Flamenco Spots

FLAMENCO SPOTS

What colour is Flamenco? It could be a pure passionate red because it is an art form filled with passion. It could be faded deep blue because of the suffering of the people who developed it in their nomadic travels. It could be the grey of the worn-out gypsy suits the male dancers wear. But it is not a colour, it is best expressed as a pattern: Spots.

Spots are the closest metaphor to the complex rhythms we’ve been learning in Palmas or Compas, guitar and dance. Most flamenco rhythms are in a twelve beat repeat. But it’s where you put the emphasis that is critical, for example in Bulerias it’s on beat 3,7,8 10 and 12, [or sometimes on 3,6,8,10,12.] Other popular rhythms we learn are Tangos, Soleas, Segurias and Fandango.

EMILIO'S TROUPE

The flamenco troupe, at it’s smallest is a guitarist, singer [often sitting on a beat box] and dancer, work together to maintain the rhythm, but along the way they speed up, slow down, introduce different rhythms and counter-point. Larger troupes might have a male dancer too, and a separate percussionist.

THE CARMEN DE LAS CUEVAS SCHOOL

SCHOOL SECRETARIES

EMILIO, GUITARIST AND TEACHER 

CARMEN, HEAD OF SCHOOL

We decided to base ourselves in Granada for a while, so we found a school. Called Escuela Carmen de las Cuevas. You can learn Spanish, flamenco dance, Compas, and flamenco guitar. Colin takes a guitar class with Emilio, gives up, then books in for the language course and I book in for dance with Pilar. In the afternoons we both learn compas with Raimundo.

DANCER FLAMENCO MUSEUM, SEVILLE

A CLASSIC FLAMENCO POSE

MALE DANCER, SEVILLE

 PALMAS [OR CLAPPING] THE COMPAS

We were very impressed by the flamenco we saw at the Museum of Flamenco in Seville, and both want to know more. The group in Seville stirred our interested in the rhythms. Learning Compas, is the basis for all flamenco; singing, guitar and dance.

RAIMUNDO AND THE COMPAS CLASS

Flamenco is a gypsy art form traditionally developed by the oppressed peoples of Andalusia. It’s believed that the dance was originated by the “untouchables” in the Punjab and travelled with these nomadic “Romany” people all along north Africa, from Egypt to Morocco and into southern Spain. The very particular style of plaintive singing and the differing rhythms have many influences, including: Persian, Islamic, Jewish, Mozarabic, Arabic and African.

MALE DANCER IN FLIGHT

TANGO

To learn flamenco dance, I have to buy the right shoes, which are simple black Mary Jane’s with nails hammered into the heels and toes. I also buy a long black skirt with white spots, as they tell me my jeans won’t offer enough movement. 

Hips need to be rotated on every beat, so I can see the problem with tight jeans.

PILAR AND HER DANCE CLASS

HELEN IN DANCE CLASS

PILAR, DANCER AND TEACHER

FLAMENCO DANCE CLASS

At first it’s like rubbing our tummies and patting our heads. We learn to turn our wrists circling every finger inwards and outwards. At the same time we tap to the odd beats and rotate our hips. We do heel, toe, stamp, and turn, across the tiny floor in the dance room, a tiny white washed cave.

FLAMENCO BABES, HELEN AND TERRI GET THE LOOK

By the end of week two we’re not exactly graceful, but at least we are all in time with each other. The dance students are from all over the world, Canada, Holland, Germany, France, Japan. The only chap in our class is an Iraqi Kurd who lives in Switzerland.

THE DANCE CLASS ON SCHOOL STAIRS

Shunning the tourist traps, where you arrive by coach to see a watered-down version of the real thing and get a dinner thrown in, we find a good club to see flamenco. It’s named after the Bunuel film, “ Un Chien Andalou”. In a tiny cavern-like space we have drinks and tapas and watch Emilio, the guitar teacher and his troupe play and dance. The dancer uses her body as a percussive instrument, tapping very fast and clapping her hands all over her body at some points. The singer has huge black eyes and curly black hair, he looks Egyptian. 

EMILIO AND HIS SINGER

DANCER IN UN CHIEN ANDALOU CLUB

TROUPE IN UN CHIEN ANDALOU CLUB

UN CHIEN ANDALOU, INTERIOR

Colin gets introduced by a local friend, Manuel, to a bar where the gypsies go to play very late at night. I won’t give its name, because it is a private space run by a great guitarist. We go up to the Sacre Monte hills one night dressed very simply. We have a drink at one bar and wait till after midnight. Then we go to the gypsy cave and order a drink. The tiny space has no fridge, so drinks are either whisky, or rum with mixers. The owner-guitarist recognises Colin from before, he raises his glass to us to clink. I make the mistake of holding my glass in my left hand “Mal Suerte” he scolds me, so I apologise, change hands and clink again. “Suerte” I say, hoping to be forgiven. Evidently this works, as some time later he beckons us into the back room, where a couple of regulars are drinking and chatting. He plays really well then hands his guitar over to some very young men in shell suits who have the worst haircuts we’ve seen for some time: 1970‘s Mullets.

They are refining their skills and are already very accomplished. After an hour they leave. Later some people arrive, looking like they’re extras in a Spaghetti Western. [These should be called Paella Westerns as they were filmed in Andalusia.] Enter a skinny buck-toothed, cross-eyed man and a tough, bald guy with a beautiful Moroccan girl on his arm and a trace of white powder under his nostrils. They are closely followed by a guy with a tanned leather face, wrinkled like a landscape after a drought, wearing a nylon bomber jacket and black leather spray-on flared trousers. A tiny eagle-nosed drunk is gently but firmly evicted after annoying our host. A local woman gets up to dance and first checks the compas-"is it a Buleria?" She asks.

Two more gypsy guys arrive, decorated with huge tattoos on their hard wiry arms, they have wildly shining, drug-bright eyes. The last to come in is a young guitarist who looks like David Essex. This completes the group and they sing and play, constantly swapping the guitar and breaking into each others’ songs. They play and sing brilliantly without stopping - we leave them early in the morning. It’s edgy but a great experience.

No photos-These people are secretive and superstitious, we wouldn’t dare photograph them

COLIN'S SKETCH OF A FLAMENCO DANCER

Granada Carnation Red

Granada Carnation Red

We arrive in Granada just in time for the Cruz de Mayo. A bit like our May Day, it’s a very ancient pre-Christian festival that continues under the guise of Christianity. Instead of maypoles, people erect huge crosses in courtyards and plazas. They are then covered in rich red carnations. Around these, there are temporary shrines with objects symbolising the main trade of the area. For example, in one square there are the dyes, yarns, spinning wheels and cauldrons used to dye cloth and to make embroideries.

Dyers Shrine

Baskets of Dye

Beautiful old and new embroidered shawls are draped over window ledges all around the courtyards. The shrines compete and awards are given for the best Cruz De Mayo .

Cupid and Shawl

Shawls, Shrine and Cross

Cross with theatrical set of Granada landmarks

Cross with Flamenco accessories

The local deities are out too, along with pots and pans in shining copper. You can find the crosses by listening out for very loud flamenco music, which is played at every site.

Baby Jesus of Granada - see inscription

Apple and scissors

An apple and scissors are seen at various sites. Apparently, this is not as we thought, to ward off evil against the harvest, but a pun. Apple in Spanish is "Pero", which also means "But" , so it is to ensure people admire the crosses and shrines without any "Buts".

A Roman god peeps out from behind a cross

That night, we go to the Sacre Monte hills, where the gypsies live in caves, and meet some friendly people who tell us they are from the pueblos around Granada. They are dancing to very loud music and I join in clapping the rhythm. Colin is quietly sketching them. They are all amazingly generous and offer us skewers of chicken and custard tarts they have made at home, and bought in for this picnic. No one is drinking alcohol. 

All ages and sizes join in the dance, and of course they are all brilliant at it and make quite flirtatious hip wiggling moves that few old timers in the U.K. could ever do. Unfortunately for me, one lady siezes me and drags me to dance. “No puedo....” I say, hoping this means "I don’t know how”. Anyway, after a brief and embarrasing attempt she agrees. “No hablas” she says. I shuffle off. Then they all flock around Colin’s tiny sketchbook. One lady recognises herself, it’s fantastic they all say, except her husband, who obviously still sees his sixty year old wife as the twenty year old he married. No, it’s terrible he insists.

Pueblo People dancing

Pueblo People clapping (Compas) 

Pueblo People with Alhambra

Part of the celebrations include horse riders with beautifully dressed horses like  the ones we saw in Seville. Two of the chaps look ahead with deadpan expressions as their amigo becomes romantically entwined.

Horse riders

Romantic horse riders

Cordoba Turquoise

Cordoba Turquoise

Cordoba is full of jewellery shops in the narrow streets around the Cathedral. Turquoise and coral are the favourite semi-precious stones used here.

Turquoise is widely used along with coral in jewellery

The cathedral has been the subject of some controversy in the newspapers recently because the Catholic church won’t let Muslims pray there, even though it was a mosque for 500 years. 

Recycled columns support the arches 

Hypnotic arches in Cordoba Cathedral

Alter piece with shell

Originally a Visigoth church c 600A.D, the structure was bought by Abd ar-Rahman, the Ummayad leader in exile from Syria. Ar-Rahman created the Great Mosque of Cordoba, c784A.D. re-using original Roman and Visigoth columns as a basis. He put a series of double arches in red brick and cream stone on top of the columns, in effect a horse-shoe arch with a semi-circular arch on top. This creates an amazingly hypnotic effect, a bit like being inside an Escher drawing.

Palm tree in the Alcazar

Ar-Rahman wrote a poem about a palm tree describing how he felt, like the tree, uprooted from his homeland.

Helen by the city walls

In 1236 Cordoba fell to King Ferdinand III who turned the mosque back into a church, but kept all the Arabic patterning.This creates some strange cultural mixes, intricate arabic patterning alongside vast numbers of cherubs, crucifixes and Deathsheads. 

Mixed styles

Putti Ceiling

What it's all about

Visiting the Casa de Sefarad, a museum mainly focused on Sefardic Jews, we find out a lot more about the history of Muslims and Jews in Spain during the Inquisition because we meet Jaime Casas, an intelligent and enthusiastic man who runs the Museum and is just putting together a room about the inquisition. Coincidentally, we had heard him on a Radio 4 podcast the week before. Helen remembered his name and on asking where we might meet him, found him standing right there.

Jaime Casas

Jaime explains that Spain was very racially and culturally mixed at that time with Jews making up about 1/5 of the population. Jews, Muslims and Catholics co-existed, and intermarried, although they didn’t have the same status in society as the Catholics. But all that was about to change. Monty Python joked that “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” but if they had, they would have run away fast.

In 1478 the catholic kings established the Inquisition and used the Alcazar at Cordoba for the first trials.

Seal of the Inquisition

Document appointing Inquisitors

What the well dressed sinner is wearing

It soon became clear that the Inquisition, based on purifying Catholic Doctrine, could only be applied to Catholics. Thus, in order to catch everyone in their net, they forced non-Catholics to convert.  However, once converted, the Inquisition then used their non-Catholic heritage against them - so they could not protect themselves or their descendants in any event.

In 1492 the Catholic Kings expelled the Jews and the Muslims from Spain. Some stayed on and became covert converts - even becoming Catholic religious leaders.

In the Casa De Sefarad, we find paintings of famous Spanish Jews including Maimonedes. Objects include wedding outfits, musical instruments and a pretty turquoise embroidered prayer cloth

Ornate prayer shawl

The museum also displays fine Moroccan clothing embroidered with Gold thread work, a special technique which was made by Jewish widows.

Ornate gold threadwork

All the Inquisition stuff left us feeling depressed, all that evil killing and torture when in 2008 DNA tests showed 20% of Spaniards have Jewish heritage, and 10% of Spaniards have North African heritage.

Like Jaime, we are greatful to live in a secular society.