Flamenco Music

Given the international renown and popularity of flamenco, including in the Anglophone world, there has been a surprising dearth of English-language publications on flamenco. This volume is a genre study, constituting the first rigorously scholarly book in English--or, for that matter, in any language--to cover all significant aspects of flamenco music, including history, formal analysis, and important relevant social issues and concepts. It draws on the abundant Spanish literature on flamenco produced in recent decades, while offering the author’s own perspectives and manner of presentation. Flamenco Music comprises three sections, roughly equal in length. The first covers flamenco history and prehistory, from the genre’s roots in the Moorish period to the present day. Both musicological aspects and sociocultural context are covered. The second section comprises formal and stylistic analysis of flamenco music, including descriptions, with musical examples, of distinctive stylistic features, and of all the important cantes or song-types (with guitar accompaniment patterns) in the repertoire. Flamenco lyrics are also discussed in a separate chapter. The third section provides an ethnography of the modern scene (performance contexts, pedagogy, the internet, globalization etc.), and explores various sociocultural themes and issues, such as debates about tradition versus innovation, gender, the ideology of authenticity, the aesthetic process of singing, and the role of Gitanos (Gypsies) in relation to non-Gitanos.