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Tonic for the spirit
It has an explanation. Aziz believes that cante jondo, just like Indo-Pakistani
music, is a vehicle which Man must use to communicate with God, since it is -in
his opinion- music of a sacred nature, "a tonic for the spirit". Verifying
that this viewpoint was not shared, not even imagined, by cante professionals
finds a response to his great question: "Why doesn't cante jondo occupy the
place it deserves among musical genres? Because the people who sing, most of them,
don't take it seriously and aren't backed well by the public, except by those
inexpert in music".
The scholar -who also published titles such as 'What is sufism (London, 1950)
and 'Le sufisme, la philosophie de l'amour' (Geneva, 1953)- regrets that flamenco,
at that time, was associated with drunkenness and partying: "It's a pity
that this spiritual cante is abused the way it's being abused by those who think
they're cantaors and all they do is shout and discredit". The dissolute life
is not the only censure. He also considers internal fusions pernicious: "Mixing
different styles and modulations in the same song does nothing more than cause
incalculable damage to pure style, which will eventually be lost completely if
cante stylists don't remedy the situation in the immediate future". And he
goes on to illustrate the blunder with a Sufi legend: "It is told that Grumanik,
the founder of the ancient religion of the Sikhs in India, had a strange vision
on one occasion. It was a horrible figure, with its feet on its head and its hands
on its feet... As Grumanik, filled with horror by that demonic figure, asked it
who it was, it responded that it was Music. "Music? How can it be?",
he answered. "That's what your singers have turned me into by mixing the
melodies, giving me the head of one melody, the tail of another, the body of another
dynasty, and so on to the point of making me this monstrous being that I now am".
The story is understood with the information provided in the chapter 'Indo-Pakistani
Music, which explains how musical modes are personified in ideograms, composing
a mythical history of music. In his study, Aziz goes so far as to relate the family
tree of Sindhi cante with cante jondo, thus the application to flamenco of the
story of the repentant Grumanik.
Family tree of Sindhi cante with cante jondo
(Click the images to enlargue)
Getting back to the Pakistani's adventures... It turns out that the Spanish
Civil War cut his brilliant career short. And it was not easy. Despite the embassy's
recommendations, urging British citizens to leave the country, Balouch was determined
to stay... until a bomb from the National Army wounded him at Plaza de Bilbao
in Madrid. "I decided to leave in order to recover, not only from the wounds,
but from the shock I suffered"; indeed, deceived, since at the embassy he
was told that all that would last two or three weeks. And he arrived in London,
where he went back to his music studies at the London College of Music and Trinity
College, under the tutelage of Thorpe Bates. Without forgetting flamenco: "I
performed music from Spain several times in several sections of the BBC".
Nor Sufi philosophy, which he spread by means of the Sindh Sufi Society that he
himself founded.
And he came back. In the city of the Thames he came across the recently appointed
Pakistani ambassador to Spain, Syed Miran Mohamed Shah, who asked him to join
his team as a cultural attaché. It was the year 1952. Aziz Balouch renewed
his old friendships -Pepe Marchena, Niño de Almadén, Imperio Argentina,
Florián Rey...- and he got down to work. On July 10, 1952, he established
the Friends of Pakistan Association in a ceremony presided over by the Minister
of Education in the halls of the National Library. And he sang "soleares
and fandanguillos in Pakistani, and Pepe Marchena sang them in the style of our
beloved Andalusia. The success was so great that I deserved the congratulations
of all the celebrities". Newspapers and radio stations again echoed the prodigy,
at the same time the Universities of Barcelona and Salamanca called on him to
expound his theories on the similarity between both types of music.
Aziz Balouch at the Biblioteca Nacional
Damascus route
Aziz did, in search of roots, a flashback to the year 711 of the Christian
era when, sent by the caliphate of Damascus, Mohamed Ben Kassim conquered Sindh
and Tarik Benzyed the Iberian Peninsula. "The road from Andalusia to Sindh,
through Damascus, was laid out. Musicians, artists, architects (to whom he
attributes a higher degree of culture than the Arab one at that time), learned
the road there and back, through the Muslim world, taking their wisdom as luggage
to the different towns in Ancient Arabia. When Ziryab came from Persia to Andalusia
to teach his cante to Spanish musicians, the road already existed, and there is
no doubt that the Spaniards knew how to travel, taking their knowledge with them
to show it to others. It is doubtless that they reached Sindh, and the ancient
men of my homeland must have learned to know the music that the primitive Spaniards
had before the invasion of the Arabs, this medium contributing to the more perfect
mutual understanding of both peoples in ancient times". This hypothesis contradicts
the widespread one based on the idea that the gypsies brought the musical modes
from India in their exodus to Europe from Punjab... or it provides an interesting
alternative. As he points out, he attributes a key role to the musician Hassan
Ali Ben Nafi Ziryab, sent by the Caliph of Bagdad to the Caliph of Córdoba,
whose reincarnation he believes himself to be and whom he calls "founder
of the world-famous cante jondo". On the diversification of styles, Aziz
Balouch recounts that "the people from each province in Andalusia recited
copying the ways of Ziryab, and when the poets, following Muslim custom, from
each province reached the Court of Abderrahamán or his successors, they
recited their poems, calling them by the name of origin. Thus, poets were announced
from Málaga (malagueñas), the ones who came from Seville (sevillanas),
the ones from Granada (...). At the same time the regional poems from each province
were recited in a special way, although it was the same melody in the background".
And, besides the poets, he emphasizes the importance of the country people
in the development of cante jondo: "As in Pakistan the country folk recite
their songs at their personal meetings or in the field or on the way to work (...),
thus the Andalusian country people, either at their meetings or when they walk
to work or go on horseback, they sing their coplas following their own inspiration
and according to the mood they are in on that day. In other words, they end up
expressing the same melodies and the same songs, following a tradition that is
many centuries old, from time immemorial". He takes advantage of this dissertation
to hurl a denial or two, as for example, that of the North African gene: "Despite
its proximity to Spain, the Mohammedan Moroccans haven't produced virtually any
cante flamenco". And even to contribute etymological possibilities different
to the so-reiterated ones: "The word "jondo" might well be derived
from the voices of the "Sindhi" language Gind, which means soul
(cante of the soul), or might be from the "Hindu" Hindustani,
as if relating its origin". It is all aimed at illustrating the theory that
"the great Spanish cante is completely identified with Sufi folk music".
Did the analysis that Aziz Balouch carried out over more than twenty years
on the origin and evolution of cante jondo have any repercussions? There is no
written evidence of it in the so-called flamencology: scarcely the brief reference
to the author found in the 'Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary of Flamenco' by
Blas Vega and Ríos Ruiz; and some odd passing mention of the musician as
an example of a precedent of flamenco fusion. We needn't quote possible reasons.
In the art world, even less so. Chrematistics and mysticism are usually as antagonistic,
exceptions aside, as cante and singing. M. Aziz Balouch was certainly less fortunate
and less influential than Ziryab as a teacher. It depends on memory -and hopefully,
on miraculous republishing- for his work to go from a simple collection of anecdotes
to enriching the in itself poor flamenco theory corpus.
Note. The trail of Muhammad Aziz Balouch gets lost in his own work. After making
several inquiries we know that the author, an accredited Sufi theory reference,
was awarded the 'Civil Award for Pride of Performance for Art (Folk Music)' by
the Government of Pakistan in 2002, according to the digital version of 'The News
International'.
(Thanks to Bolo, for his generous curiosity)
magazine@flamenco-world.com
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