(noticia) The new side of flamenco

BY MARTY LIPP

January 7, 2007
An Italian proverb says that "bed is the poor man's opera." Certainly, it's a place of drama and passion, if sometimes a sparsity of costuming.

But other kinds of music have also been the heartfelt expression of poor people: to cry, to comfort, to hope for more fortunate times. Rap is the most recent example. Others include the blues in America, tango in Argentina and, for the past five centuries or so in Spain, flamenco.

The World Music Institute's upcoming flamenco festival is a chance to see the vital state of contemporary flamenco and to get in touch with the age-old spirit of flamenco, which, at its core, centers around "duende."

Duende is the sought-after moment when a performer becomes one with the song, loses himself and takes the audience with him. It's a stop-time moment when artistry overwhelms our quotidian world.

The exact origins of flamenco - and even of the word itself - have been lost over time, with its roots starting in the 15th century with the arrival of the Gypsy, or Roma, in Andalusia in southern Spain. It then developed amid the world-traveled influences of the then-outcasts of the country: Gypsies, Muslims and Sephardic Jews.

(leer +) [vía newsday]

tags: flamenco, baile, cante, flamenca