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"Sometimes, when I hear flamenco I get on my knees. My heart
shrinks, then it grows before it shrinks again."
Miles Davis
The minero-levantino cantes : Flamenco's Eastern essence
We're going to travel to the eastern coast of Spain, to the provinces of Almería
and Murcia, and the history of the singing and playing styles from this region.
Today the development of these styles is attributed to the massive
flows of migration that took place in the 19th century, marking the demographic
and urban concentrations that were established around the mining areas of Linares,
La Carolina, Almería and its Gador mountain range, and Cartagena-La Unión. In
the early 1800's, the first great mining crisis in Almería brought on a wave of
migration. Scores of miners from Almería traveled north in two directions: to
the eastern part of Murcia, and towards the interior of the peninsula, to mines
in the province of Jaen. In both areas there had been numerous discoveries of
large mineral deposits, and work in these areas was assured. In the areas of Cartagena
and La Unión, the new mining fever appeared around 1840, remaining popular for
decades.
The avalanche of outsiders was such that the local inhabitants
were outnumbered by eight to one. The demographic and sociological relevance of
the newcomers would remain in the area around La Unión. This is notorious in nearly
all manifestations of daily life today in La Unión: ways of speaking, the frequency
and preponderance of family names from the area of Almería, and, of course, in
our singing and playing.
Based on the primitive taranta song form from Almería, these
flows of migrating workers brought on a sort of hybrid with their local fandangos.
Of special importance in this synthesis was the active role of the night life
of the miners, the extension and proliferation in La Unión of the cafés cantantes,
and lastly, the personal contribution to these styles of Antonio Grau Mora "Rojo
el Alpargatero" and Antonio Chacón.
To illustrate this sociological explosion of migration, singing,
mining, and night life, we may observe that towards the middle of the last century,
in the main street of La Unión, there were sixteen cafés cantantes, some of which
were open twenty-four hours a day.
In summary, the cantes mineros of La Unión have existed as a
separate song form for approximately 150 years, created by the cultural and human
hybrid brought on by the flow of migrating workers from Almería to this city in
the province of Murcia.
The national festival of the "Cante de las minas" of La Unión
While the cantes mineros of La Unión were already well established in the 1800's,
towards the middle of the 1900's a state of decadence took over that endangered
their existence, promotion, and transmission. The mining crisis of this period
left the town of La Union as little more than a ghost town. The unlikely commercial
nature of the song forms, devoid of rhythm and simple melody, coupled with the
general crisis in flamenco art, brought the cantes mineros of this area to the
verge of extinction.
In this context, Juanito Valderrama visited La Unión in 1960.
He was already a widely acclaimed national artist and was quite familiar with
the world of flamenco. During his successful performance, and faced with numerous
requests for his most commercial compositions, he lectured the crowd on its lack
of sensitivity towards flamenco singing-this was not always so-because it did
not defend its local singing styles.
©Paco Sánchez
Fortunately, a small group of aficionados of La Unión heard Valderrama's desperate
plea, and organized the "I Festival Nacional del Cante de las Minas", in 1961.
This first celebration was held in the Terraza Argüelles on October 13th, 1961,
and it brought together a great number of singers. The winner was Antonio Piñana,
who had drunk deeply from the wellspring of cante minero, receiving the deep heritage
of Rojo el Alpargatero directly from his son, Antonio Grau Dauset.
The Festival del Cante de las Minas had taken root. From that
moment on, the 39 yearly celebrations have taken place without interruption. The
contest is now greatly respected, and is considered one of the most important
flamenco events in the world.
Parallel to the programming of the event, the organizers of the
contest try to publish, edit, and distribute a CD that includes the live performances
of the finalists of each yearly contest. In this way, the aficionado or collectors
can compile a discography that demonstrates the complete history of this contest.
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