(photograph of the great flamenco dancer Antoñita La Singla)

It is believed that the “cry” of the oppressed gave birth to Flamenco. Before words and other forms of expression were embedded to embellish that which is now known as Flamenco, the llanto or cry was said to be the first song. Grief was, originally, its body and soul.

It was the grief of those who were stripped of their identities. The Gypsies, the Jews, the Muslims and anyone who refused to submit to Spanish Catholicism, by the order of the Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel, were either forced to flee or handed to torture by the Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada. Dispossession and uprootedness are events that define the existence of the oppressed. To them they are the only promises that are never broken.

The year 1492 is generally thought of as the beginning of a new epoch in history. The alleged “discovery” by Columbus of distant lands was a new dawn for Western civilization; for the “discovered lands” it was the beginning of their eventual dispossession. What for the West was discovery for the other was loss.

Double loss.

The first loss was the stolen possessions and properties from those persecuted by the decree of Ferdinand and Isabel which were ultimately used to finance Columbus’s voyage.

The second loss was one of the darkest periods in human history: the period (which stretches to this day) of a series of stigmatization, dispossession, displacement, racism, and social death by the discoverers against the indigenous peoples of discovered lands.

1492 was a history of loss.

Grief seeks union, therefore it unites: sympathy seeking another: the affinity in suffering. The oppressed groups (mainly the Gypsies, Jews and Muslims) held on to each other, spoke to one another, lived side by side. Hope and despair have always to do with solidarity.

The solidarity of the powerful is artificial. They are united by greed—by profits which they consider to be the finality of all human pursuits and the summation of all human values.

The solidarity of the oppressed is an intenser attachment possible. Tenderness in the most unexpected form emerges from it. It was this tenderness nourished under adversity which brought about Flamenco.

Flamenco is a perfect example of an art form born when highly diverse cultures are brought into intimate contact with one another. Each cultural contribution of each ethnic tribe or social group is integrated in the (artistic) process without one element overriding or excluding the other; but rather a free, generous integration of all elements.

Flamenco is an art of affinities; an integration of differences and attractions. Contrasts are overcome by bringing them together, freely and openly. For the powerful, destruction and accumulation are the higher prescriptions for existence. The oppressed ascribe to inclusion and tenderness as a sort of volition and power.

Cante, Toque, Baile: The Trinity of Flamenco Expression

Cante (Song).

The llanto (cry) is the deepest, most assertive of songs. A song complete in itself. In Flamenco, the Cante Jondo (Deep Song) parallels the llanto.

No other art form has the same emotional immediacy and sensitivity to human experience than song. The wisdom of the human singing voice! Its inexplicable insight into the human soul. Song gives substance to the question of what it is to be human. Song liberates our capacity for deep feeling. It is an infinite resource in a man’s heart, like a picture of the beloved kept in a wallet.

In the face of history’s repeating cruelties songs carry a secret hope.

Toque (Guitar).

“The weeping of the guitar
begins…
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps…

– Federico Garcia Lorca, The Guitar

Besides grief, music is one of the few possessions of the oppressed. Like music, grief touches those who are familiar with it. It is impossible to silence grief; it resonates with centuries, winds, rubbles, and bones without names. Its strings are made of guts, as thick as the lines in the peasant’s hands.

For the oppressed, there is no more potent tool to confront the ugly and inhuman aspects of daily life than through music. Like laughter, friendship and love, music is inexhaustible. Like resistance, music confers human dignity on the oppressed.

Baile (Dance).

Dance is one of the most enduring aspects of our humanity. Each movement of the body is a promise of life and freedom. Only the living can dance. When speech is stifled by constraints imposed by political power and authority, the body spells out, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, step by step, the hope for release: the body celebrates resistance. Dance becomes a fight.

Dance entails wakefulness. To be awake is to sense our movement in space and time, and what we make of the potentialities of that movement will shape the course of history. Movement implies continuous activity and participation in the unique, transitory space and time allotted to each.

The body is the great storyteller. “No word is metaphysical without its first being physical.” Dance is a dialogue in action. This is how human movement acknowledges its identity and reasserts its history.

All great struggle for human dignity is but a dance.

Every movement that dances toward freedom is a slap in the face of tyranny.

 

 

Carlo Rey Lacsamana is a Filipino born and raised in Manila, Philippines. Since 2005, he has been living and working in the Tuscan town of Lucca, Italy. He regularly writes for journals in the Philippines writing on politics, culture, and art. He also writes for a local academic magazine in Tuscany which is published twice a year. Some of his articles have also been published in small magazines in the U.S. and UK. Visit his website at https://carloreylacsamana.wixsite.com/carloreylacsamana