Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain

Abstract

Flamenco was transformed into a symbol of Spanish national identity during the Franco's regime.This Andalusian style of music has, during the latter half of the twentieth century, turned from locally performed musical genre into an art form that is appreciated and performed around the world.The musical style has become an artifact that brings Spain groups of tourists who are chasing the authentic flamenco performance of the yesteryears and eager students who want to learn the style and its aesthetics more thoroughly.Yet, this globally known symbol of Spain is now being reconstructed as a non-national, patrimonial cultural marker of Andalusian identity.At the same time flamenco is also being used to oppose the national political interest that it has served in the past.William Washabaugh's book Flamenco Music and National Identity in Spain tackles this interesting turn in the study of flamenco, providing a refreshing insight on 'the cultural and political reverberations that accompany flamenco performance ' (2012, xi).Here, Washabaugh 'examines the processes through which flamenco is being cultivated as a marker of Andalusian identity and a patrimonial symbol of Andalusian autonomy' and also 'looks at the steps that Andalusians have taken to avoid transforming flamenco into a fixed and well-defined patrimonial object' (2012, 7).The aim is to pay attention to the future of flamenco rather than towards the past as other works, including his own (Washabaugh, 1996) have done.Through this forward-leaning emphasis, he demonstrates how flamenco provides Andalusians an opportunity to realize solidarity and autonomy.For researchers in a wider research context, there are two useful themes regarding style and recording.Discussions about style are faced with the difficulty of distinguishing a simple set of stylistic features; flamenco's hybrid nature makes it difficult to say what flamenco is and what it is not, while opinions on the matter vary from one group to the next.Washabaugh uses the idea of musical promise as a way to define the flamenco style, by proposing that musical style should be understood as an aspiration through which musicians create a desirable identity.He is not denying that artists respond to past experiences but argues that they do so in the process of envisioning the possible future, in which an intuitive and organic development towards perfection may be regarded as a teleonomic concept of style.Through this perspective, style is not only connected to the issue of authenticity but also to the search for an ideal of what the art works want to be.The search for authenticity is therefore leaning

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