EVERY GENRE PROJECT - September 19 - Flamenco Pop

Genre of the Day - Flamenco Pop 

Album of the Day - El Mal Querer by Rosalía (2018)

It feels like flamenco and massive stature within the wider Spanish musical world comes up with biweekly certainty in this column. Shortly after this month kicked off, we were whisked to the traditional poetic songcraft and elaborate dances of Seville. On the whole, though, I don’t mind its frequency. Flamenco and its lineage of traditions presents a veritable cross-section of some of the themes that define musical exploration, spanning its role as a cross-bearer of national identity, its distinctive musicality, and its thorny social history. To enshrine a form in popular music is perhaps the most dangerous and bold act of all, opening a Pandora's box of debates while simultaneously proving that with a thoughtful, innovative touch, the traditions of yore can brim with newfound vitality.

Today, flamenco is an international industry. If you live in any medium-to-large sized city, look up its name plus flamenco to see how many organizations continue to proliferate the form. It’s generally taken as an innocuous musical symbol connoting Spain’s vibrant visual culture, its appreciation for passion, and multicultural musical heritage. Probing the depths of its history reveals complexities and shocks as intricate as its core tiers, encompassing cante (singing), baile (dance), toque (instrumental accompaniment) in the mystique of minor-key Dorian and Phrygian modes, and what thematic palo song-type a particular performance falls into. 

The form began as a vital mode of expression among southern Spain's marginalized Romani communities in the late 18th century, incorporating flourishes like traditional wedding calls into guitar-led mini-dramas. The Napoleonic Wars and the looming threat of cultural Francization—nobody wants to capitulate to the French—prompted Spaniards to think about national identity through new lenses. The vivacious cultural traditions of southern Spain like bull-fighting and flamenco began to stand out anew in the cultural imagination, and flamenco began its journey as a larger-than-life phenomenon transcending its subcultural, insular origins. 

Strongarm Francisco Franco weaponized this vision of flamenco as an instrument of his dictatorial conservatism, making theatrical forms of flamenco like copla unfortunately synonymous with the tragedies of his forty-year grip over Spain. A reclamatory, fighting spirit reemerged to correct these misuses in the form of singers of Romani origin like Camarón de la Isla and La Repompa de Málaga, who added popular elements like the bass guitar to either create flamenco pop or pop aflamencado (flamenco-fied pop). If the distinction seems subtle, think again: its outsized role in Spanish national identity-building inevitably leads to controversy, and even outside of that context, there is no way to steer a traditionally cherished form in a pop-facing direction without facing pushback from those who worry about the social and structural cheapening of a complex musical form. Nonetheless, flamenco-tinged pop became increasingly popular by the end of the 20th century, adding ‘traditional’ and offbeat overtones to dance-pop and international Spanish-language dance styles.

Rosalía has become a lightning rod for the last decade’s reckoning with the concept of cultural appropriation in an increasingly ‘deculturated’ world as this excellent recent New Yorker piece explores. Her greatest claim to dedication to her art lies in her adolescence spent closely studying flamenco in exclusive Barcelona music programs after having her musical passions awakened by the aforementioned Camarón de la Isla. Through releases stemming initially from her student-projects, she became a one-woman force renowned for her production creativity, sharp visual sense, and arresting voice, bringing flamenco pop to the international stage. Her unprecedented visibility as a flamenco-pop figure has brought old debates to new light—many voices take issue with a Catalonian unabashedly interpreting the cultural integrity of the still-maligned Romani community (49% of Spaniards still hold unfavorable views of Roma). Other purists simply find her incorporation of musical elements insufficient and feel her distinctive vocal style diverges too much from tradition.

I have no answers to these debates, but it’s clear that she’s one of the most transgressive and electrifying figures in music and in genre of our era. Her 2018 breakout El Mal Querer invited that magnitude of debate chiefly because it’s an unignorable triumph of an album. “MALAMENTE - Cap. 1: Augurio” floats in on dusty synth clouds, its ritualistic handclaps illustrating the potency of pop and flamenco elements meeting. Coming off of “QUE NO SALGA LA LUNA” and its ominous guitar foreshadowing the storyline’s later tragedy, “PIENSO EN TU MIRÁ” could easily slide into 2018’s slinkiest pop playlists with its subtle reggaeton punch and vocoder sweetness. From the theatrical, copla-recalling visions of flamenco in “RENIEGO” to the conceptual ambition of blending her bewitching melisma with cityscape-chaos in “DE AQUÍ NO SALES,” Rosalía again and again proves flamenco-pop’s power. She wields her avant-garde sensibilities to shatter the picture of flamenco she carefully absorbed as a student and reconstruct it in an image that blends its idiosyncrasies without minimizing its transgressive nature as a form, showing how flamenco’s expressions of the powerful and the forlorn still carry weight amidst 21st-century relationships.

P.S. Rosalía guested on a song by her fellow meta-explorer of European musical culture-gone-pop star Björk to save the salmon, and it’s a must listen.