Brandon
Walker

Guitarist

Composer/performer

Music/instrumental tutor

Music from the ages.
Music for the ages.

Discovering another layer to flamenco

March 2025

This years Festival de Jerez was an experience which led me to a different place in flamenco terms.

In Seville, the most common venue for flamenco shows is the tablao. Wandering those narrow streets you will likely come across so many of them that it's difficult to choose which one to go to each night. Often the performers are doing three shows a night, and there is an element that is—understandably—designed for the curious tourist more than anything.

That's not to take anything away from these performances. They are more playful, but you will still witness powerful moments of profound expression, and the spontaneous beauty which is all over flamenco, not to mention highly skilled performers. But I have seen a couple of bored guitarists at tablaos, and a few with a tendency to over-play.

In Jerez de la Frontera, the principal flamenco venue is a tabanco (a portmanteau of estanco and tabac), and there are also peñas. But a crucial difference in Jerez is that the city wears its flamenco heritage with a unilateral pride. Some performers go about their business during the day in full flamenco regalia, and in the town centre I saw adverts offering state-funded, 900-hour flamenco dance courses for anyone registered unemployed in Andalucía, cost free as long as attendance is above 75%. On a tour of the Alvaro Domecq bodega, our kind host Cristina informed us that three things matter in Jerez: sherry, horses, and flamenco.

After a week in Jerez, with some memorable performances, including a free show at the Peña and Centro Cultural Luís de la Pica, I returned to Seville for the last part of my trip, staying in Triana, the barrio which is most cited in flamenco origin stories. But the tablao show I saw in Triana was disappointing; the most memorable things were fake smiles and brutal use of castanets. The following evening I picked a tablao I knew from last year, and there were some lovely moments, but something still seemed lacking. After some discussion with locals I found the Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena.

(This is part of a growing blog-style essay. I will update the story every week.)

The Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena is an enchanting and welcoming place. The club does inexpensive, face-to-face, cash only sales for admission and has 'normas' by which it operates, listed on the wall. The memorabilia and decor; pictures, photographs and art speak of a simple and unwavering devotion which makes all the academic blustering over origins, authenticity, and stylistic content seem trivial and effete. Nowhere is this better represented than in the groups constitution:

I. YOU WILL RESPECT AND LOVE FLAMENCO SINGING, because it is a spiritual expression of the Andalusian People who, due to their profound richness, turned it into an ART, as sublime as it is solemn and as unique as it is beautiful. You will not forget that it is a wonderful thing that you inherited from your elders, so you are obliged to take care of it with immense love and, because it is a heritage borne temporarily, you also have the duty to preserve it with all rigor, to hand it over to future generations, at least, in the same conditions that you inherited it.

II YOU WILL LOVE THE SINGING FOR THE SINGING and you should know that there are no "bad songs", since there are only "good and better songs"

III YOU SHOULD KNOW, and never forget, that flamenco singing, because of its "depth and seriousness", is not a thing for drunks. Even though sometimes, and especially on extreme occasions, it produces accomplished drunkards.

IV YOU HAVE THE UNAVOIDABLE DUTY to watch over its greatness, to respect it and make it respected, because its reason is your reason, soul is your soul.

V WHEN YOU DOUBT ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF A SONG, or about any technical nuance, do not feel ashamed to consult a professional, the only ones who are technically prepared to clear up your doubts. Keep in mind that the only way to explain them is by singing them.

VI. YOU WILL APPRECIATE THE FAIR MEASURE of the singer's voice, because it is an innate quality, timbre or intensity; its sound is a faculty that can be acquired voluntarily, phonetics that, owing to their great richness, can at times seem as a gift granted by God.

VII. THE BEST FAN is not the one who understands the most, but the one who knows how to listen the best.

VIII. KNOWING HOW TO LISTEN is the "art of silence" and knowing how to keep silent is an obvious sign of good artistic education. Silence should only be broken when one vibrates with emotion and, in time, because expressing those "olés" that confirm our emotions at the wrong time is the only way for the fan to show that he is "in the right."

IX FOR THESE REASONS, considering that respect breeds respect, no fan, no matter how informed he may be, has the right to want to impose on other fans the singer of his preferences, especially when we understand that if each singer is a world of expression apart, each fan is a receptive world apart.

X. THE AMATEUR who meets the conditions of "knowing how to behave", "knowing how to listen" and "knowing how to digest" what he hears, deserves the TITLE OF TRUE AFICIONADO.

Brandon Walker

Music from the ages.Music for the ages.