Forgotten Sounds of Flamenco

Hit lists are a great way to get an insight into the most popular songs of a specific time frame. For this episode, we have curated a definitive list of the best flamenco hits, considering the recordings produced in the first two decades of the recording industry. We will thoroughly inspect the top ten highest-ranked flamenco songs (palos) on this remarkable list.

The Sevillian composer Manuel Font de Anta is perhaps best known for authoring some of the most emblematic processional marches of Holy Week, such as "Amarguras" or "Soleá dame la mano." What is not so well known is that Font de Anta also composed some flamenco works for piano. In this episode, we review some of these works, which are entirely unknown, and listen to some of them. 

The name "the panaderos" was given to popular music and dance in Spain in the 19th century. They probably arrived to Spain from Mexico, where it was already being danced two and a half centuries ago. It was a common "palo" in the flamenco of the 19th century and somehow, as we see in this episode, never disappeared. We review the history of the panaderos in flamenco and listen to some of them from the 19th century, some of which still need to be discovered.

At the end of the 19th century, one of the most important European singers of the time, the French Anne Judic, triumphed in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba, singing one of the most famous flamenco songs of the time: the peteneras. In this episode, we review who Anne Judic was, how she arrived in Spain, where she learned to sing the peteneras, and why she drove half the world crazy with her voice. We also hear her own voice singing on an old wax cylinder and some of the flamenco compositions inspired by Anne herself.

The history of flamenco has been built through various theories. Some of them we call "mythical theories," which are those that, although they were formulated with arguments of dubious rigor, everyone has ended up accepting them as accurate over time. In this episode, we describe what we mean by "mythical theories," and we describe a couple of examples that refer to the same stick: the petenera.

At the end of the 19th century, a priest, the organist of the Cathedral of Seville, composed some of the most beautiful flamenco pieces for piano of his time. In this episode, we review the flamenco works of Buenaventura Íñiguez, a Navarrese who lived the last 37 years in Seville. We also listen to a good part of his flamenco compositions, some very virtuosic.

In this episode we talk about how flamenco guitarists had to create new toques throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as new cantes were integrated into flamenco. For example, it is illustrated with the guajira guitar playing and some of its most characteristic falsetas, which were not created out of thin air and are perhaps based on music from countries thousands of miles away from Spain.

From its beginnings in the 19th century, flamenco has had a significant international impact. Flamenco artists toured half the world with their art, and foreigners composed many flamenco musical pieces in the 19th century. In this episode, we see some stories showing intense flamenco activity, especially in American and European countries. We also hear flamenco music composed by French composer Gabrielle Ferrari.

After the first year of this project is the podcast "Forgotten Sounds of Flamenco", in this last episode of the season, we review how the first 25 episodes have gone, what reception it is having in many countries around the world, and we remember some of the characters, stories and sounds that have been the protagonists of this season. We also talk about the beautiful music that serves as the tune of the podcast.

In flamenco, it is said that the malagueña belongs to the fandango family or is a cante derived from it. Some authors even claim that the malagueña and the fandango were mainly the same in the 19th century. In this episode, we review the analysis that Lénica Reyes made of both cantes in the 19th century to see how they were similar and differed. You can also listen to music from both cantes you have never heard.

In flamenco, it is common to establish phylogenetic relationships between the different palos, as if each had necessarily derived from a previous one. One widespread theory is that the 17th-century jácara is the mother or grandmother of many palos. In this episode, we comment on what the theories supporting this kinship have been based on and analyze them to see to what extent they can be considered correct or questionable.

This episode is extraordinary because of the importance of its protagonist in the history of flamenco: Don Francisco Amate. An amateur flamenco singer who, as fate would have it, recorded some non-commercial wax cylinders in Los Angeles (USA) at the beginning of the 20th century. These recordings are one of the few samples of how flamenco was sung before commercial recordings appeared.

Throughout the history of flamenco, some palos have been incorporated into it, and others fell into disuse until they were practically forgotten today, such as the jaleo, not the jaleos extremeños, but the jaleo. In this episode, you can hear how the jaleo sounded, both in the concert flamenco guitar and in the very few recordings made of the jaleo; some of them never sold commercially.

This episode continues the previous one and is dedicated to the history of a guajira that is still sung in flamenco and has at least 135 years of history. This guajira was part of the zarzuela "Los de Cuba" from 1888. In this episode, we see how, due to its popularity, flamenco artists began to sing and record it at the beginning of the 20th century. Even today, we can still hear it in the mouths of some flamenco singers and singers.

In this episode, we talk about the zarzuela "Los de Cuba," premiered in 1888, which contains some musical pieces typical of the island of Cuba, such as the guaracha or the punto, which were conceived to be sung in a flamenco style. We listen to a fragment of this zarzuela and analyze its lyrics, some of which were already popular in Cuba several decades before and are still sung today in the flamenco guajiras.

In this episode, we have a luxury guest, the ethnomusicologist Lénica Reyes, with whom we talk about the malagueñas in the 19th century, a subject in which she is an expert. Lénica dedicated her doctoral dissertation to the study of the malagueña and was awarded the best dissertation of her generation at the UNAM, the most prestigious Spanish-speaking university in the world. We can listen to also an amazing 19th century malagueña.

At the end of the 19th century, Antonio Machado y Álvarez, known as "Demófilo," left us one of the first descriptions of the process of shaping flamenco and compiled hundreds of coplas that were used in the flamenco songs of his time. In this episode, we review Demófilo's contribution, which was not always well understood by flamenco scholars, and we can listen to music from his time that contains some of the coplas he compiled.

One hundred twenty-nine years ago, the first woman in history, who was Andalusian and danced Spanish and Flamenco dances, was filmed in New York. Her name was Carmen Dauset, but everyone knew her as Carmencita. This film had no sound, so it was unknown what dance Carmencita performed. After a thorough investigation, Lénica Reyes and José Miguel Hernández Jaramillo concluded that Carmencita's dance was probably one of the most popular flamenco dances of that time: the petenera. This episode describes the details of the research process.

Blind people contributed enormously to the diffusion and popularization of songs and musical pieces in the 19th century, including flamenco. Although their contribution has been forgotten from the history of flamenco, they were a crucial element in making flamenco what it is today. This episode discusses their contribution and serves as a tribute to the significant relevance that blind people had in the history of music in general and flamenco in particular.

When we talk about flamenco musical instruments, perhaps the best known are the guitar, the cajón, or the castanets, but many other instruments are currently used to make flamenco music. In this episode, we look at how in the 19th century, the piano and the guitar were the protagonists of the flamenco scene. We analyze what role the piano played in that flamenco, in which spaces it was usually used, and we can listen to some of those flamenco piano sounds, nowadays very forgotten.

In the last years, some artistic proposals appeared combining baroque pieces with flamenco palos. In this episode, we will talk with Emil Rzajev, who has just finished his master's degree in ethnomusicology at the UNAM in Mexico, with a thesis where he analyzes the so-called "barrocho," where baroque pieces are combined with sones jarochos, a phenomenon analogous to what happens in flamenco.

At the end of the 19th century, the guajira flamenca was widely practiced in Cordoba. It is surprising how many references exist about the preference for this song in all social collectives: ballrooms, celebrations, street music, etc.  In this episode we will travel to Cordoba at the end of the 19th century to feel how the guajiras resounded in every corners.

At the end of the 19th century, Oscar de la Cinna, a Hungarian pianist, a disciple of Czerny, Thalberg, or Frank Liszt, lived in Andalusia for many years and composed virtuosic piano works of some flamenco palos. In this episode, we remember who Oscar de la Cinna was, and we listen to some of his incredible piano compositions, probably never recorded before.

Throughout the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, new flamenco “cantes” (songs) were incorporated into flamenco. The last was the “colombiana”, recorded for the first time in 1931 by Pepe Marchena. In this episode, we review the gestation process of this cante, who probably inspired Marchena, and whether it is related to music from Colombia or other American countries.

The so-called "género chico" is a musical theater genre that triumphed in Spain in the last three decades of the 19th century, just when flamenco became very popular. In this episode, we analyze how the perfect marriage between género chico and flamenco took place, from which both spouses came out very reinforced. You will also be able to listen to some flamenco pieces included in género chico works.

Throughout history, music has been the protagonist of the "Feria de Abril" (April fair) in Seville, especially flamenco. Although sevillanas and rumbas are danced at the Feria today, among other music, it has not always been so. In this episode, you will learn which flamenco palos were common in the 19th-century Ferias and listen to the music that used to be danced in the "casetas" at that time.

This episode deals with how the petenera became one of the most fashionable songs in Spain at the end of the 19th century, becoming popular in all corners of Spain, even crossing national borders. A phenomenon with success inversely proportional to the knowledge we currently have of it.

The saeta is a flamenco song related to Holy Week. It is performed in the streets at the passing of the "cofradías" (brotherhoods) and in some acts of Lent. However, in the past, another flamenco palo was also linked in one way or another with the Holy Week. In this episode, you will know what it was and where it used to be heard. You will also be able to listen to some very curious old saetas recorded in sheet music.

Although the first flamenco recordings appeared around 1895, this episode poses the following question: Could we know now flamenco sounded like before the first recordings? Have you ever thought about it? Some clues are provided so that, at the end of the episode, a more precise answer to this question can be given.

In this episode, we travel to a particular date: the summer of 1878, where we locate the first references of the guajira in different locations in Spain. We present who its first protagonists were and listen to some guajiras of that time that have never been recorded before, and a live performance of a guajira for guitar from this period.

The fandango is considered one of the pillars of flamenco and is currently one of the most performed songs in recitals and concerts. However, there was a time when this palo was hardly performed in the repertoire of flamenco artists. In this episode, we analyze what happened and will listen to some fandangos from the 19th century, which are slightly different from the current flamenco ones.

This episode revolves around the question: Was flamenco in the 19th century really the way it has been told to us? It provides some clues that can help to understand specific processes of 19th-century flamenco, which have only sometimes been considered in the history of flamenco.

In this episode, we remember a flamenco style already in disuse, but that was popular in the nineteenth century, the jarabe. We review how it arrived in Spain from Mexico, where it was considered the national dance, and stayed in the flamenco family for just over half a century. We walk the paths that the jarabe traveled in its flamenco journey, and we listen to some of its forgotten sounds of the nineteenth century both in Mexico and Spain.

This episode is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the first news we know of one of the most popular flamenco styles in the nineteenth century, the petenera. We talk about the context where the petenera appears some of that time, as well as the repercussions it had in Spain and Mexico.

On January 6, 2023, this podcast will start. It’s dedicated to remembering the sounds, stories, spaces and characters that were part of the early stages of flamenco. This podcast will be available on the main podcast platforms and can also be seen in video format on the youtube channel "Sonidos Olvidados".