Everything that you wanted to know about flamenco, but never dared to ask

'Cante por cante' is the first instructive record-book
which aims to help in the recognition of different flamenco styles

Silvia Calado Olivo

"Flamenco both attracts and intimidates". The reasons for its attraction are obvious and the reason it intimidates is as a result of "so many years of exaggerated commentaries, of experts prepared to ruin the evening of a someone who has just been overcome with emotion for the first time". This is what has led a team made up of the journalist José Manuel Gamboa, the producer from the Flamenco en el Foro label, Julián Sanz, and the director of New Atlantis Music, Álvaro Perales, to create the first instructive flamenco record-book, 'Cante por cante', which is now being translated into English.

The idea emerged, as Álvaro Perales explained at the presentation of 'Cante por cante' at the Madrid base of the General Society of authors on June 10 2002, from the natural response of the uninitiated: "What is this, a soleá? No, it is a tiento". And after a year's work, the key to avoiding such an experience - it is frowned upon to be ignorant in such circles - has been produced. Julián Sanz resorts to a metaphor to explain how al three were involved: "He hatched the egg, he fried it, he added some salt ... and you all are the people that are now eating it".

'Cante por cante' is a carefully produced work both in terms of its depth and its format. The opening pages of the book are directed towards establishing the basic foundations. The development and structure of the cantes are analysed, the key that allows "a guitarist and a singer who don't know each other to understand one another ... not because they improvise but because there are some established foundations whose understanding they share": a guitar introduction, the beginning, the cante de preparación, the cante valiente and the end. After this introduction, which also includes an essential glossary, Gamboa unravels the secrets of the Andalucian scale, the rhythm and words of flamenco, occasionally using musical terminology: "You don't have to know music to understand the method, but it is extra information for those that do." In addition, there is a classifying table in which the cantes are divided into four groups, as a step towards the study of the sixteen styles, starting with the verdial, because "the basis of flamenco remains the most primitive fandango".

Álvaro Perales and José Manuel Gamboa
(Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Víctor Coyote's design and format is aimed at clarity and synthesis in the explanatory details of each style. Each description is entitled with the style written over a colour-coded band which corresponds to a particular category: purple for fandangos, green for those derived from the soleá, orange for the seguiriya and blue for the tangos. For each style there is a brief descriptive text which contains details about its origins and its basic characteristics: "The granaína is nothing more than a fandango from Granada, one that is stripped of all the rhythm". Then they explain three aspects: the scale, the rhythm and the verse, a trio which at the end of each description they annotate with icons and colours. Finally, using an icon in the form of an eye, the most important points of each description. José Manuel Gamboa points out that "although it appears a trifle to distinguish between a polo and a caña, if you begin the singing with words it is a polo and if you begin with an cry it is a caña". These are the little tricks we use "without trying to become too simplistic we are trying to aid understanding".

The instructive approach is accompanied by a record which contains examples of the sixteen styles analysed in the book. Julián Sanz was in charge of selecting the cast of singers and musicians which include Talegón de Córdoba, Mercedes Cubero, Miguel de Tena, Pedro Sanz, El Flecha and Chaquetón, accompanied on percussion by Pepe Núñez, Eduardo Rebollar and Salva de María. He thanks them for "having renounced their artistic personality to help in the understanding of the cantes", as Gamboa adds, "they have renounced their freedom of expression in order to limit themselves to the most basic". By the way, in order to get their won back they all shine when they are accompanied on percussion by Pepe Núñez, Pedro Sanz and Miguel de Tena in the garrotín and granaína at the presentation of the record-book.

The idea "of we will return your money if you can't tell the difference between martinete and debla", is not guaranteed in 'Cante por cante' but it seems that te book does work. Gamboa says that when he was in the midst of recording Carmen Linares latest album 'Un ramito de locura', he used the assistant sound technician, who had no previous experience on the subject, as a guinea pig: "I gave him the sheets on the seguiriya and the very next day he had got everything sorted".

Click here to enlarge

revista@flamenco-world.com