Spain's flamenco on the edge

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To many, the passionate music and dance known as flamenco is an important marker of Spanish identity, and perhaps even synonymous with it. So much so, that Unesco has recognised the art form as part of the world’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. Yet its place within the country of its birth is both more complicated – and more precarious - than this might suggest. During the Covid lockdowns, a third of all flamenco venues closed down, and with many yet to reopen, training opportunities for new artists remain in short supply. The pandemic has also exacerbated the struggle of many singers and dancers to make ends meet. Meanwhile, to the outrage of purists, other practitioners see a future in fusing traditional flamenco with new, more commercially viable genres, such as pop and hip-hop. Still others see flamenco as a stereotype, and unhelpful to their country’s modern image. The BBC’s Madrid correspondent Guy Hedgecoe takes us on a colourful journey, reflecting on flamenco’s intriguing origins among the downtrodden folk culture of southern Spain, its difficult present, and its possibly uncertain future. Presenter: Guy Hedgecoe Producer: Mike Gallagher

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC World Service. Welcome to assignment.
0:07.0	Flamenco is an art. All that energy, all that passion, so real, so intense.
0:24.0	It's late evening, central Madrid and that the city's premier Flamenco venue, the shows just begun.
0:34.0	His music, his songs, his dance. Flamenco is part of the identity of Spain.
0:52.0	The nightclub, the chorale de la Moreira, has been doing brisk business ever since 1959.
1:07.0	Today guests enjoy Michelin starred cuisine and some of the finest Flamenco singers, dancers and guitarists.
1:15.0	But says Juanma, so-called Tau Laos like this, have just been through a devastating time.
1:22.0	The pandemic made us feel so fragile, so vulnerable. We had to close for a year and a half.
1:31.0	I mean, imagine that in a business, your income goes to only 50%. It's unbearable.
1:41.0	No, your income goes to zero.
1:46.0	For so many people, Flamenco is Spain. But the pandemic threatened its very existence.
1:53.0	And today, its fate remains uncertain. Some performers are still struggling, while others are trying out radical new ideas that are proving divisive among a fissionados.
2:05.0	Meanwhile, many of the Spanish public are simply not interested, seeing Flamenco as either too inaccessible or at odds with the modern sounds they prefer.
2:15.0	I'm Guy Hegeco, and for this week's assignment here on the BBC World Service, I'm asking what the future holds for this most iconic of Spanish art forms.
2:36.0	I'm about to meet a victim of Flamenco's crisis, a struggling guitar player called Hezule Losada.
2:48.0	He's a modest block of flats here where Hezule lives.
2:56.0	His entire family share a cramped and rather drab apartment. But when I meet him, I'm struck by his exuberance.
3:04.0	He's just how I imagined a Flamenco guitarist to be, with curly hair, a roll-neck sweater, an earring, and a medallion around his neck, and he has a flash of artistic passion in his eyes.
3:18.0	Something that's obvious too is he demonstrates some of the various palos or musical structures of Flamenco.
3:32.0	There are dozens of palos, each one dictating how a song will be played, the rhythm, speed, structure, and lyrics.
3:43.0	I spend a lot of time as a boy listening to my dad practicing, says Hezule, and that's how I got into Flamenco.
3:55.0	I think it stayed in my head, or maybe my soul. His father, Antonio, now aged 84, looks on through a thick fog of cigarette smoke.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.