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SOCIOLOGICAL SIMILARITIES
BETWEEN ANDALUSIAN FLAMENCO, ARGENTINE TANGO AND GREEK REBETIKO
by Gerhard
Steingress [University of Seville, Spain]
[Hydra Rebetiko
Conference, October 2004]
Introduction
The following exposition
deals with three ethnicitarian [1] music styles, with musics that not only express
the feelings and experiences of ethnic, social and cultural groups in society,
i.e. their mentality, but also are used as a challenge within the process of
collective identification. Independently of the formal peculiarities of each of
these music-styles, my intention is to demonstrate the extraordinary semantic
and socio-cultural similarities of these musics, it tries to emphasize and
explain the expressive and interpellative [2] character of flamenco, tango and
rebetika as the result of certain historical, social and cultural circumstances
that allow to understand them, independently of their former peculiar,
exclusive ethnic and national characteristics, as manifestations of
intercultural communication.
Andalusian flamenco,
Argentine tango and Greek rebetika are not only music-styles that refer to the
historical background of the millenarian Mediterranean culture, but also to
social exchange and cultural hybridization: they originated between 1850 and
1920 as musical expressions and consequences of the collapse of the old
European empires and pre-modern societies, and the rise of the modern nation
state, with its urban, industrious society. 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 and middle classes within a society exposed
to social change and mobility. This is, as far as I can say, the most outstanding
characteristic of the mentioned music-styles.
1. Characteristics of rebetika, flamenco and tango
Ethnic musical styles play a
romanticizing role in the process of establishing different kinds of collective
identities and of becoming an artistically defined and manipulated object of
intercultural communication. However, new and critical scientific investigation
must consider and analyse above all the historical, social and cultural
determinants and backgrounds of these ethnic musical styles in order to
localize common structures and dynamics that figure into transcultural
processes in contemporary societies, characterized by a growing worldwide
entanglement and implication of cultural patterns by art performanceBut this
phenomenon could not really be explained without considering the crucial
influence of changes in consumer’s attitudes: anybody interested in music
avoids reducing his musical taste to what his own, national culture offers him.
Today`s musical experience extends far beyond national limits – an extension
facilitated by modern technology, a highly developed entertainment-industry and
a global market, all of which enables one to "receive" world-wide
musical expression at any moment and in any place.
Relying here on studies of
flamenco, tango and rebetika, we emphasize the important socio-cultural
determinants and phenomenological particularities of this newly emergent
musical experience, namely nationally defined, ethnically loaded, highly
sensual types of “passionate musics”.[3]
These three previously mentioned styles originally appeared within the
period between about 1850 (flamenco) [4], 1895 (tango) [5] and 1920 (rebetika)
[6] as synthesized models of artistic popular music, related to urban
subculture and marginalised groups, alcohol and drug-consumption, prostitution
and crime. This social background created new attitudes in music, a kind of
expressivity narrowly merged with ethnic musical traditions but adapted to the
new necessities of urban subcultures. It was probably this ambiguous affinity
not only to modern urban culture but also to nostalgic traditionalism that
turned these musics into vehicles of identity-construction in a supposed
chaotic social environment. Due to professional artistic efforts, tourism and
modern mass-media, they became part of modern popular ethnic-music. They point
to a series of similar structural conditions and socio-cultural determinants
within societies caught up in processes of modernization, i.e. the transition
from traditional, agrarian, pre-capitalist society into modern, urban national
capitalistic society. Their common peculiarities are summarized below,
referring to some of the characteristic manifestations of each of the
discussed styles:
a) In its origins we find a clear reference to certain
kind of social marginalised groups, outcasts and otusiders, who opposes
the newly established social and political order of bourgeois society. The fact
that these marginalised groups did not -would not- conform to the conditions of
modern life may explain not only the intensity of emotion in their musical
expression, but also their frequent ardent nostalgic attitude towards the past,
traditional life-stile and its values. So we find ballads and heroic poems
(romances) related to romanticized popular heros: the gaucho (Martín
Fierro) in the case of tango; the gitano (Gipsy) and the bandolero
(Diego Corrientes, El Tempranillo) in the case of flamenco; and the koutsavakithes,
vlamithes, tsiftes and rebetes (outsiders), what refers to
rebetika.
b) According to their social status as outsiders
and/or immigrants, these groups appeared in the suburban and subcultural
environment of big cities and with their typical social and ethnic local
colour of prisons, brothels and taverns. It is the case of the arrabales
(suburbs) and the lupanares (brothels) of Buenos Aires, or that ot the
Andalusian corrales (corrals), ventas (inns) and cafés
cantantes, as well as the Café Amán and teké.
c) The subcultural origin of these styles is reflected
in a peculiar music, dance and manner of singing, marked by extremely
passionate, expressive and highly sensitive attitudes related to love,
sorrow, pain, loneliness, death or to overwhelming delight and sensual
eagerness expressed by the voice and the body. Explicit erotic female attraction
is present especially in the tsifte-teli (belly dance/rebetika), the bulería/flamenco
and the tango in general). In the case of flamenco and rebetika, eroticism is
related to the image of sinful female Gypsies. What in tango-history refers to
the milonga (or sandunguera) as a charming, but superficial
woman, is the Andalusian flamenca; both types of female singers and
dancers used to be related to prostitution in certain moments of the history of
the corresponding music-styles.
d) All three kinds of music-styles originated in
eclectic compositions based on different local and ethnic traditions of
dances and songs [such as the milonga, habanera, tango
andaluz (tango); canción andaluza, bolero, seguidillas,
tonás (flamenco); casaka (cossack dance), allegro (slavic
dance), tsifte-teli, zeibekiko, jail-songs (rebetika)] and
converted in new types of song and dance within the cafés, brothels and
neighbourhoods. Besides traditional influences in these musics, other modern
tendencies in music also played and still play a decisive role, including the
operetta, the chanson, jazz, rock and so on.
e) The representative types of these styles are
characterized by a pronounced male chauvinism (machismo) as a reflex of
the general cultural attitude of the social environment: the Argentinian compadrito
(fellow), reo (tramp, rea: bitch) or lunfa; the Andalusian
flamenco (as the former Gipsy-like majo or fellow), and the Greek
manga or rebetis. Pronounced extravagance in dressing and
appearance, the attitude of carrying knives or sticks and the relation to the
world of the Gypsies is frequent, not only in the case of flamenco, but also in
rebetika (giftos means as well "musician" as
"Gipsy"), although less in the case of tango (La Moreira).
f) Regarding their manner of speaking, every one of
these three subcultural groups generated and used their proper slang in
their songs (lunfardo/tango; flamenco or caló/flamenco; mangika/rebetika).
g) The subproletarian, subcultural and ethnically multicolored
environment of these music-styles found its artistic representation in
the tanguero or tanguera/tango; the flamenco or flamenca/flamenco
and the rebetis/rebetika. As a result, the former "outsiders"
became professional artists and representatives of a peculiar artistic
subculture, which are often considered as objects of (national) identity,
especially by the lower social classes and the bohemians.
h) In general terms, these music-styles represent a
kind of subcultural music characterized especially by the conflictive
relation between social and ethnic factors. What in flamenco relates to payos
and gitanos, in rebetika also points to the conflictive relation of Asia
Minor Greeks an continental Greeks, as well as of Turkish and Greek culture. And
in the case of tango, the massive immigration of Euoropean lower-class people
at the end of the nineteenth century also created conflictive social, cultural
and ethnic situations.
2. Explanatory
model
In a second step I will try to
systematize the social, cultural and ethnic factors in a kind of explanatory
model that takes into consideration the origins, functions and consequences
of subcultural popular music as an artistic manifestation within societies in
the process of transition towards modernity. According to this end, the
following propositions are made:
a) The
above-mentioned subcultural musical styles appeared in conjunction with the
transition of agrarian societies and traditional rural culture into modern
industrial societies with civic urban and bourgeois culture as a hegemonic
system of habits and beliefs, submitted to the necessities of the modern state.
According to social-class differentiation in high and folk culture, the former
traditional rural culture became an object of reinterpretation and adaption to
the needs of lower and middle urban popular classes by a new generation of
artists. The effect of this new artistic orientation was the transformation
of the traditional agrarian culture in nostalgic folklore and the modern
mass-produced popular culture (see Abercrombie et al. 1992: 131 f.).
b) This
transformation included a double tendency in the use of the
cultural/ethnic heritage: on the one side, it expressed the necessities of
popular classes to redefine their cultural identity in terms of
nationalism within the newly established bourgeois society in a predominantely
non-industrialized, agrarian area. On the other side, it was strongly
influenced and even submitted to the romantic idea of seeking this new identity
proceeding from the re-animation of the heroic historic past and certain
idealized popular social and cultural patterns. The newly created urban
popular music caused enthusiasm not only in the lower and the marginalised
social classes, but also in those sectors of the pauperized middle and upper
class-society which were unable to adapt themselves to the new social order.
Accordingly, the Andalusian society of the second part of the 19th century
constructed a spontaneous cultural expression out of the polychromatic pot-pourri
of old-fashioned folklore, nostalgic reminiscence and imitation of the so
called traditional dances and airs – but at the same time mixed up with modern
popularized Spanish operetta-romances and Italian opera-arias. In this sense, flamenco
is just one example of music-styles that can be seen as a sensual manifestation
of the need for adaptation of lost traditional culture and cultural
traditions to upcoming new cultural necessities of modern society and the claim
for continuity and cultural identity in a changing world.
c) True to the
ideas of Romanticism and Neo-Romanticism, cultural identity had to be sought in
the traditional popular manifestations of the historical past of the new-born
nations. Nation-building often requires the construction of collective identity
based on popular culture. But in order to demarcate one’s own identity from
those of others, only the most
singular, most exotic and most fascinating elements of ethnic expression were
accepted in order to imagine national culture. By roughly 1850, Romanticism had
already cleared the way for a more realistic perception of culture; thus, stereotypic
ascription of "mentality" was being advanced as a kind of positivistic
reification of social and cultural patterns, that is cultural
essentialism.
d) Due to the
social dynamics of the industrial society and the rise of modern democracy, the
decline of traditional (folk)culture emphasized the existence of modern
mass-culture as a highly diferentiated compound of social subcultures. The
dominant romantico-idealistic approach towards identity-construction converted
certain marginalized social-groups into objects of long-sought national
representation (see Salinas 1898). Accordingly, the creation of a national
image was based on the existence of certain, predominantly marginalised
social groups, whose cultural attitudes and aesthetic expression became an
independent (alienated) ideological construct in order to create national
culture as an eclectic compound of what was considered popular art.
e) This new kind
of popular art mined the quarry of traditional folk-culture in order not only
to invent a second-hand-folklore or folklorism (see Martí 1994, 1996) as
an ideological concept, but also to strengthen popular identification
with the nation state as the political institution of the social class
system.
f) Consequently,
in their origins, flamenco, tango and rebetika must be considered artistic
expressions of certain marginalized and ethnically multi-structural urban
social groups, but with a still strong nostalgic (romantic) hang-over from the
past traditional culture. Due to this fact, the manner of speaking, dressing,
moving, singing and dancing were considered as elements of typical national
representation and the related music became a kind of popular philosophy
that was estimated not only by the lower classes. Notwithstanding, as a
symbolic manifestation of mentality, these musics also stimulated folklorism
and populism as ideological instruments to cover social and cultural antagonisms.
g) Today, as the
consequence of artistic popularization and nationalization of former
subcultural styles, tango, flamenco and rebetika have lost very much
of their original notoriety within the frame-work of Modernity and have
become either national representations of regional folklore, or elements of the
creation of transcultural musical styles within the postmodern phenomenon of
world-music. This fact makes it necessary to differentiate clearly between
the social and cultural background of the mentioned music-styles and its use
today.
3. Ethnicitarian
music in the postmodern age
The relation between
romanticism and postmodern feeling is highly evident. The
significance of traditional popular and “exotic” music-styles for the
postmodern idiosyncrasy can’t be denied. As we can see today, the existence of
those marginalised social and ethnical groups (Gipsies and cheats, robbers,
beggars, prostitutes and souteneurs, immigrants etc.) only influenced the
latter musical styles in their origins. The flamencos, lunfas and
rebetes or manges were soon converted into models of extravagant
and – at the same time- nostalgic behaviour, represented above all by
bohemian artists and imitated by members of (urban) lower and middle classes.
Within the field of symbolic game,
these excluded "others" soon became "objects of
desire" (Featherstone 1992: 283) and the identification with their
artistic expressivity is commonly received as a symbolical gratification for
their former social discrimination. The common romantic identification with
ethnic music-styles is still seen as a gesture of sympathy with the
marginalised social and ethnic groups in modern society. But there is no doubt
that according to the demands of the growing artistic market, the original,
spontaneous music-styles were rapidly developed, transformed and adapted by
professional or semi-professional musicians and dancers: the former wild and
primitive music and dances received special attention and accentuation by the
bohemian artists as specialists for subcultural behaviour and emphasized
sensual amusement. Given the romantic
appreciation of the primitive, the crude and unorthodox expressivity (e.g. of
"deep song"), related to the "celebration of the grotesque
body – fattening food, intoxicating drink, sexual promiscuity"
(Featherstone 1992: 283; see also Mitchell 1994: 43 f.), the new genres
responded to the psychology of the
working and the new middle-classes and their necessity for erotic pleasure in a
highly repressive environment. Hence, the craze for amusement or even
melancholy thoughtfulness of working-class people was frequently considered and
criticised by factory-owners as unproductive attitudes and idleness, as bohemianism
or even anarchism (see Martín 1995). Voluptuousness and capitalistic
labour-discipline did not fit together, although contemporary leisure-society
soon became adapted to its contradictory constitution. Consequently, social and
sexual oppression are still important
reasons for the postmodern search of passionate expression with the help of
ethnic music. The tragedy not only refers to social relations, but also to gender-conflicts.
Unlike the generally
collective character of folkloric dances, the sensual attraction of the male
and female body was cultivated and particularly pronounced by the new
subcultural and highly individualistic popular genres as a mostly unconscious
expression of ambiguous gender-relations. Notorious in flamenco is the psychological
drama of the male, involved hopelessly in the wickerwork of emotional relations
between his mother and his bride as the reason both of his fear of castration
and male-chauvinist reaction, which relates the flamenco with the alcohol
dominated juerga, the tough-guy and the environment of prostitution. In
the case of tango, it is quiet the same (see Reichardt 1981: 167 ff.), and
Rebetika also deals with carnal desires of hashish-smoking and sexual
attraction. By the way: the most recent example is Algerian rai, it
confronts the explicit prohibition of alcohol and liberal sexual love in Muslim
cultures as one of the main themes – similar to rock-music in the sixties, with
its combination of drugs, love and hot music (Schade-Poulsen 1999).
Besides harboring these
elements of individualism and corporeality, tango and flamenco, as well
as rebetika (and probably other similar bohemian ethnic musics) can also be
analysed as sites of intercultural communication and interpellation (see
Frith 1990; Middleton 1989; Vila 1995). According to this concept, it is the
audience itself which assigns signification to the music. Postmodern collective
identities consequently are constructed in the course of a bargain: "What
is adopted as a mark of identity has first to be negotiated" (Vester 1996:
99). This concept (based on earlier works of Collier & Thomas, 1988; DeVos
& Ross, 1982 and McCall, 1976) allows one
to analyse popular music styles as mass media supported
artistic events which transmit certain symbols and significance, values, habits
and rules of behaviour all of which figure into the production of social
identities in situations of postmodern transculturality. This
"sharing" of identifying attributes as a prerequisite of
identification of the "self" with "the others" appeals, for
example, to gender relations or to relations between different social or ethnic
groups, national minorities or generations. In any case, one must attend to the
given historical background and situation where this aesthetically and musically
edged bargain takes place. It is also necessary to include the dominant paper
and the effects of the market, as well as the socializing function of a music
whose peculiarities are preformed by economic and hegemonic interests (see
Adorno 1980).
As the case of flamenco
shows, for example, its value and function in modern Andalusian culture has
changed very much, but it still represents the probably most important medium
for Andalusian (and Spanish) Gitano self-identification and cultural
self-esteem. I think, something similar could be said with respect to rebetika.
As Robertson and others point out, cultural globalization is far away from
pushing us toward a unique global culture. It is better to speak of “glocalization”
as a global process of transcultural hybridization, where local cultures merge
with others at the same time that they pronounce and develop their own
peculiarities. It is true that the origin of this kind of acculturated bargain
of collective identities and self-concepts via popular music dates to the
nineteenth century, but contemporary society claims for a new collective
identity as an ideological basis for strengthening social cohesion in the face
of increasing social and nationalistic conflicts.
Notes
1.
"Ethnicitarian" (adj. from "ethnicity") refers to those
ethnic/cultural characteristics which become a special reference-frame for
national/ethnic identification. Whilst "ethnic music", for example,
means that kind of music that belongs to the every-day's life of a singular
(mostly pre-modern, traditional) ethnic community, "ethnicitarian
music" (see: "musical nationalism") is a construct in order to
create national/ethnic sentiments and consciousness. As we can see with respect
to the mentioned music-styles, the ethnic and the ethnicitarian (the
spontaneous and the functional) usually are closely related and interwoven.
2.
"Interpellative" refers to situations of mutual challenge or appeal:
ethnicitarian musics "provoke" a reaction (either identification or
delimitation) by part of "the others". As Pelinski points out,
"the interpellation is an imaginary mechanism of mutual recognition where
ideology constitutes individuals as
subjects of experience (...). In this process, ideology works in a way that it
'recruits' subjects between the individuals (...), or 'transforms' the
individuals into subjects by the action of interpellation or hailing..."
(Pelinski 2000: 166). In our case, the concept "interpellation" in
music (or by music) helps us to explain the construction of social identities under
the strong impact of hegemonic ideology (for example: nationalism,
ethnocentrism).
3. See
Washabaugh (1998), which includes several articles dedicated to the mentioned
music styles, especially those from Gail Holst-Warhaft ("Rebetika: The
Double-descended Deep Songs of Greece") and Angela Shand ("The
Tsifte-teli Sermon: Identity, Theology, and Gender in Rebetika").
4. See
Steingress 1997.
5. See
Reichardt 1987; also Pelinski 1995.
6. See
Holst 1975.
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