Historic flamenco article. ‘Granada.
El Concurso de Cante Jondo’ (1922)
Granada. El concurso de cante
jondo
Literal transcription
from the magazine ‘Nuevo Mundo’
in Madrid. Article signed by Federico García
Sanchíz and published on June 23rd,
1922 |
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Contestants of Granada's
Cante Jondo Contest (Photo Revista Nuevo Mundo,
1922) |
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The honking of car horns reaches my hotel room, with its
prolonged lament through the forest of La Alhambra. The
whining sounds intertwine, gabble, shape a disturbing gibberish.
It could be said that it was after two nights of cante jondo;
that is, of not interrupting the whines in the red hill;
infected, maddened, how many instruments could imitate the
desolate modulations winding in a cantaor’s throat,
breaking out into the classic sobs of primitive Andalusian
song. But it doesn’t happen that way. The rain, suddenly
pouring down over the fiesta, forced the crowd to break
up, so that the endless line of cars which were waiting
came unraveled, and the claxons resounded from there like
hunting horns. And this is how the famous Contest ends.
The thicket now deserted, the hint of water will feign the
guitar, and the sighs of cuckoos replace the cante jondo.
It’s a serenade to the moon, tenaciously concealed
behind the clouds. The moon, so sought-after, however, that
for it not to be missing, one didn’t hesitate for
this cante ritual, already mysterious and bewitching in
itself, to be held on the 13th, and Friday on top of it.
Fortunately, no misfortune afflicted the crowd with terrible
symptoms. The zambra slid calmly and frivolously beside
the danger, like next to the wizened, ferocious Spain of
Zuloaga, the true one laughs and flourishes. The final downpour
doesn’t go beyond a big flamenco joke, amidst friends
who have been joking around a bit...
The Contest, in short, came down to listening
to professionals, which anyone can find in the dressing
rooms of a café, and to the pharaonics of Albaicín
repeating once again the caravaneering they usually serve
up to tourists at the little theater of this Palace Alhambra
Hotel. As regards to the contestants, old people or children.
Cante jondo looks like a home for destitute old folks
and orphans. Attending the fight were several precocious
kids, ready with a gramophone, and a contemporary grandfather
of Silverio
Franconetti, and blind grandmother, both personages
of picturesque pathos. Where is the man or woman in their
prime, the only ones able to be tormented and express
the drama of cante jondo? That cante jondo which must
have been born in the heart of a desperate female, jealous
and in heat, a widow hardly married, and not resigning
herself to fatality.
Excerpt from‘Granada.
El Concurso de Cante Jondo’.
Drawing by Tono (Revista
Nuevo Mundo, 1922)
Then, you might ask: didn’t anything
exemplary and extraordinary happen at the Patio de los
Aljibes? I’ll always remember the saetas by a nephew
of El Gallo, the bullfighter; some instants by the aforementioned
old man; and in a special way, the voice, style, mask,
dynamism and ecstasy of Manuel
Torres, nicknamed Niño de Jerez. I’ll
also remember the guitars by Amalio Cuenca and Niño
de Huelva, who didn’t press the guitar against their
hearts in vain. And I’ll remember La
Macarrona, an ounce of gold amidst an adulterated,
chromolithographic band of gypsies. Yeah. Unforgettable
is so much yearning, faints and vehemence, echoes of distances
in race, time and space; fervor and superstition; a simple
seduction of sound; rhythms linear in the flesh; very
fleeting visions in flashing silhouettes; an ensemble
of diverse expressive modes, absolute but fragmentary,
since they look like pieces of a huge broken organism,
like fabulous bones speaking of fame gone by. Who will
manage to repair the destroyed architecture, reorganize
the liturgy which vanished, set back afloat the submerged
Atlantis? At least, at the Patio de los Aljibes inventory
has been taken of what we still preserve, and a new reconquest
has been sworn over the ruins, precisely in the land where
reconquest has a Eucharistic meaning. Manuel de Falla
and his romantic, generous group try and return to the
people their psychology and to intensify the artistic
music with suggestions of a nearly mythological, Byzantine-gypsy
soul. And they started their work on Tuesday the 13th
of June, at La Alhambra in Granada. The moon didn’t
attend, but the place was swarming with gnomes, fairies
and even the devil. A huge box-office hit. Not an empty
seat. And it was a disciplined, cultured audience dominated
by women, many of whom were wearing 1830 dresses, and
others were in old trousers, and all of them with that
poise which is the privilege of women from Granada. With
fans, the crowd rumored and fluttered, unless suddenly
a copla paralyzed them with its emotion, like the entomologist’s
pin paralyzes butterflies.
Federico GARCÍA SANCHÍZ
