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Thrid part.

Sellers of lottery tickets, pedlars of all sorts, parasites, eccentrics, and a few psychological cases for whom cante was a therapy

José Menese

Why did cante gitano appear in this area and nowhere else ? The primary historical fact seems to me that this region flanks the river connection between the Atlantic and Seville. Its protection was vital for the survival of Spanish power, especially as its shores were exposed to attacks not only from the northern powers, but also by Barbary pirates, who made frequent raids. A little lawlessness and even highway robbery would be of no great consequence elsewhere, but not where the wealth of both the Indies entered Spain. Hence, I suspect, a particularly close surveillance of the Gypsies. The legislation periodically described them as utterly lawless, and they could easily be sent to the galleys for any reason or no reason at all, as many were for periods of years. The galleys’ home port was El Puerto de Santa Maria, where they wintered. A passage in Lope de Vega describes the wives of the galley-slaves trying to maintain contact with their men when in El Puerto, and bringing them small comforts : “Allí les llevan dinero, / Regalos, ropa, calzado” (“And there they bring them money, / Small presents, clothes, footwear” (xi)).

The galleys were disarmed in 1748. The following year, in Seville, a small group of Triana Gypsies invited to give a show in a great house is described as intoning what they called a “queja de galera” (or galley lament), so named, and I quote, “porque un forzado gitano las daba cuando iba al remo, y de esto pasó a otro banco y de estos a otras galeras” (xii) (“because a Gypsy galley-slave used to utter it when rowing, and it passed from his bench to another, and then to other galleys”). Some years ago, I called attention to a manifest continuity between, on the one hand, a central melodic motif in the public call to Muslim prayer, the Adhán, and on the other the oldest of the tonás (the martinete) and a handful of founding siguiriyas, which are based on that motif and develop it (xiii). Since the galley-slaves permanently included a number of Muslim captives, the galleys themselves provided a natural background for the emergence of those songs.

We can now turn to MAP 2, entitled “The jondo area in Andalusia”. The area where the Gypsy songs appeared, between Seville, Cadiz, the Guadalquivir and the Cordillera Bética, also included for two centuries a frontier zone on its eastern side, the rest of it having been reclaimed for Christianity in the 13th century. The Gypsies arrived there probably some twenty years before the Fall of Granada in 1492. Now that area further extends eastward, from Morón de la Frontera and Marchena to Lucena and Cabra, into another remarkable frontier zone, in which one finds evidence of an intense interest in and serious dedication to cante, this time among Andalusians. Places like La Puebla de Cazalla, Osuna, Puente Genil, Lucena and Cabra, conjure up the names of notable Andalusian singers like Cayetano Muriel Niño de Cabra, La Niña de la Puebla, Fosforito, Menese, Diego Clavel, Antonio Ranchal and Miguel Vargas, as well as those of writers and artists like Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Ricardo Molina and Francisco Moreno Galván, who were among the first to find a culture in cante.

MAP 2

The other, Gypsy, style of expression is characterized by starkness or even bareness, a pronounced preference for brief emotional inflexion over ornamentation

What thus emerges into view, between Cadiz and the Lucena area, is a sort of arco morisco or morisco arc. The Moriscoes were those Muslims who, after the Fall of Granada, were invited to choose between Christianity and exile. Many conformed, but the depth of their conversion was unclear: finally most of them were expelled, but some returned and others managed to stay. I suspect in that area the presence of pockets or even reservoirs of past cultures which survived under the surface long after the Reconquista (xiv). The very lie of the land east of Morón even suggests that the certainty of a reconquest created a special fondness for the old order of things even before it had gone, which transformed into nostalgia after 1492.

Some musical features of those songs bear out such views. Whether Andalusian or Gypsy, they periodically involve a sort of strangled modulation which seems to come from the throat itself. Now this very striking characteristic is found in many of the traditions, both Muslim and musical, which extend between North Africa and the East. Also, within cante itself, one finds two broad styles of expression. One of them, Andalusian, is periodically marked by an abundance of melismas, in which single syllables of the text are enriched with sequences of notes. The other, Gypsy, style of expression is characterized by starkness or even bareness, a pronounced preference for brief emotional inflexion over ornamentation, and even, occasionally, pure unmitigated shrieks. Behind all this one can recognize the two main musical traditions which had gone into the culture of al-Andalus, that of the Berbers from Morocco and its mountains (which is where the soldiers came from), and that of Arab opulence and refinement imported from the East.

Anzonini

A wider cultural pattern also springs into view, in which the Gypsies of Andalusia take an interest in some popular traditions, first exploit them and keep them alive in front of various types of public in order to make money, and finally integrate them in their culture, so as to have something of their own on which to lean, in order to remain distinct and resist assimilation. Their interest in and preservation of a rich romancero of their own provide a magnificent example, which is abundantly documented: first by Cervantes in “La Gitanilla”, written in 1608 ; then by Estébanez Calderón’s “Un baile in Triana”, based on his memories of the early 1820s; then again by the information available on the romancero of Juan José Niño, a Gypsy from Triana and Cadiz discovered in 1916, whose knowledge of romances was prodigious; and finally by the superb work done since the late 1950s by a lawyer from El Puerto, Luis Suárez Ávila, who has located between El Puerto and Triana dozens of texts or romances in a few dozen Gypsy families, where they are sung and danced to during their weddings and other festivities (xv).

The Gypsies of Andalusia take an interest in some popular traditions, first exploit them and keep them alive in front of various types of public in order to make money, and finally integrate them in their culture

Now those Gypsies have preserved this romancero of theirs through four centuries, in exactly the same way as the Sephardic Jews have kept their own alive to this day, through five centuries, in North Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, the Argentine, and other far-away lands (xvi) , in order to retain something of their own, and maintain a separate identity, in the countries of their diaspora. Nor is this all: those romances of the Gypsies are sung on melodic patterns quite unlike those surviving in other romanceros in Spain or abroad, and a filiation between them and two basic forms of the soleá seems certain (xvii).

Similarly, I am currently exploring probable influences from Black Africa, as relayed by imported slaves, on the genesis of the tango flamenco, which was periodically called tango de negros. The pattern is the same: a tradition found locally is first used by the Gypsies as a means to earn a few coins and the good will of the local population, before it becomes integrated in their culture and provides it with something like a past. When examined against such backgrounds, the Gypsy songs become off-shoots of such phenomenons.

The basis of cante is a type of tradition which demands permanent reformulation but regards all transgressions as illicit

To conclude, I shall briefly mention three points.

Cante, both Gypsy and Andalusian, having now clearly emerged as a culture, it can be placed with some firmness within the traditional triad of cante, toque, and baile. The basis of cante is a type of tradition which demands permanent reformulation but regards all transgressions as illicit. Guitar-playing, or toque, leads into a musical genre which invites creation and is expanding considerably. The dance, el baile, is what makes new converts, but its foundations in tradition remain narrow, and its main activity seems to consist in periodically restating its own premises. To harness those three horses under a single term, flamenco, is to overlook the fact that they are very different horses, which pull differently in different directions.

La Perla de Cádiz, Pierre Lefranc, Curro La Gamba

The Andalusian writer who came nearest to what I have been describing probably was Federico García Lorca, even though, for him and for Manuel de Falla – and unknown to both –, Granada was unpromising territory for cante. His great intuition was that those Gypsies present a sort of quintessence of Andalusia (xviii). As, after the Granada Competition of 1922, he kept up an interest in cante and remained on terms of friendship with Pastora Pavón, Niña de los Peines, there is no telling where he might have got to had he lived. His perceptions were those of a poet and often point in the right direction.

However, I find that “flamenco” (undefined) is currently being proposed by authoritative voices as a cultural and identity marker for Andalusia. My own (unsolicited) contribution to that debate would take the form of two questions : which flamenco ? and which Andalusia (xix)? It may be that some chapters of the cultural history of Andalusia should be re-examined in depth and with some vigour, from the point of view of those who counted for nothing in society but who, amidst living conditions which were often unbearable, forged and kept alive a unique culture founded on stoicism and gracia, with which cante belongs. In this context, it seems thoroughly clear that the Gypsies of Andalusia provided a voice to the suffering of many.

NOTES

xi. Lope de Vega, El Arenal de Sevilla, III.iv. On the sending of Gypsies to the galleys, see Bernard Leblon, Les Gitans d’Espagne, (Paris, 1985), pp. 156-8 ; Manuel Martínez Martínez, La minoría gitana de la Provincia de Almería […], (Almería, 1998), pp. 32-40 ; and Luis Suárez Ávila, “El fragmentarismo […]”, Revista de flamencología, 12 (2000), p. 69.

xii. See Libro de la gitanería de Triana de los años 1740 a 1750, (Sevilla, 1995), pp. 21-22.

xiii. See my book, pp. 47-55 and, in the CD included with it, Tracks 10 to 20.

xiv. The two « tonás chicas » that Chacón is credited with having saved from disappearance are very similar to the second call to Muslim prayer, the « Iqâma ». When Chacón came upon them, probably in one of the campiñas, these melodic formulas had crossed something like four centuries since the Fall of Granada, and simply been transferred to the narrative and lyrical field.

xv. On « La Gitanilla », Estébanez Calderón, and Suárez Ávila, see my book, pp. 42-5. On Juan José Niño, see for instance Teresa Catarella, El Romancero gitano-andaluz de Juan José Niño, Sevilla, 1993.

xvi. See the following records and brochures : Françoise Atlan, Romances Sefardies (Buda Records, several vols.) ; Selección de romances sefardies de Marruecos (Saga) ; La herencia judía en España (Several Records) ; Henriette Azen, Chants judéo-espagnols de Tétouan à Oran ; Diaspora sefardí (Hesperion XXI) ; Chants judéo-espagnols (Inédit) ; etc…

xvii. See my book, pp. 42-7, and Tracks 2 to 7 in the CD.

xviii. This is particularly notable in his « late » lectures. His most illuminating formula is « La Pena de Soledad Montoya es la raíz del pueblo andaluz » : see III.344 in Obras Completas, 3 vols., Madrid, 1986. “La Pena de Soledad Montoya” refers to the “Romance de la pena negra” in Romancero Gitano : “¡ Oh, pena de los gitanos ! / Pena limpia y siempre sola”.

xix. One shudders at the prospect of a possibly official return of (or to) el flamenco – or la Andalucía – de pandereta. But how can it be avoided unless the Andalusian lament (quejío) is granted the prominence that it deserves, and properly traced to its social and historical backgrounds?

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