FLAMENCO DOCUMENTATION: AUDIO DOCUMENTATION
Ana Mº Tenorio Notario

Audio documentation

Registered sound, both in flamenco as in all other music, can be divided into two fundamentally separate periods characterized by the medium in which the recordings were produced: Recordings made on slate cylinders (approximately 1878 - 1954), and polyvinyl records.

Some technical data

Although throughout the nineteenth century there were many experiments with recording and reproducing the human voice, the first patent for a mechanism capable of reproducing voice was granted to Edison in 1878. The machine was called a phonograph and consisted of a mechanical device which registered sound through a sort of trumpet in whose slim end there was a diaphragm which transmitted vibrations to an ivory needle which in turn transmitted the signal to a cardboard cylinder covered with a sheet of tin. The needle traveled along the length of the cylinder via a watchmaker's mechanism. The reproduction consisted of another diaphragm and another needle which traveled the same grooves left by the recording needle. This type of cylinder was not marketed since the system could only take very few recordings. In 1889 Edison substituted the tin-covered cardboard for another of solid wax. This system was marketed for several years until the appearance of a new gadget: The gramophone.

In 1887 Berliner had patented a new recording system which was called the gramophone. The recording was made with a chemical process on a flat disk which spun around via a spring mechanism. A needle transmitted vibrations to a diaphragm which transformed them into sound. Basically the record was produced on a slate composite. The quality of recordings improved after the twenties with the introduction of a new kind of electronic recording which picked the sound up from microphones and amplification.

This system lasted from 1898 - 1900 until the beginning of the fifties when microgrooves appeared. This type of recording was made on a disk of vinyl resin and had the advantage of increasing the length of the recording (from 4 to 25 or 30 minutes), and eliminating the annoying scratching sound of the needle's drag across the slate disks. The first microgroove record was presented at Columbia in 1948 (although in Spain slate records were not abandoned until 1957). These recordings lasted until the introduction of CD's and digital technology.

Old flamenco recordings

When sound systems appeared, attention was focused mainly on recording the human voice more than music, particularly collections of popular verses from different parts of the world, and the so-called word archives. If slate recordings were fundamental for the study and investigation of the universal musical heritage, it became absolutely necessary for the conservation of that music which, like flamenco, was constantly submitted to the influence of personal styles, the inspiration of the moment and the impossibility of applying traditional musical notation.

The impact of 78 r.p.m. recordings was even more important in the case of flamenco where there were artists who did not have an artistic career geared to a large audience, but rather limited their interpretations to informal gatherings or private fiestas. The best-kown example is that of Tomás Pavón regarded as the person who rescued and transmitted the ancient cantes of Triana (martinetes, seguiriyas and toná grande), and who brought back cantes such as the debla, which had been forgotten by that time. But Tomás Pavón never got up on a stage and limited himself to small gatherings. Nevertheless he left ten slate recordings which comprise a miniature enciclopedia of flamenco cante. His own sister La Niña de los Peines represents the opposite extreme and managed to record nearly four-hundred cantes. On June 9th, 1997 the Junta de Andalucía declared Pastora Pavón's recordings to be a National Cultural Treasure establishing the prohibition against taking them out of the country, obliging their owners to guard and protect the records, and formalizing the right of the Andalusian government to appropriate them.

The phonograph companies which set up business in Spain were all from abroad: La Voz de Su Amo, Gramophone, Pathé (all French), and Odeón (German). But in spite of their foreign origins, they all granted a fundamental place in their catalogues to flamenco recordings. From the first recordings which were purely informative, cante flamenco was already introduced. Blas Vega states that the first public demonstration of how a phonograph worked took place in Cádiz at the Santa Cecilia School and it included a malagueña sung by María Monte, and malagueñas, tangos, and serranas sung by María Payans.

There are references to quite a few singers who made wax recordings: Cagancho, Chacón, Niño de Cabra, Paca Aguilera, Revuelta, Juan Breva, Paco el de Montilla or El Mochuelo.

Nevertheless the extreme fragility of the cylinders has caused many of them to disappear over the years.

As far as slate recordings, it could be said that nearly all the flamenco artists of the era made at least one record. In the catalogue of slate records at the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco there are nearly three-hundred different artists.

Various studies count around three thousand flamenco recordings on slate. Some catalogues of these records can be found in the following works:

- Guía del Flamenco by Arcadio de Larrea
- Diccionario Enciclopédico Ilustrado del Flamenco by José Blas Vega and Manuel Ríos Ruiz
- Candil Magazine (Manuel Yerga Lancharro)
- Catalogue of 78 r.p.m. recordings of the National Library (1988)
- Catalogue of 78 r.p.m. recordings of the Andalusian Center of Musical Documentation (1995)
- Catalogue of slate records of the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco, available on the Internet and which includes a collection of 2020 78 r.p.m. records.

Modern recordings

After the fifties the system of microgrooves was established in Spain. The production of flamenco records shot up in an extraordinary way, to such an extent that nowadays it is practically impossible to carry out a proper cataloguing of everything produced up to the present. The recordings made, not only of the artists of the moment, but also various compilations and reconstructions taken from primitive slate records, are very numerous. There are recording companies with absolutely impressive catalogues such as Belter or Hispavox.

Nevertheless seven anthological works can be singled out as obligatory points of reference for a flamenco discography:

- Antología del cante flamenco (3 records). Hispavox, 1954.
- Una historia del cante flamenco, 2 records interpreted by Manolo Caracol. Hispavox, 1958
- Memorias antológicas del cante flamenco. 4 records interpreted by Pepe Marchena. Belter, 1963.
- La gran historia del cante andaluz. 3 records interpreted by Antonio Mairena. Columbia
- Archivo del cante flamenco. (6 discos). Vergara, 1968
- Gran antología flamenca. 10 records. RCA, 1971
- Magna antología del cante flamenco. Hispavox, 1978 (20 records with an explanatory booklet)

Currently, flamenco has been placed on an equal footing with other kinds of music in the new Compact-Disk technology. Some recording companies are passing their fund of old records to Compact-Disk. This is what has been done for example with the complete discography of Camarón and of Paco de Lucía which was recently released by Polygram Ibérica, or the collection Quejío with which EMI is again making available its trove of flamenco music recorded on microgroove.

Nowadays, nearly all the big record companies include flamenco artists in their catalogues. There are many labels exclusively devoted to this specialty. Such is the case of the Seville companies Senador and Pasarela. Other companies (some of them foreign) keep up a line of flamenco releases: Nuevos Medios, devoted to "new flamenco artists", Auvidis Ibérica, Harmonia Mundi...