The Flamenco BodyAuthor(s): William WashabaughReviewed work(s):Source: Popular Music, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 75-90Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852901 .Accessed: 25/04/2012 11:47

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Popular Music (1994) Volume 13/1. CopyIight ) 1994 Cambridge University Press

The flamenco body

WILLIAM WASHABAUGH

Objective This article is part of an on-going analysis of a Spanish television documentary series entitled Rito y Geograffa del Cante.1 This larger on-going analysis treats the programmes in this series as 'cultural performances'. The programmes are assumed to model personhood as they go about presenting information about flamenco music. This particular article focuses on the role of the body in these performed models of personhood.

The Rito programmes The Rito documentaries consist of about 100 half-hour programmes which were produced by Spanish National Television and aired on Sunday evenings in south- ern Spain between 23 October 1971 and 29 October 1973 (Zern 1987). The docu- mentaries were shot on 16mm black and white film. Filming was generally done on location in southern Spain where flamenco artists live and perform and where different 'flamenco forms' are popular. The primary flamenco region is Andalusia, and accordingly the Andalusian cities of Sevilla, Jerez de la Frontera, and Cadiz are frequently featured in this documentary film series.

The term 'flamenco forms' refers to the rhythmically distinct varieties of flamenco song (henceforth cante). Flamenco forms like Solea', Alegrfa, Bulerfa, Fandango, Malaguena, Tango, Rumba, etc. are derived from Andalusian peoples, including Muslims, Jews, Gitanos (Gypsies), and from Latin American influences. In different cities, towns, and villages of Andalusia, musicians cultivated these distinct flamenco forms and, for decades, struggled to promote an appreciation of their local forms over others. In consequence, the survey of flamenco forms in the Rito films is also a survey of the competitive cultural life of Andalusia.

The programme credits indicate that the documentaries were directed by Pedro Turbica, Mario Gomez, and Jose Maria Velazquez. Flamencological know- ledge was provided by Jose Maria Velazquez and Pedro Turbica. The director of photography was Federico G. Larraya. Camera work was done by Manuel Caban- illas, Jesus Lombardia, and Alberto Beato. Juan Matias handled reproduction. Antonio Cardenas, Rafael Viego, and Efren Gomez were the audio engineers. The film editors were Angelina Barragan Cabecera, Miguel Inlesta, and Manuel Gal- indo. Aside from these few credits most of the artists and scholars who appear in this series are unnamed.

The programmes - I have access to eighty-nine out of the original one hun- dred - are comprised of musical exemplifications, voice-over commentaries, and

75

76 William Washabaugh

on-screen interviews. Generally speaking, three-quarters of each programme con- sists of musical exemplifications by a featured artist. The remaining quarter con- sists of voice-over commentaries and interviews conducted by Jose Maria Velazquez.

Nearly half the programmes focus on individual artists, most of whom are singers. Four programmes feature guitarists; no programmes in this series explore flamenco dance, although subsequent television documentaries, produced on the heels of this series do focus attention on flamenco dancers.

Besides those Rito programmes which focus on artists, some fourteen focus on specific flamenco forms, providing overviews of the genesis and development of those forms. Seven programmes are focused on geographical regions and on the manner in which regional characteristics have influenced flamenco song. Finally, the series includes a number of miscellaneous programmes on distinctive aspects of flamenco, including elderly singers, very young singers, the role of wine in the flamenco tradition, the contributions of Manuel de Falla and of Feder- ico Garcia Lorca, the diffusion of interest in flamenco beyond southern Spain, Christmas events, flamenco festivals, etc.

The problem

The voice-over commentaries and the interview segments of the Rito programmes provide viewers with instruction in the rudiments of cante. Generally speaking, they portray cante as a deeply spiritual practice. Such instruction would be convin- cing and the lesson in flamenco spirituality would be persuasive except for one condition, namely, the activity of bodies. Like a key that fits all the tumblers of a lock except one, the Rito commentaries fail to unlock the complexity of cante because they ignore, or repress, the raw and edgy flamenco body.

This essay will contend that the flamenco body is central, not incidental, to flamenco song, and that without an appreciation of the body there can be no real appreciation of cante. The argument will begin with a summary of the Rito commentaries on cante. This summary will be followed by a review of two major conceptions of musical activity in Western society. When we compare the sum- mary of Rito commentaries with the major Western conceptions of music, we discover that, generally speaking, bodies are everywhere portrayed as incidental and marginal to song.2

Rito and flamenco logy

The commentaries and interviews of the Rito programmes encourage viewers to think of cante as a contemplative activity. The series presents cante as heartfelt song and soul-stirred music. For example, in the introduction to a programme on the form called Siguiriyas, the narrator informs viewers that 'The themes of Siguiri- yas refer to the most profound feelings of the Andalusian Gitano community on the history of their personal and dramatic existence .... They are expressed in a most elemental and direct form without artistic and literary presence' (Los temas del cante Siguiriyas se refieren a los sentimientos mas profundos de ese pueblo gitano andaluz a la historia de su existencia personal y dramatica .... estan expresadas de la forma mas elemental y directa sin pretensiones artfsticas y literarias). Similarly the commentary surrounding the musical performances of Manuel Agujetas tells

The flamenco body 77

The two sisters Fernanda y Bernarda de Utrera. (Photo by Peter Holloway)

78 William Washabaugh

viewers that 'The song of Agujetas grows out of the whole lived world of feeling, from the experience of infancy, right through to the everyday customs of this neighbourhood (El cante de Agujetas se desprende de todo el mundo viviente del sentimi- ento, desde la infancia, hasta dentro de las costumbres de este barrio).

The 'feelings' to which these commentaries refer are said to have arisen through chronic collective trauma and through communal experiences of pain which extend over long periods of time. Individuals, it is said, have the seer-like capability of resurrecting those social and historical experiences and of expressing the emotions which those experiences have generated. For example, the pro- gramme devoted to Pepe Nunez el de la Matrona displays the street scenes that Matrona took in as he walked through Sevilla. The musical backdrop to these scenes consists of Matrona's rendition of 'Soleares'. Subsequently, the interviewer asks Matrona, 'The other day we were walking the streets of Seville. What did you feel as we were walking there?' (El otro dfa estuvimos en Sevilla dando un paseo por las calles. Que' sintio' entonces cuando estaba'mos paseando por allf?) Pepe responds, 'Joy and sadness' (alegrfa y triste), thus implying that the feelings produced during Matrona's walk are the same feelings which dominate Matrona's song. The joy and sadness of Matrona's 'Soleares' are the conscious feelings that flood over him as he walks the streets of Sevilla.

The collective historical feelings which a singer resurrects, are supposed to be elemental, authentic, and sincere. Cante should be unsullied by commercialism and unaltered by considerations of popularity. The Rito commentaries repeatedly stress the importance of sincerity and purity in cante. For example, the Rito narrator introduces the programme on E1 Perrate in this way: 'Success or acknowledgement by the public at large for an artist, is greatly influenced by social circumstances and by the aesthetic taste of the era. In the case of E1 Perrate de Utrera, his expressive forms, canonical and pure, remain unknown or known only by a small number of aficionados and artists, while the tendency of the public leans towards the threatrical and the folkloric. In this programme, E1 Perrate, who has survived in some manner the conditions described above, offers us without adulteration, the distinctive styles of the Sevillian zone of Utrera' (El exito o reconocimiento por parte del gran publico por un artista se influyen poderosamente por las circunstanctas sociales y el gusto este'tico de la e'poca. En el caso de El Perrate de Utrera, sus formas expresivas ma's cano'nicas y puras quedaron en el olvido o tan solo para una minorfa des aficionados y artfstas, ya que la tendencia del publico entonces se vertfa hacia al teatro y al folklore. En este programa El Perrate que en alguna manera ha mantenido vigencia, por las circumstancias antes senaladas, nos ofrece sin ninguna adulteracio'n, los estilos propios de la zona sevillana de Utrera).

The Rito interviews, like the Rito commentaries, emphasise the importance of sincerity in cante. For example, the Rito interviewer asks Pepe el de la Matrona whether anyone can 'invent' a new form of cante. The presumption seems to be that invented songs are artifices and therefore less sincere than are songs sung from memory. In another session, the interviewer asks Jose Pansequito whether it is true that singing in clubs destroys a singer (se habla de que tablao, de alguna manera, estropea al cantaor). In other words, the 'unnatural' setting of a tablao taints the purity and sincerity of the singer's soulful message.

In general, the Rito programmes characterise cante as an expression of per- sonal and historical feeling presented with candour and sincerity. Unsurprisingly, this same portrayal dominates scholarly writings about flamenco, i.e. 'fla-

The famenco body 79

Guitarist El Ingles and singer Paco Gil, fiom the flamenco dance company Jaleo, performing during a tour of Britain. (Photo by Robert Holloway)

80 William Washabaugh

mencology'.3 For example, Felix Grande (1992) cites F. Garcia Lorca approvingly: 'the singer has a profound religious appreciation of the song' (el cantaor tiene un profundo sentimiento religioso del canto). Ricardo Molina says that a singer is a 'solitary hero' (he'roe solitario) who paves the way for the emergence of 'a new being', with a substantial union of body and soul' (un nuevo ser, como la unio'n sustancial de cuerpo y alma) (1981, p. 15). Singing, in this account, is a contemplative act. This contemplative act requires of cantaores that they establish appropriate moods (Hecht 1968) and set their minds to the task of cutting through supeficial layers of experience to reach an inner core of emotion.

A number of flamencologists have argued that the emotions of flamenco song transcend the personality and the individuality of the singer. They are aspects of human 'primary processes'. They are universals of the human collective uncon- scious (cf. Molina 1985; Quinones 1982; Serrano and Elgorriaga 1991). Arrebola (1991, p. 15) says that 'flamenco is universal, and at the same time Andalusian and Spanish, because of its profound human inspiration and by reason of the elemental force by which it directly expresses radical problems, needs and experi- ences common to all human beings' (El f!amenco es universal, al tiempo que andaluz y espanol, debido a su inspiracio'n profundamente humana y por la fuerza elemental con que directamente expresa problemas radicales del hombre, sentimientos y preocupaciones, deseos y experiencias comunes a todos los seres humanos). Quinones writes of cante that 'its basic content manifests a simple elemental force which makes it accessible to all men' (Sus con ten idos primarios son de una elemen talidad simple que lo hace asimilable a todos los hombres) (1982).

That simple elemental force, according to these flamencologists, is conveyed in cante with sincerity above all else (Grande 1992; Molina 1981). That sincerity of song is, for its part, driven by the power of duende. Duende, according to Grande, refers to the singer's radical concentration (ensimismado) on memories, resulting in liberation and a return to innocence: With flamenco we endure a transformation: there is introduced into daily life, the site of our identity, an exalted aesthetic atmosphere, which is the place of liberation. One can summarize it in a word: communion. In flamenco, the shadow, the sorrow, the being, the memory and the mystery of cante enter into communion . . . rescuing identity from the daw of Time and History, and revisiting transcendent intimacy, the paradise of innocence. (El flamenco . . . sutrimos una transformacion: se introduce en lo cotidiano, el lugar de nuestra identidad, una atmosfera este'tica supretna-gue es el lugar de la liberacion. Lo gue sucede puede ser dicho con una palabra precisa: es la palabra de communion. En el flQmenco, la sombra, el dolor, el ser, la memoria y el misterio del cante, entran en communion ....rescatarse de la identidad de la garra del Tiempo y de la Historia, y regresar al absoluto de la intimidad, al parafso de la inocencia). (Grande 1992, p. 85)

Thus duende functions as 'a singer's hidden faculty for introducing us to the inef- fable so as to draw us close to the ultimate mystery . . . ' (Insospechada facultad del in te'rprete para hacernos part icipes de lo inefable para approximarnos al en igma ultimo de lo que pretendfa expresar) (Caballero Bonald 1975, p. 67). Armed with this spiritual power, singers probe the limits of the human condition, 'sentimientos radicales del hombre' (Molina 1981, p. 14). They sing of life lived against death Fosephs 1983).

The physical presentation of cante

The problem with this portrayal is that it runs headlong into the jolting physicality of the Rito exemplifications of cante. The comments on profound feeling, collective

The f!amenco body 81

memory, and sincerity of song in the Rito programmes and in the writings of

flamencologists may be instructive and valuable, but these comments are helpless at best, and more often confusing, in the face of the physical punch of the recorded

examples of cante. The sheer diversity of bodies of the Rito singers is unsettling. Some flamenco

bodies are harsh and daunting, some are languid and fluid, some are old and stiff

and barely capable of uttering a sound, some are portly without apology. Some

bodies, e.g. young Montoya in the programme devoted to children, are so young

and bright and smooth as to seem incapable of bearing the frightful weight of the

sounds they emit. But even more unsettling than the physical diversity of singers is the move-

ments and actions which those diverse bodies produce. When Manuel Agujetas, La Fernanda de Utrera, Manuel Soto 'Sordera', and Antonio Mairena sing, their

fists are clenched and their muscles are raw and straining. 'The hands are like an

instrument in themselves, which extend, join, retract, then suddenly punch, as if

they were appendages or springs responding to every emphasis and inflection of

the voice' (Woodall 1992, p. 106). Sometimes these singers seem to be doubled over in pain, as if they had just had the wind knocked out of them. At other

times, they seem to be caught up in a birthing labour. The Rito commentators and the majority of flamenco scholars typically

respond to the pained body of a singer with comments about the meaning of the

singer's pain. As such, the flamenco commentaries miss the mark. They fail to

recognise the centrality of the body in the Rito exemplifications. They fail too to

understand that cante might very well operate best when it communicates nothing,

and when it expresses pain that has no meaning. The persistent efforts of com-

mentators to attribute meaning to what has no meaning might, in the end, only

serve to further marginalise the bodies which singers seem bent on centralising. The Rito commentators end up marginalising the bodies of singers because

they generally subscribe to Western conceptions of music. These conventional conceptions of music are longstanding, and they have been at work marginalising bodies in social life from times in advance of the emergence of flamenco song. In

other words, the Rito commentators, together with the flamencologists on whom

they have relied, have simply followed some well travelled channels of interpreta- tion. They have taken for granted what most Westerners have taken for granted

before them, namely, that bodies are marginal to song. This essay argues that cante - at least some cante - resists dominant Western

musical conventions which regard the body as marginal. Cante centralises the body

that is conventionally marginalised (cf. Stam 1989, p. 163). This resistance to the

conventions of Western music is misunderstood or ignored in the Rito commentar- ies. My aim is to respond to the Rito commentaries by unearthing and examining

the historical roots of the Western marginalisation of bodies and then by reflecting

on the central role of the body in cante.

Song and the body

The social act of singing, like that of speaking, is variable and heterogeneous . . .

necessarily and unavoidably. Singing is heteroglossic and irrepressibly diverse in

form and practice, from place to place, and from person to person (Bakhtin 1981). The variability of song is never lost in any society, but it can be overshadowed by

institutional constraints (Middleton 1989). Specifically, institutional constraints can

82 William Washabaugh

encourage musical uniformity while discouraging what might otherwise be a musical gallimaufry.

Variability is institutionally overshadowed and discouraged in surprisingly concrete ways, as Goffman illustrates in his discussion of the shaping of conversa- tions between patrons and ticket vendors at the movies (1983). The ticket vendor's box, with its hole strategically placed for speaking and trading money, stands in for words, channelling conversation to a speedy end. The architecture of the ticket booth is a concrete institutional constraint which encourages patrons to rush for- ward with a curt word, 'Two please!'

The 'official' institutions in the Middle Ages constrained song and song inter- pretation, streamlining them through concrete devices along specific paths. Any song that deviated from those paths was hidden and muted. However, heterog- lossic song persisted on the margins of social life. Like the grass that grows persist- ently in the cracks of a concrete sidewalk, diverse songs continually arose to chal- lenge the constraints of officialdom and to reassert the heteroglossia of song in particular and of social life in general (Bakhtin 1981).

Modern Western social life, no less than medieval life, involves tensions between mainstream social forces that resolve diversity into uniformity and coun- tervailing forces that encourage heteroglossia. However, the power of mainstream forces has increased during the modern period (Stallybrass and White 1986). With respect to music, the emergence of the performing stage - and subsequently audio and video recordings (Corbett 1990) - is a primary concrete force which resolves diversity into uniformity.

The performing stage became a complex institution in the mid-nineteenth century, usurping all prior aspects of popular music and redefining them according to its own institutional parameters (Middleton 1989, p. 13). After 1850, popular performers were distinguished from audiences. Stars became highly-paid profes- sionals in contradistinction to amateurs. New roles were defined, including 'coaches' who trained the professionals to perform properly, and 'claques' who trained audiences to respond properly (Attali 1987). And in all these roles, uni- formity prevailed over diversity. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was very difficult to maintain an awareness of the diverse range of possibilities of popular song.

The performing stage generally succeeded in channelling musical activity along two paths. First and on the one hand, the stage played up a concept of song which had been cultivated in the Roman Church, and which subsequently encouraged universalist-communalist interpretations of music. Second and on the other hand, the stage played up a concept of song which had been cultivated in Protestantism, and which subsequently encouraged interpretations of songs as competitive accomplishments of individuals. These two narrow channels of mutual interpretation came to dominate musical activity by the end of the nineteenth century, and, I will show, they have dominated commentaries on cante.

Communal song

The first channel encouraged social relations in which individuals gave themselves over to the performance of traditional and transcendentally significant roles. Greg- orian plain chant exemplifies this form of song in which an individual's behaviour is constrained by traditional roles in service to the sacred. Specifically, plain chant

The flamenco body 83

is sung by a group in a monotone. Unlike polyphonic music which highlights the distinctive contributions of different voices, plain chant aims to eradicate the distinctions between individual voices. Chanters are to blend their voices so com- pletely that listeners hear one voice only. Thus the attention of listeners is diverted from the heterogeneity of the singers. Moreover, plain chant is sung in such a way as to deny, in practice, the limitations of the body. In contrast to singing in which phrases are matched to the lung capacity of singers, the singing of plain chant proceeds without regard to breath groups. Chanters are advised to take breaths anywhere but at phrase junctures. The resulting song with its randomly distributed breathing seems to be a single endlessly swelling voice unfettered by

normal bodily requirements. Listeners, for their part, are encouraged to hear a disembodied voice rather than a voice constrained by physical limitations.

By the nineteenth century, this mode and model of musical activity was secularised, that is, emptied of its religious significance. Courtly music in Britain, France and Germany was celebrated as a disembodied music whose form approx- imated the structure of human reason (Barry 1987). Romantic writers at the begin- ning of the nineteenth century embraced this music as a vehicle through which the universal spirit might express a rationality which individual bodies, in their contingency and concreteness, could never know: 'Unknown to me', writes Words- worth, 'the workings of my spirit thence are brought' (Barry 1987, p. 131).

This characterisation of music as a vehicle for tapping an invisible and univer- sal wellspring of meaning, has served as a powerful model of and for modern social relations. According to this model, singers, though apparently independent of each other, are capable of being joined by abstract universal ties. Songs operate like the myths described by Joseph Campbell. They recover the abstract universal ties which invisibly bind humans together. A singer is a hero who searches out the forces in 'Mind-at-Large' (Campbell 1972) thereby joining scattered individuals into a seamless community. Song, understood along these lines, is a utopian pro- ject. As a staged spectacle, it seeks to draw performers and audiences together to form a perfect unity.

This 'communal song' model has influenced the interpretation of cante in the Rito programmes.4 For one thing, Rito narrations frequently characterise flamenco as distinctly communal song. The anonymous authoritative narrator in the pro- gramme on Tangos, says: 'In Gitano celebrations, the festive song - Tangos, Romances, Alborea's, Bulerfas - is one of the elements which lends coherence to these reunions. Only in these situations of communal participation is there produced songs with such an abundance of freedom'. (Dentro de las celebraciones gitanas, el cante festero - Tangos, Romances, Alborea's, Bulerfas - es uno de los elementos que da cohesio'n a estas reuniones. Solo en estas situationes de participacio'n comunitaria se produce el cante con toda largueza de libertad). With a similar tone, the programme on Soleares offers this comment on the characteristics of the Soleares of Alcala: 'The principal characteristic of Soleares of Alcala is that . . . it is not a personal but a popular creation with an unmistakable mark' (La caracterfstica principal de los Soleares de Alcala es que . . . no es un cante de creacio'n personal sino popular con sello propio inconfundible).

More striking still is the stylised characterisation of communal ties in the programme which focuses on the Christmas-time festivities in the family of Manuel Soto 'Sordera'. At one point late in the programme the family is singing and dancing Bulerfas when suddenly the voice of La Nina de los Peines, perhaps the most renowned of all cantaoras, is ghosted in over the sound track in perfect syn-

84 William Washabaugh

chrony with the rhythm being played at this Soto family reunion. The suggestion, which is advanced by this overlain sound track, is that communal celebrations are potent enough to revive ties to the past. The community that sings together, stays together not only in the present but through time as well. In other words, cante is an expression of universal emotions springing from communal memories which, when unearthed, liberate singers from 'the claw of time and history'.

Competitive song

Western song and music was institutionally channelled along a second path which also influences contemporary interpretations of cante. This second path assumes song to be a competitive expression of individuality (cf. Turner 1984, p. 174). Along this channel, songs spring from individual artists for the purpose of validating their personhood vis-a-vis other individuals. A song is inscribed onto the singer's voice and then sent out into the marketplace for competition and validation. There, through that disembodied voice, the singer vicariously competes with others. The vicarious competition of songs forms a community of sorts among singers. How- ever, the communal relations realised through such song are indirect rather than face-to-face, and they are marked by competition rather than unanimity.

The linkage between such competitive musical practice and Protestant theo- logy is nicely illustrated in a recent film portraying the lives of St Colombe and Marin Marais in the second half of the seventeenth century, Tous Les Matins du Monde. This film (and not necessarily the actual behaviour of St Colombe and Marin Marais) models and celebrates a mode of producing and interpreting music which assumes individuals to be gifted, to one degree or another, and charged with a moral responsibility for cultivating that gift. St Colombe, an ascetic reformer, builds a hut off in the woods where he practices at his viol for fifteen hours a day. So committed is he to his music that he forgets his child-care respons- ibilities. Viewers are encouraged to believe that the responsibility for developing God-given musical talents supercedes any responsibility for cultivating physical ties to others.

This mode of interpreting modern song as both symbol and carrier of per- sonhood gained popularity at the same time as body-cosmetics, and for the same reasons. 'Cosmetic practices are indicative of a new presentation of self in a society where the self is no longer lodged in formal roles but has to be validated through a competitive public space' (Turner 1984, p. 174). The actions of singing and of putting on lipstick both serve the individual by enabling him or her to cultivate a self which can compete in the marketplace of public life.

The Rito interpretations of cante bear numerous marks of influence from this second channel of song interpretation. Pepe Marchena struts about in natty dress, with ascot, cigar, and a variety of stylish hats, singing for adoring audiences, claiming to be a walking encyclopaedia of the art of flamenco (yo soy un enciclopedia de las cosas del arte). The question asked of him by Jose Maria Velazquez presup- poses a world in which a distinctive talent like Marchena's might well succeed in the musical marketplace and also validate personal worth: 'Can one speak of a style created by Pepe Marchena?' (Se puede hablar de un estilo hecho por Pepe Marchena?). Marchena responds to this question saying that his distinctive style consists in his improvements and advances of all things flamenco.

Similarly, Camaron de la Isla, who is presented in a recording studio rather

The flamenco body 85

than in intimate gatherings, is described as an artist bent on breaking away from

the pack, and forging new canons of flamenco art:

Nowadays many young singers set their sights on revising the traditions of flamenco that have persisted up to the present. Perhaps the most significant of these is Jose Monge Cruz 'E1 Camaron'. He has revolutionized the established canons. His very personal style is distinct from others both in musical form and expressivity. Thus Camaron is a singer who has captured the attention of the most important record companies. His recordings are as successful as those of any other popular singer.

(Hoy en dia son muchos los cantaores jovenes gue intentan renovar las fradiciones flamencas seguidas hasta ahora. Quiza' el ma's significativo de todos sea lose' Monge Cruz 'El Camaro'n'. El ha revolucionado los ca'nones establecidos. Su estilo muy personal se distingue de los dema's, fanto en su forma musical como expresiva. Por eso Camaron es un cantaor gue ha capEado la atencio'n de las ma's imporEantes casas de discos. Sus grabaciones suceden con la misma frecuencia gue las de cualquier cantante de las u'ltimas dias).

Here again is highlighted the idea that personal talents can be packaged for success in the competitive world of music redounding to the credit of the artist. The idea

is consistent with the conception of 'music as competition'. On the whole, Rito encourages viewers to adopt one of two modes of inter-

preting cante. Viewers are led to see cante as a communal song in which individual- ity is submerged, or viewers are led to see cante as an individual song through which the artist breaks free of a stultifying community. With either mode of inter- preting cante, a special emphasis is placed on spiritual ties and gifts. That special

emphasis results in the marginalisation of the singer's body. With an emphasis on spirits rather than on bodies, the Rito programmes are

generally unable to come to grips with the corporeal presence of singers in the

Rito films. Manuel Agujetas, Manuel Soto 'Sordera', Antonio Mairena, la Fernanda de Utrera, La Perrata, Maria La Sabina, Diego E1 Perote and Juan Talega are singers that come across as bodies first and foremost. Their songs do not merely use their

voices, as if their voices were instruments of song. Their songs are their voices. In

the Rito films, the songs of these singers are their bodies. In sum, the two major Western paths for interpretation, i.e. communal song

and competitive song, cannot account for the raw and edgy physicality of the Rito

exemplifications of cante. Flamencologists tell us that cante is an act which tran- scends the physical in its quest to reveal universal sentiments, in its quest to

liberate the spirit. Or they tell us that singers are solitary heroes whose songs

spring from a unique combination of physical strength, personal insight, and creat- ive genius. But neither of these modes of interpreting cante helps viewers to

appreciate the raw corporality of Rito songs. Neither addresses adequately the

flamenco body.

Cante and the flamenco body

Let us therefore focus on the flamenco body. The remainder of this article will

argue that the flamenco body, when caught up in cante, steps outside both conven- tional Western song models.

We can begin our inquiry into the flamenco body by searching out the origin of cante. It should be noted, however, that this search for flamenco origins -

is quite different from the searches for ethnic roots, historical precedents and

genealogical affiliations which have prevailed in flamencological literature. Our

question asks about the forces which have encouraged cante to step outside of the

86 William Washabaugh

modern Western song conventions. It asks about the social conditions in which singers began to behave in ways normally suppressed in Western social life. With its focus on the corporality of cante, this question asks about the origin of a practice rarely associated with Western song.

The force which prompts the distinctive practice of Flamenco singers is frus- tration and failure. Mitchell (1988, 1990, 1991) has outlined the impact of chronic economic and political failures and oppressions which, starting in the sixteenth century, robbed Andalusians of autonomy and gave rise to a culture of victimage. He has documented the relationship between the historical experience of failure, and the emergence of provincialisms, the scapegoating practices, the blood sports, the emotional religiosity of Holy Week, the penitential cofradias, the pilgrimages, etc.

Why does frustration and failure breed the sort of practice which is character- istic of Andalusian culture in general and of cante flamenco in particular? I suggest that we search for an answer to this question in the behaviour of persons caught up in bodily failures.

Bodies in pain turn their attention inward (Leder 1990). When in pain, indi- viduals truncate their customary outgoing (ecstatic) attention, and begin exploring, feeling, and exclaiming about internal realities which, in the normal course of activity, are invisible and, for all practical purposes, absent. Bodily failures prompt extended and repeated monologues of self-examining body-talk.

The inwardly directed, self-examining expressions which arise on occasions of pain and death, are often non-functional. Their hallmark is their uselessness. Often enough, such expressions do not even seek out a listener. Consider, for example, the radio commentary presented on the occasion of the crash of the Hindenburg dirigible, 6 May 1937:

I don't believe . . . I can't even talk to people whose friends are out there. It's a . . . (sobs), I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen, honest. It's a laid-down mass of smoking wreakage, and everybody can hardly breathe. I'm sorry; honest, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Scotty, that's terrible. (sobs) I can't. Listen, folks, I'm going to have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. (as quoted in Nichols 1991, p. 220)

The Hindenburg commentator had turned radically inward. He forsakes all hope of describing the events before him. Instead his words serve to bemoan his own failing state. His 'I can't talk' is not intended to represent anything or even express anything. The commentator's emotional agitation is so great that he has disen- gaged himself from the essential features of the communication process, even from the listener. His words are directed to no one in particular and have no identifiable purpose to serve.

In their uselessness, the expressions of bodies-in-pain are exceptional. They deviate from the institutionally established channels which recommend that expressions serve as 'conduits of meaning' (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lee 1992, p. 80), that they be directed to a listener, and that they transfer some useful information or sentiment from the speaker to the listener. Stepping outside of the institutionally recommended channels for expressing themselves, individuals in pain are often oblivious to listeners as they focus inward and direct their attentions to their own bodies. They deviate from institutionally approved modes of speaking.

The singers in the Rito programmes behave in a fashion similar to the Hinden-

The flamenco body 87

burg commentator. Like the Hindenburg commentator, Manuel Agujetas, singing Siguiriyas, is focused inward. His whole-body expression is devoted to the task of presenting internal realities which are normally held aside and assumed to be absent from everyday affairs. Not that his self-presentations are supposed to do anything or even mean anything. They are not. Rather they are distinctively non- functional and uninformative. Like the Hindenburg commentator, Agujetas is using his expressive force to introduce his own failed body into the landscape of disasters which is Andalusia.

Cante resists the rules that govern conventional communicative expressions. For one thing, the cantaor is often surprised by what comes out of his mouth. 'Things come out of me that I wasn't expecting would come out of me' (me salen cosas que yo no esperaba que me salieran - Jose Menese quoted in Angel Caballero (1981, p. 172)).

Flamencologists, operating with understandings that are consistent with con- ventional Western conceptions of music, have generally failed to appreciate the uninformative and unintentional nature of such cante quejEo. Diaz del Moral com- plains that 'there never appears [in cante] any rebellious uprising, any revolution- ary impulse, or any urgency for political, social or economic reform' (no aparece por ninguna parEe un brote de rebeldia, un impulso revolucionario, una ansia de redencio'n polSica, social o econo'mica (as summarised by Molina 1985, p. 49). Herrero (1991, p. 118) describes cante as 'hermetic' song. In contrast to jazz, flamenco is closed off, hidden, introverted, and in danger, therefore, of self-suffocation. Gelardo and Belade (1985) contend that Andalusian flamenco became, over the past 150 years, toothless. It lost the grit of resistance and the bite of protest during the decadent period of the cafe's cantantes when, little by little, it was sweetened to please the tastes of the middle classes. Earlier song involved wrenching accounts of life in prison, but the sweetened moan of the cafe' cantante substituted the softer themes of death and mother for the gritty theme of life in the prison (ibid., p. 133). In sum, cante quejEo has been criticised as quietistic and self-indulgent.

Such criticisms take for granted the authority of dominant Western modes of interpreting song. They fail to see that cante quejEo is itself a resistance. They fail to understand that the 'uselessness' of cante is its sharpest challenge to an oppress- ive institutional order which demands that expressions be communicatively useful.

Cante quejEo floods the floor with the 'wonder' of a failed body, leaving wit- nesses awestruck and bewildered (Greenblatt 1990, pp. 161ff.), raising awareness levels and producing exhilaration. Cante quejEo gives pleasure rather than meaning (Frith 1988, p. 115; Middleton 1989, p. 261). It is a voice music, 'the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue' (Barthes 1977, p. 188). The words used by Barthes (ibid., p. 181) to describe the sounding body of a Russian church bass apply equally well to the sounding body of a cantaor:

Something is there, manifest and stubborn, beyond the meaning of the words, their form, the melisma, and even the style of execution: something which is directly the cantor's body brought to your ears in one and the same movement from deep down in the cavities, the muscles, the membranes.

Commentators may persist in asking about the meaning of such cante, treat- ing songs as semantic and representational expressions. However, the persistence is itself oppressive because it pressures cantaores to conform to conventional and normal modes of musical practice. Like the persistent search of psychologists for

88 William Washabaugh

meaning and information in expressions of sorcery or possession or ecstasy (de Certeau 1988, pp. 250ff.), the search for meaning and information in cante effec- tively denies the Otherness of cantaores and assimilates their voices to mainstream voices. This persistent search for meaning in cante resolves the problematic Otherness of the cantaor by dissolving it into a normality, and in the process 'stamping out the popular manifestations of the body' (Greenblatt 1990, p. 79).

Cante quejEo resists conventional modes of musical interpretation. However, that is not to say that cante quejEo is therefore a general tool of political resistance. It would be dangerous and ultimately oppressive (Grossberg 1992, p. 94) to attribute general political significance to cante as if it were an 'anti-structural' force (Turner 1969), or a 'tactic' (de Certeau 1984), or 'a countervailing form of positive body awareness' (Leder 1990, p. 153), or a 'hidden transcript' of resistance (Scott 1990), or, as I argued under a pseudonym (Doe 1988, p. 220), a 'language of resistance'. Rather, cante, like other popular manifestations of the body, is politically ambigu- ous (Crowley 1989). Its political valence is negotiated in the concrete events of presentation and uptake.

Televising cante

The negotiation of the general value of cante has less to do with the intrinsic character of cante quejEo as a popular manifestation of the body, than with the juxtaposition of cante with other expressions. Specifically when cante is put together with the television medium in the Rito programmes, viewers are encouraged to respond to cante as conventional song. The video medium reframes cante as con- ventional song, and the Rito commentaries encourage the interpretation of cante as either 'communal' or 'competitive'. Cante on television comes off as normal song. Meaning is returned to centre stage. Corporality is consigned to the wings. Reyn- olds (1990, p. 82) would describe this process as a sell-out and not unlike the sell-out of 'soul' music. Soul was once - a very long time ago - the sound of a psyche breaking up, shattered by desire or loss - a wracked catharsis, an ailing, dejected broken sound, essentially tragic. Today, soul has become a token of strength of feeling, of strength of being. Beige popsters take a vicarious pride in the slow baptism of fire that their chosen genre and its protagonists underwent. Beige vocalists admire and envy the blacks' for being more in touch with their emotions, their bodies, the unfettered ignorance of their self-expression . . . Beige vocalists attempt to construct an erstaz black body to signify, what? Health! The vocal dexterity, vigour and power of the soul man amount to . . . passion as workout! In our culture, which sets such a high premium on self-enrichment, the robust, emotive and expressive aspects of soul act as a sort of therapy, helping us to 'liberate' ourselves by getting back in touch with ourselves, opening up, unblocking, becoming more functional and therefore (it runs) more free.

Conclusion

In the documentary series Rito y Geografia del Cante, flamenco song is interpreted and portrayed as meaningful song. cante is presented as a spiritual journey to the heart of the human condition. This handling of cante, while edifying, fails to account for its physicality. Specifically, the singers in the Rito programmes advance a corporality which is conventionally consigned to the margins of musical experi- ence. The intensity and diversity of singers' bodies overshadows the allegedly spiritual mission of cante.

The flamenco body 89

In this essay I have argued that bodies occupy a central rather than a marginal place in the Rito examples of cante. The singer's words and intentions suddenly become secondary, and the singer's body, sounding itself, obtrudes into the musical event, wondrous and awesome. As such, cante is a site of resistance to conventional notions of song, and, potentially at least, to conventional models of personhood.

Promising though this 'marginocentric' resistance may be, the promise is compromised by the filmic condition of cante in the Rito series. The presentation of the Rito films on television reframes cante as conventional song and encourages viewers to ascribe meaning and significance to meaningless bodies.

Still in all, flamenco song is a diverse and shifting experience. The document- ary television programmes of the Rito series cannot put limits on flamenco song or fix its place in human affairs. Viewers are constantly revising their responses to cante - and to each other through cante - with each viewing and with each

. . muslca experlence .

Endnotes

1 This article is part of a larger project of under- standing the Rito films. My project of under- standing these films began with translations of the narrative and interview materials in the Rito programmes and with analyses of the objectives towards which the words and images in the Rito films have been organised. But beyond the focused activities of translation and analysis, this project involves reconsiderations of ethno- graphy, documentary film, and flamenco music in the light of contemporary social theory. My plan is to publish the results of the project in a single volume.

My thanks to Brook Zern, to Professor Dieter Christensen of Columbia University, and to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lib- rary. Their collaboration made it possible for me to gain access to Rito y Geograffa del Cante. Also I thank Timothy Mitchell, David Monroe, and especially Catherine Washabaugh for their sup- port and criticism.

2 The marginalised role of the body in conven- tional commentaries on song parallels the mar- ginalised role of the body in commentaries on drama. Specifically, conventional commentaries on Greek tragedies, which focus on spleens and humours, persist in interpreting spleens as emotions and bodily fluids as states of mind,

thereby marginalising the body in Greek tra- gedy (Padel 1992).

3 Scholarly writing on flamenco has been labelled 'flamencologia', in the wake of the landmark book Flamencologia (Gonzalez Climent 1964). These 'flamencological' writings tend to be gen- etic and classificatory histories with emphases on the oral traditions of Andalusia in general, or on the contributions of Gitanos, or on the specific contributions of Andalusian provinces, or on the musical influence of Hispano- America. Some contemporary and comprehens- ive contributions to this literature include Rios Ruiz (1991), Woodall (1992) and the forthcom- ing work of Timothy Mitchell.

4 Interestingly, it has often been said that cante bears marks of influence from Gregorian plain chant. For example, the Rito programme on the form Tona's, probably one of the very earliest programmes in the series, implies such influ- ence in its presentation of plain chant in the audio track behind scenes that aim to depict a formative period of flamenco. German Herrero (1991, p. 31), Hipolito Rossy (1966, pp. 39ff.), and Jose Caballero Bonald (1975, p. 20) all make explicit reference to this influence, though none of these scholars provides unambiguous histor- ical documentation for the linkage between Gregorian chant and cante.

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