EVERY GENRE PROJECT - May 24 - Copla
Genre of the Day - Copla
Album of the Day - Maria Canta Copla by Maria Rodes (2014)
May 24, 2024
Within three weeks, we return to the musically well-trodden land of Andalusia, arid in climate but lush with musical history. Andalusia could arguably be considered the musical capital of the Spanish nation, rather than more theoretically likely contenders in the country’s heartland and affluent Madrid or in bohemian Barcelona. Andalusia’s ruggedness, its perched place peeking south and west towards Spain’s colonial stomping grounds, and its place at the final frontier of the Reconquista efforts that in part gives it a historical potency, though historical memory tends to become an object of weaponization.
In my article covering Andalusian rock, we examined flamenco’s musical distinctiveness making it an object of fascination to ongoing generations of Spanish musicians. However, there lies a dark underbelly to its story. Well aware that it was regarded as an integral Spanish musical pillar, the Franco regime aggressively pushed a vision of flamenco in a traditional, conservative mold as a centerpiece of Spain’s cultural public relations and as a tool for cultural homogenization. This factors into today’s genre because copla, an Andalusian lyric-based song, was adjacent to flamenco and often used flamenco musical styles as backing, and as such raises similar questions about Spanishness, music and authoritarianism, and the ever-evolving tension between the relics of tradition and the promise of experimentation.
You can try to separate the art from the artist, but it’s ever more difficult to try to separate music from the clutches of the time it was disseminated, no matter how definitionally simple it is. Copla simply translates to couplet, meaning a group of four verses composed of couplets. The form was influenced by Spanish theater styles of the 1800s, lending a sense of drama to its themes. While copla and its similar progenitor cuplé in its earliest form resembled more risqué Spanish equivalents of the popular folk ditties of the American Songbook, the later commercial dominance of copla in Spanish music in the 1940s and 1950s rendered it a relic of Franco-era conservatism and left the bitter memory of the dictator’s isolating, impoverishing attempt at economic autarky in the minds of many Spaniards once the authoritarian tide subsided at last.
Luckily for copla, though, the lyrical fluidity of its nature allowed for an image rehabilitation, as writer Silvia Martinez discusses in the enlightening chapter on copla in the book “Made in Spain: Studies in Popular Music.” Although a copla could portray women and their relationships in an instructional, shaming manner, it could also exalt an individual’s passion. Given that all a copla must be is a lyrical ‘sung novel’, one whose story could primarily be pointed towards the working class as a popular music, this variety of meaning has allowed singers in the last few decades to look back with a refurbishing gaze. Aiding these efforts are copla’s nature prior to the authoritarian turn once the Francoist side won the Civil War. Many popular tunes openly explored figures on the margin of society, such as the experiences of prostitutes, convicts, and down-on-their-luck sailors. Though copla’s weaponization led to a full 180 for a few decades, its emotional power has never been lost on interested musical thinkers since.
If Rosalía is any example, many contemporary Spanish singers have a voracious desire to explore and reinterpret hundreds of years of Spain’s musical history. Fellow Catalan singer-songwriter Maria Rodes is of that same ilk, and approaches copla with a reverence that pours new life into decades-old songs like musical vinegar over collected rust. “Tengo Miedo” opens with a brazen theatricality as a multi-act tune, blooming out from the spare guitar intro to a rich horn ensemble embracing its lyrical distress (“Tiemblo de verme contigo, y tiemblo si te veo / Este querer es un castigo/ castigo que yo deseo.” [“I tremble to see myself with you, and I tremble if I see you / this love is a punishment, punishment that I want.”]) A healthy retrospective distance gives Rodes space to play with soundscape as she pulls these lovelorn tunes into a new era, reflected in the haunting, echoing swirls of sound in the intro of “El Día Que Nací Yo” aligning with the song’s cursing at astrological fate. “Tre Puñales” reaches for alt-rock fusion and dispenses with it for the plaintive pace of guitar strumming on “Que Nadie Sepa Mi Sufrir.” The crystal-clear softness of her voice carries a lonesome weight to it, but it’s an appropriate tone for a genre about stories as wrecked as these, with an equally fraught, heavy history.