![]() Flamenco is a repository of popular wisdom, an encyclopaedia of those who inhabited southern Spain.”įlamenco is not really a genre that you dabble in – its history and back catalogue is so complex and sprawling that it’s almost its own musical language – but if you’re looking to explore the new flamenco scene, then Camarón de la Isla should be your starting point. There are lyrics about the Christian Reconquest, the Expulsion of the Muslims, the persecution of the gypsy people, the colonial era, slavery. “Andalusia has been a land occupied on multiple occasions by different cultures, and in the cante we perceive how people adapted to the changes brought by these invasions. “The essence of flamenco dates back hundreds of years, and the lyrics of every song encrypt our history,” she explains. José Llergo works with trap producers like $kyhook and hip hop beat makers like LOST TWIN, creating something a million miles from the sangria-soaked sounds of tourist flamenco, but the foundations are still in place – both José Llergo and Rosalía trained for many years with the legendary flamenco master, Chiqui de La Línea, or ‘El Chiqui’. That’s why young artists have always found inspiration in it. “Flamenco is simply people in a conversation with the time they happen to live in. “What’s now a longstanding tradition was revolutionary in its time,” says José Llergo. Of the youngers keeping it strictly flamenco, though, Andalusian artist María José Llergo is arguably the most loyal to the genre’s original sound, a timeless counterpart to Rosalía’s ghetto futurism. Today, there’s a huge crossover between contemporary flamenco and Spain’s trap and reggaeton scenes, with artists from each genre often adding guest features to each other’s tracks, while trap supergroup PXXR GVNG overtly honoured Camarón da la Isla – modern flamenco’s GOAT, whose willingness to embrace other genres made way for the upsetters of today – on their track “ Letra Camarón”, rapping: “Escuchando al Camarón con los gitanos / Dios bendiga a to’ los barrios bajos” (translation: “Listening to Camarón with the gypsies / God bless all the slums”). It’s not unusual for Spain’s new slew of trap rap stars to cite flamenco as a source of inspiration and a precursor to their proud, working class, immigrant sound and aesthetic. Having a formal framework makes it ripe for innovation, giving artists the freedom to create whatever they want within the parameters of this unspoken brief. ![]() For a song to qualify as flamenco, there are some basic elements needed: the caste (song), palos (styles or sub-genres), toque (guitar), palmas (rhythms built from hand clapping), pitos (finger snapping), knuckle-rapping and foot-tapping castanets are strictly for tourists. She’s just one of a slew of young artists for whom flamenco isn’t about novelty or nostalgia, but a modern and effective mode of expression and storytelling that’s a years-in-the-mastering discipline. Her combination of savvy social media, maximalist visuals, and Beyoncé-standard triple-threat of voice, face, and moves, have made her the genre’s most visible proponent on the international stage, but she didn’t get there alone. Rosalía, flamenco’s first global pop star, first encountered the sound blaring from boy racers’ tuners in the park growing up in her Barcelona suburb, Sant Esteve. In Spain, flamenco soundtracks ghetto life. On the surface, these stark and angular paeans to universal pain and suffering, propulsed by traditional hand-clapped rhythms, may seem a world away from genres like grime in London or trap in Atlanta, but each is a homegrown sound acting as a vehicle for storytelling from the streets. You’ll hear trap, techno, and reggaeton, but also a more unexpected sound – flamenco. In Barcelona’s barrios, groups of lads who have rattail haircuts, wear tracksuits, and grow weed on their balconies stay up all night blasting music.
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