Now
that the April Fair (Feria
de Abril)
in Seville is ceremonially closed, I take my time to say a couple of
words about one of the most important characteristics of it - folk
art as expressed in singing and dancing.
The gate of the Fair at night (Photo by Antonio de Juico)
At the Seville Fair, it's Sevillanas. What is it? My goodness, I most certainly have some difficulties in defining what the Sevillanas is! It's a real Andalusian thing, that's in the first place. And it has a lot to do with expressing oneself in the complexity of music. But it's not just melody and lyrics. Neither can I simply say that it's flamenco, a style you have probably heard of.
It's
telling the stories of people (pueblo) through music or verse, or both music and verse. It can be a rhymed verse recited, but more
often it's music performed together with the verse sung. It's the music
you take part in:
- playing
the guitar or other “folk” instruments;
- singing
or dancing a melody overheard;
- creating
additional background sounds to contribute to harmony;
- cheering
the musicians, singers and dancers.
Snapshot from the Carlos Saura's "Sevillanas"
Andalusia
consists of the eight southern provinces of Spain. It is the largest
region of the peninsula both geographically and in population. Famous
for its fortified wine, bullfights, and picturesque white villages,
this region is also home of the famous flamenco and the popular
four-line verse known as the copla. Most flamenco lyrics (for
singing, cante) occur in this form, especially the Sevillanas,
but coplas are also composed for unaccompanied oral
recitations and for spoken performances. Andalusians are well known
for their wild love for song and dance, but, as the legendary
researcher David D. Gilmore says in his 1986 article on Andalusian
oral poetry (see the references), when it comes to oral art, they are
indeed proud public performers, glorying in their talent for
expressing deep emotion through imaginative wordplay.
All
the oral creations are composed for speaking or singing before large
groups. The most popular of the flamenco lyrics, the Sevillana
verses (copla),
are highly mannered and predictable. As an illustration, fully half
of the songs collected by Gilmore contained pointed material about
women - mothers, wives, daughters, fiancées, and mothers-in-law.
Among many, the following is an example of the Sevillana
verses about unequal relationship between an upper-class seducer
(señorito), depicted as a rapacious bird of prey, and
his victim, an innocent working class sewing girl with a strong
erotic appeal. This copla is taken from another article
written by Gilmore in 1983 on Andalusian oral literature (see the
references).
Era como una paloma
Tan fina y tan
distinguida
Su pelo con el aroma
De rosa de Alejandría.
Pero en el pueblo
sabían
Que sus ojos le
seguían
Y las gentes
comentaban:
Pobrecita la paloma
Si el aguila la
alcanzara.
Como una ave de rapiña
Que a su victima
acechaba
Sorprendiéndola en el
vuelo
Cuando mas se
confiaba.
Señorito rodeado de
Criados mal pagados
Que te alaban
falsamente
Dios te va a mandar
Un castigo para vengar
A
esa inocente.
|
She was like a dove,
So elegant and pure.
Her hair had the
fragrance
Of subtlest damask
roses.
But her fellow
townsmen knew
That his cruel eyes
were on her;
And they said:
The poor dove is lost
If the eagle overtakes
her.
Like a bird of prey
Which stalks its
victim,
Surprising her in
flight,
When most
unsuspecting,
Señorito, surrounded
by
Badly paid servants
Who falsely flatter,
God himself will
punish you
To avenge
This innocent girl.
|
There
is an absolutely excellent book on the cante (sadly
not in English), expertly written by a
Cordovan poet, Ricardo Molina, and a flamenco singer from Mairena del
Alcor, Antonio Mairena (see the references).
Molina
and Mairena tell us that the
Sevillanas is not a Gypsy song
(Cante Jondo), but an archetype of the Andalusian
flamenco-like folk song (Cante Flamenco), and is thus a
historically accurate folkloric and regional song in its essence,
tuned by some Gypsy touch that is, in some cases, even more
pronounced. The Sevillanas was there in the public domain
already before the 19th century. It hasn't evolved in
isolation, in privacy at homes (casa), as compared to the Gypsy song, but
has always been considered a public heritage. Its sole purpose has
always been to accompany the dance. So, the Sevillanas is both
sung and danced, and it's sung and danced by Andalusian people in a
wide variety of ways.
The
Sevillanas is a must-sing at fairs and pilgrimages (e.g. La Romería) in Andalusia. It's not limited to Seville and Sevillians, but loved
community-wide thanks to its joyful ease and rhythm. That what
distinguishes the Sevillanas, is its catching grace together
with its lightness, liveliness and flexibility. The Sevillanas
is performed in small groups supported by the appropriate social
tools, including:
alcoholic
drinks (such as wine, anisette, whisky or something of the kind) to
be had so as to be tuned in, so to speak, and share the same
emotional temperature;
- clapping
(palmas)
that serves a musical rhythmic function, being often mixed with
finger snapping (pitos),
guitar body tapping (percusiones en
la madera de la guitarra), foot
tapping (zapateo,
taconeo), or table/chair beating (golpeo de
mesa, golpeo
de silla) either with the flat hand or
knuckles; and,
- cheering
(jaleo)
that serves an auditory stimulation function comprising a series of
spontaneous shouts of admiration, like ¡Je!,
¡Ezo!,
¡Ezo é!
(That's right!), ¡Arza!,
¡Olé!
Gilmore adds to the latter that the pleasure in the release of feelings
communicated by the many shouts in the audience can also be in the
way of approval and agreement: ¡Verdad!
(How
true!), ¡Así
se canta! (That's
the way to put it!), and so on.
Katherine Thomas, an award winning flamenco artist graduated from the
University of California with a Master of Arts in Dance, suggests a
good book by Ana Maria Durand-Viel, "La Sevillana" (1983),
to learn about the history of the Sevillanas, its
terminology, the phrasing of dance sequences, and the instrumentation
for the dance (see the references). In that book the performance
styles and contexts are also exploited, including the festival
version of the dance performed during La Romería, the spring
pilgrimage made from Seville to Rocío each year. According to
Thomas, Durand-Viel's work reflects earlier excellent books on
Spanish dance, notably La Meri's 1948 English-language "Spanish
dancing", which includes classifications and descriptions of
Spanish and flamenco dance styles, and Teresa Martinez de la Peña's
1969 "Teoría y Practica del Baile Flamenco", which lists
and categorizes flamenco dances, defines and describes the sections
of flamenco dance, and describes how to approach a performance
impressionistically.
And, as
referred to in one of the previous posts, there are several
documentaries that focus on cultural phenomena, including those on
flamenco, such as a 52-minute film about the Sevillanas
directed by Carlos Saura (studied by Manuel Trenzado Romero). It's
available on DVD (PAL), and partly on YouTube.
DVD cover of the Carlos Saura's "Sevillanas"
.JPG)
