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Spain Frets Over Future of Flamenco
MADRID, Spain — Master guitar-maker Arcangel Fernandez has stopped taking orders. He's been at it for 50 years, fashioning delicate wooden shells into lacquered beauties, and at age 75 he has enough work for the rest of his life.
However, the aficionados buying his coveted $13,000 instruments are not local musicians but Japanese collectors _ an alarming sign that the art form considered so intrinsically Spanish is declining in its birthplace and is now more popular among foreigners.
A decade ago, Madrid boasted 20 flamenco taverns featuring this unique kind of entertainment _ the furious, rhythmic tapping of a dancer's heels, the thundering chords of a classical guitar, a singer's soulful lament, all that contagious hand-clapping. Now only four or five remain, all packed with tourists and too expensive for the average Spaniard.
At the city's most hallowed flamenco school, half the students are from abroad.
"These days flamenco is more valued among foreigners," Fernandez said in his guitar shop, part woodworking sanctuary, part meeting place for guitar buffs.
Silvia Calado, a critic for the Web site said flamenco is not quite in a state of crisis. But while it has built up great prestige abroad, here in Spain it is low on creativity and has failed to reach out to new audiences. http://www.flamenco-world.com
"Flamenco is distancing itself from young people and they are the ones who can keep it alive," Calado said.
Flamenco classes would have lots of empty places were it not for foreign students, and half of the hits on her Web page come from abroad, Calado said. The Grammy awards give out a prize for flamenco music and the Spanish media barely bother to cover the awards, telecast from Los Angeles.
"It is disgraceful," Calado said.
Fifteen years ago, Fernandez, who makes an average of eight guitars a year, decided to work exclusively for foreigners. Now, he doesn't even raise the metal shutters of his shop when he is inside toiling away.
"Foreigners pay you better and they give you fewer problems than Spaniards," Fernandez said. "Customers come to pick up the guitar and you never see them again. They are always happy with the product. For them, flamenco is a very serious thing."
At the famed Amor de Dios School, teacher Inmaculada Ortega said flamenco has serious box-office problems and dance companies receive little support from a government more interested in promoting other Spanish art forms, such as painting or contemporary dance.
Ortega, 36, said she has to go as far as South Africa or the United States _ some times for months _ to make decent money, while in Spain she must give classes and sew flamenco costumes to make ends meet.
"Before, a flamenco dancer was held in high social esteem, had glamour. Now a dancer goes unnoticed," she said. "In Spain, you can only barely get by on flamenco."
Despite that gloomy assessment, some of the foreigners at the school have given up everything to come here and chase their dream.
Emily Liedel, 23, quit her job as a legal assistant in the United States a year ago to come to Madrid and study flamenco full time. She learned it in her native Portland, Ore., but wanted to polish and perfect her steps.
"I want to be a flamenco teacher, good enough to be a flamenco dancer," Liedel said. "It fascinates me, but it's very difficult, especially for a foreigner like me because we're not familiar with the music," said Liedel, who teaches English and belly dancing to pay for her flamenco.
The precise origins and evolution of flamenco are unclear. It is traced to the Gypsies of Spain, but was also influenced by folk songs and dances from the southern Andalusia region. There are also Moorish influences.
After the Civil War of 1936-39, the right-wing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco embraced flamenco as a quintessentially Spanish genre that he saw as a force for unity in a country with disparate regions proud of their distinct languages and cultures.
Flamenco was transported from the smoky taverns where it was traditionally performed to dominate movie screens and the stages of theaters. A cliche was born _ the Spain of tambourines and castanets.
After Franco died in 1975 and democracy was restored, Spanish youths looked to foreign music as an expression of rebellion and independence, to the detriment of flamenco.
Many flamenco professionals say it is not universally popular in Spain and that many Spaniards are embarrassed by foreigners' assumptions that flamenco is Spain's national music.
Ortega said she believes many Spaniards cannot accept flamenco as a serious art form because of its gypsy roots.
"Foreigners like flamenco more because they don't have any social prejudices. Spaniards have learned that flamenco is an art of a racial minority," said Ortega, who has been dancing since she was 8.
"For Spaniards, it's a hobby but foreigners idolize it. They make flamenco their lives," she said.
MAR ROMAN | October 27, 2007 07:40 AM EST |