. XXII f. (footnote).
15. Mas y Prat, Benito: La
tierra de María Santísima. Cuadros flamencos. Sevilla, 1988, p. 77.
Updated
2.vi.06
Ends
[1] The first document
of Spanish liturgical music is the Libellus Orationem, written in west-gothic
codes probably towards the end of the 7th century in
