LATIN DANCE

Latin Dance is a gateway to experience the rich and diverse nature of the Latin American people. From Flamenco to Salsa, Reggae to Tango, the legacy of indigenous ethnicities, and a shared history of poverty and oppression are written on the bodies and through the dance forms that is known as Latin Dance. To participate in Latin Dance is to participate with generations and nations, becoming attuned to the intersection of politics, spirituality, and cultural in such a way as to leave one changed.

Rumba is fiesta.  Rumba is the combination of music, song, and dance that makes up a party.  Yvonne Daniel (1995) writes, "Rumba is a passionate dance, considered beautiful by many. Often the highlight of a community event or social gathering in Cuba, it embodies important elements of life: movement, spontaneity, sensuality, sexuality, love, tension, opposition, and both freedom and restraint. It requires play as well as deliberation. It involves the human body, the human voice, and  tremendous rhythmic sense. And since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, rumba has become even more enigmatic, full of contrasts and contradictions, reflecting life and projecting national goals in contemporary Cuba."

The style emerged over the last century in the barrios found on the outskirts of Havana and Matanzas; in time, spreading throughout Cuba.  This music was born from African descendants and Spanish descendants finding commonality in their experiences of oppression at the hands of the ruling classes.  These white descendants of the Spanish, cut off from their origins, established new forms of social relations which brought them closer to the life of urban blacks. Ancestral gestures and movements that were characteristic of the black or mulatto population in Cuba played a part in the development of rumba. The creation of rumba was not a simple question of a profane style borrowing directly from ritual dancing (like a dance to Chango, or a palos ritual dance); neither was it a caricature or a debasement of the original elements of ritual dance, but rather rumba emerged as a new expression of cultural characteristics that were latently present in the population that created it. This is clear in the vocals, percussion and different forms of dance.

At first, rumba was performed in the places where people in the neighborhood usually gathered together; the meeting place could have been an empty plot, a cafe or a small room. Everything with any potential for percussion was used to make music:  the side of a cupboard, the drawer of a chest, any pair of sticks, etc. Rumba started up, just like that, without need for a reason, just as did ragtime, condombe, marinera and other Afro-American styles created all over the Americas. The original meaning of the word rumba is not known; however, it belongs to a class of Afro-American words such as tumba, macumba, tambo, and cumbe that were used to describe a party, both on the continent and on the islands.

Danzón is integral to the history of Cuban dance music, popular between 1880 an 1940. The first documented danzón occurred in 1879 in Matanzas, Cuba,  by Miguel Failde (1852-1921). It consisted simply of the two parts of a contradanza habanera. The danzón has developed within the urban popular tradition with increasingly obvious African influences. The genre remained in fashion for 60 years, lending its influence to composers of boleros, sones, cha cha cha, mambo and all Afro-Cuban music and dance.

"In the early 1920s, the danzón was Cuba’s most popular form of national music. Danzones developed out of nineteenth-century ballroom repertoire, patterned after French and Spanish court music but infused with local rhythms. In the early twentieth century, the instrumentation of danzón groups consisted primarily of violins, flute, piano, acoustic bass, timbales, and the güiro, a gourd scraper. The groups were known as charangas or charangas francesas. Early-twentieth-century danzones were instrumental, but beginning in the 1920s the danzón cantado, or sung danzón, gained popularity as well. This reflects the public’s growing interest in boleros, North American jazz ballads, Broadway show tunes, and Tin Pan Alley repertoire. In 1929, another variation emerged: the danzonete, first popularized by Aniceto Díaz.

The Cuban bolero (which has no connection with its Spanish counterpart), was popular in the mid 19th century. The rhythmic characteristics of the Cuban bolero has changed considerably since the later part of the 19th century, resulting in either 2/4 or 4/4 time. The modern Cuban bolero was heralded by José Pepe Sánchez in 1885 with Tristeza. The bolero developed alongside the Cuban son. The bolero would include verses of well-known poets within its lyrics. The trend towards "montuno" (instrumental solos) during the first half of the 20th century influenced the bolero and resulted in compounds forms such as the bolero-son and bolero-mambo.

"The Cuban form of bolero was developed in Santiago in the late nineteenth century, when the tradition of trova (derived from trovador, Spanish for troubadour) canción (song), a kind of urban storytelling tradition sung by traveling singers, began interacting with the explosion of musical styles on the island. Like most of nineteenth century Cuban music, the trova was influenced by French romantic styles, the Neapolitan tradition of farcical musical comedies, and of course, opera -- popular music forms despite their seemingly aristocratic pedigree. Performed by mostly unrecognized singers wielding a guitar and playing in small bars and on the street, the trova was closer to its early Spanish origins as folk music. The lush countryside and more laid-back pace of the Oriente province, where Santiago was situated, removed from the comparatively cosmopolitan Havana, was a perfect breeding ground for trova." (Morales, 2003, p. 121)

The word ‘mambo’ (of African derivation) refers to a Cuban genre of the mid 20th century. It is strongly influenced by Afro-Cuban forms of the late 19th century and the early 20th. Though not improvised, it draws on the technical resources of jazz, has rhythmic figures, similar to those of the danzón. Perez Prado introduced mambo at La Tropicana in Havana in 1943. Mambo then swept through Mexico on its way to New York. Mambo reached its zenith at the famed Palladium Ballroom in the mid 1950s, and remained quite popular throughout the United States and Cuba until the 1960s.

Salsa means sauce, gravy, and its ingredients are many, depending upon where it’s made. But one thing is certain: it’s got plenty of spice.
 

Like much of the greatest popular music, the creative fire was lit when Africa met the cultural cauldron of the New World. For salsa, it began in Cuba in the 1940s. One part Yoruba drumming, another part call and response vocals, it was diced with the music of local, indigenous people. Then, with heaping measures of musical Spain, France, and the country dances of England, the son was formed. And it was very tasty indeed.

Yes, Cuba set modern Latin dance music in motion. But with the varied ingredients in place, a transformation took place not in the Caribbean, but on the street of New York (and increasingly in Miami). It was in New York and Miami that Puerto Ricans and Cubans settled as a result of the joint upheavals of poverty in the former and isolation due to the revolution in the latter. The son turned ready to serve salsa when this sauce got stirred up by North American jazz.

As long ago as the 1930s Cuban bands were playing in Paris and New York. In the 1950s, Europe and North America were virtually colonized by the mambo and cha cha cha. At various other times in recent memory, Latin forms have gained huge popularity all over the world. However, Latin music came to stay in America, and suddenly there met two parallel traditions that had dipped into the same creative gumbo made of Africa and the New World.

In the 1960s and 1970s, salsa resumed a more basic Cuban style, as performers blended conjunto and charanga instrumentation, replacing trumpets with trombones in conjuntos.  Puerto Rican, and later South American elements, were also introduced. Salsa rhythms are based on Afro-Cuban dances such as the bolero, cha cha cha, guaguanco, guaracha, mambo and son montuno. Each piece of music has three sections: a head (melodic) section; a montuno in which the lead singer improvises against a repeated vocal refrain; and a mambo section of contrasting riffs.
 

Salsa caliente, as it is called, is the faster and the fantastic Colombian salsa music. The greatest salsomanos meet every December for the international Salsa Festival in the Colombian city of Cali. Colombian bands as Grupo Niche, and Joe Arroyo are very popular around the world. Salsa romantica, which favors sentimental love lyrics, features artists like Eddie Santiago, Luis Enrique, and Lalo Rodriguez. Salsa pura is performed by the likes of Willie Colon, Oscar de Leon and Celia Cruz,  "la reina de la salsa" (the queen of the salsa).

The 1990s saw former hip-hop/house singers la India and Mark Anthony return to Latin music as part of the new wave of salsa stars, attracting new followers with their updated images. But with the romantic baladas and pop singer Ricky Martin, Latin music had reach the top of popularity all around the world.
By the way, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Venezuela are known for having the best salsa bands.

Popular throughout the Caribbean and South America in the 1940s and 1950s. While the merengue originated in the Dominican Republic, it is also known in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Venezuela. It has its origins in Afro-Cuban rhythms and dances. There is a belief that the tumbao, the two steps of the merengue, was caused by party-goers trying to dance like a man who lost his leg in a battle and danced with a limp due to his stick leg.

The tango has its origins in Argentina, as immigrants from Europe, Africa, and unknown ports streamed into the outskirts of Buenos Aires in the 1880s. It symbolizes the hopes, successes, and failures of the millions of immigrants who were concentrated in the big cities. Many gravitated toward the port city’s houses of ill repute, where the Porteños (as the citizens of Buenos Aires are called) could forget their sadness and troubles with a few drinks and some companionship. They were looking desperately for a distraction to ease their sense of rootlessness, trying to forget that they were "strangers in a strange land." From this multicultural brew emerged a new music and dance called tango.
 

Musical historians argue on the historical origins of tango. Whereas some considered that there might be an influence from the African slaves’ beat on the drums, known as tan-go, others assumed that the popular music of the Pampas (flat lands), known as the Milonga, had influenced the tango. The Milonga is a mixed dance of Afro-Argentinan, Uruguayan folk tradition, and Indian rhythms with the music of early Spanish colonists. Moreover, it has been said that the word "tango" comes from the Latin word "tangere" (to touch). But as a dance, the tango is in part a local adaptation of the Andalusian tango, the Cuban danzon and Habanera, and to a lesser extent, the European polka.

Just as the Irish came to North America looking for the "American dream," Italians, French, Spanish, and Germans came to Argentina with the illusion of finding riches in South America. Instead of their dreams, they found the horror of hard work in the heat and the stench of spoiling meat in places like the Mataderos district of Buenos Aires and El Cerro in Montevideo. The immigrants returned at night to the "Conventillos," where they lived five and six to a room. They became known as the "Atorrantes," the Buenos Aires street dialect’s word to describe the homeless. Ironically, as these lonely immigrants were trying to escape from their feelings, they developed a music and dance that would unify them. Tango speaks of more than frustrated love, it speaks of fatality of destinies engulfed in pain. It is the dance of sorrow.
 

Originally the tango was only referred to by characters in the world of prostitutes. It was prohibited for upper class women to take part. In the beginning, males would practice the dance secretly, behind closed doors. During this time, the melancholic music of the bandoneon (an accordion-like instrument imported from Germany in 1886) became a mainstay of tango music. In 1912 the advent of the universal suffrage law in Argentina helped to legitimize many of its cultural forms, including the tango. Although this particular dance form was accepted by a larger society, its original structure remained intact and it soon developed into a worldwide phenomenon. Even in North America tango became accepted as a sensual and passionate dance; however, women initially wore "bumpers" to keep their partners at a respectable distance.
 

During the first two decades of the 20th century, tango took Paris by storm. Tango reigned supreme in the cabarets and theaters frequented by the rich and the status of the tango musician became elevated to that of a professional composer. The tango stars of this era were Oswaldo Fresedo and Julio de Caro.
In 1918 a most handsome, charismatic performer became a national hero in Argentina, the tango singer and first "Latin lover," CARLOS GARDEL. To this day, five decades after his death, his memory is still celebrated. In late 1930’s tango musicians like Pugliese, De Caro, and Anibal Troilo took the form into new directions. When Juan Peron rose to power in 1946 the tango reached the pinnacle of popularity in Argentina. The Tango again fell from the spotlight with Evita’s death in 1952. American rock and roll invaded the popular scene and the tango was forgotten. Today the tango is enjoying a renaissance of popularity, keeping its fire and passionate art form.

Jazz originates from the Mississippi Delta and finds primary influence in African-American rhythms. Jazz, along with Latin and Afro-Cuban musical styles, has a rich history of improvisation that still adhered to the clave rhythm. During the 1940s and the 1950s Latin American musicians moved to the eastern USA, particularly New York, where Latin and Caribbean styles of music partly meshed with jazz. It acquire a big-band style, and "Latin Jazz" developed as a combination of jazz structures and Latin rhythms.

New York City in the 1940s witnessed the evolution of Latin Jazz through the collaboration of musicians Mario Bauza, Dizzy Gillespie, and Chano Pozo. Perez Prado and the great timbal player, Tito Puente, pioneered their own unique form of Latin Jazz known as Mambo.

The Latin Jazz dance is well known as one of the aesthetic forms that synthesizes much from Latin American culture. Latin Jazz dance combines movements and rhythms of merengue, salsa, mambo, lambada or samba with European jazz dance techniques.

AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN

In the old days, during the voyage from Africa, slaves were forced to dance on shipboard to keep themselves healthy. Before they reached America, however, many had absorbed something of European dances.   
From 1800, dances for the courts and elegant salons of Europe, Spain, France and England became popular and were imitated by the slaves. "Every Island of the Caribbean" has some of quadrille, reel, jig or contradanza.
Cuban dances in general uses steps and figures of the Court of Versailles, combined with hip movements of the Congo, from Africa. Cuba’s cha cha cha combines African style steps with the pattern typical of Scottish dances. The mambo is identified with a Congo step from Africa and a Chango step from Trinidad. Actually Mambo is a Congo word.
Latin American dances such as the conga, samba, mambo, cha cha cha and son show the greatest African influence.
African dance is frequently performed from a crouch, knees flexed and body bent at the waist. The custom of holding the body erect seems to be principally European (son, mambo and salsa).
Latin American dances, as African dances, are centrifugal. The legs move from the hips instead of from the knee. In fact, the movements of the shoulders and head result from the hip motion: "Starting with the hips and moving outward tends to make the dancing looser".
The future of this mix of cultural styles, of which dance and music are but parts, is the future of the Caribbean. It seems inevitable that the blending process now molding a new race of people will continue and produce a new form, not African, not European but fused from the meeting of two races in the world: "African-American culture".

Five thousand years ago the Caribbean Islands were occupied by small groups of Indians known as Ciboneys. About three thousand years later, around the first century AD, Arawak Indians from South America arrived and settled in the islands.
The Arawaks were peaceful people. They grew maiz (corn), root vegetables (casaba and sweet potatoes). They made pottery and wove cloth, lay in hammocks and smoked tobacco, which Europeans had never seen before their arrival in the Americas.
Much fiercer Carib Indians started to move from South America to the islands in about the 14th century, attacking and killing the Arawaks, while keeping the women as their wives. They were hunters and fishermen. In the late 18th century almost all the Indians died out, though, the result of Europe’s conquests and diseases.
The Europeans called the Caribbean Islands the West Indies because they mistakenly believed that they had arrived in India. The term Caribbean was later coined after the Carib Indians.
Christopher Columbus led the first European expedition to the Caribbean. The first island that he reached in 1492 was Guanani in the Bahamas, which he renamed San Salvador.
Grenada Island has a French name because the island was French before it became British in 1783. The name means "jumpers" because Carib Indians chose to jump to their deaths from cliffs rather than surrender to the French.
Caribbean Culture has its roots in Africa, Europe and South America, but the mixture has a character of its own.

    Trinidad & Tobago is the land where the steel band, the Calypso and the limbo were born. Drums and percussion instruments have been added, and women, who were excluded ten years ago, now play as well.
Trinidad & Tobago are separated from Venezuela by only seven miles of sea, and have the same flora and fauna and an identical climate, but the islands have their own folklore.
Trinidad’s population is a mix of Spanish, French, Dutch, English, and African. Tobago’s population is essentially of African descent.
In their lyrics Calypso singers, or Calypsonians, criticize government and satirize serious situations. Their themes can be intellectual and constructive, or abusive and critical.
The first steel band was founded by Alexander Ragtime in 1937 in Port Spain. The tops of empty oil drums are carefully beaten with hammers into segments, so that each area will produce a different sound.
The annual Caribbean carnival begins in Trinidad two days before Ash Wednesday at 5 a.m.

Reggae is hypnotic, trance music, is the anger and protest of the lyrics, zero degree music, is the Jamaica’s folklore culture.
Reggae means: coming from the people. Reggae musicians became Jamaica’s prophets, social commentators and shamans. Columbus discovered Jamaica in 1494.
The first African were brought to Jamaica by the Spanish in 1517, but Jamaica had no gold and the Spanish gradually lost their interest preferring to concentrate their colonial effort on Cuba and Española.
English invaded Jamaica in 1655. From the middle of the seventeenth century Jamaica was used more as a huge agricultural factory by the British planters, who reaped astronomical fortunes from sugar plantations, worked by slaves imported from the Coast of Africa.
During the 250 year’s period some thirty million Africans were brought to the New World (the largest forced migration in human history).
Jamaica’s aboriginal "Arawak Indians" had almost been killed by the Spaniards or had died from their diseases, leaving no mark upon their land but their name for it "Xaymaca" (*Land of Springs").
The roots of the reggae music are fixed in slavery. In the early fifties Jamaican music consisted only in "mento" (adaptation from the calypso of Trinidad). In the sixties anything British, American or Canadian was vastly superior to any home grown, but the dance that replaced Rock steady around 1968 was called REGGAE. Jamaica got the independence from Britain in 1962 after 250 years of slavery.
RASTAFARI: Rastafari is not a millenarian sect to go back to Africa, but an alternative spiritual nationality that deploys a mass cultural identity for thousands of Jung Jamaicans.
Most of the reggae musicians are Rastas. They are vegetarians, artists and craftsmen. if weren’t for reggae, few people heard from Rastas.
Everyone in Jamaica has an opinion of Rastafari. The middle and upper classes think of Rastas as violent hippies. The government tolerates and tries to use them to its political advantage. But the Rastas and the reggae have contributed more to Jamaica that any other group.
Rastas started with Marcus Gravy with BACK TO AFRICA MOVEMENT in 1907. Rastas believe in the redemption for the black man can come only through repatriation to Africa.
Language: Papiamento (Dutch, Spanish, English and a little bit of Portuguese)

The cumbia has its origin in San Basilio, a little town of Atlantic coast of Colombia, South America. It was danced and created by the slaves to feel happiness and forget the heavy work and hard life. It was danced at night in the Palenque de San Basilio behind the ocean walls, the place where the slaves used to hire from the Spanish.
The cumbia is danced with wide and long white skirts, with tropical flowers on their hair and a candle as a ritual in the darkness. Men wear white pants folded up, without shirt, with machete to side and sombrero hipihapa. Later they added a red panuelo (scarf ) around the neck to add color.
The cumbia is danced barefoot because they dance on the sand and so close to the ocean that the water reaches to touch their feet. Dancers perform around the drums musicians and the fogata.
In the Palenque, where we can still found descendants of cumbia, African-Americans who speak African and Spanish language. They continue with their traditions and customs; like crying the babies when they are born and do a rumba (party) when they die; sending letters to their dead relatives, imitating the occupation of the person that just died. They celebrate big parrandas and rumbas (big parties) to the son of cumbias with fogatas and typical orchestras, remembering their heritage and slavery, being now completely free.

THE AFRICAN POWERS

The African Powers are some of the best known 'Orishas' of the thousands of deities that Africans brought with them to the New World through the Slave Trade. Based on Yoruba legends and ancestor worship, and often associated with Catholic saints, the Orisha and their songs and dances were predominant influences on what we enjoy as Latin Music today.

FLAMENCO

Between 1000-800 before Conquest, Celts and Indo-European moved to Europe and in 500 BC they came to the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and mixed with the Iberians.    
In 1100 BC over the Mediterranean Sea came the Phoenicians (merchant people) and set on Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast and brought with them musical instruments from Tyros and Sidon. Jews came at the same time(1000 years BC).
Arabian-Morish invasion at the beginning of the 8th century. The ancient Greeks voyages beginning in 500 BC; they built temples and theaters. One can trace the roots and influence of Spanish dance from that time. The spiral movements and head turning to the side are characteristic movement in both, Greek and Spanish dances.
Rome took over the role of the Greeks as rulers of the sea and in addition the Roman Empire spread quickly over Europe and North Africa.
When the Roman Empire began to lose its power, in the 5th century, AC; the Iberian peninsula was invaded by the Visigoths (barbarian war like people who remained in the country about three hundred years).
During the 15th century there were nearly 900.000 Jews in Spain. After the 13th century, the Christian persecution of Jews began. The Catholic Kings "Fernando and Isabel", ordered all non-Christians to leave the country or be baptized.
The Arabs invasion in the year 711 BD and the conquest was completed by 716. They spanned until the coast of North Africa ) Tunis, Algeria, Libya and Morroco).
Musicians and dancers were imported from Baghdad. Jews, Arabs and Moors with melodies from India, Persia, Iraq and North Africa, beside native songs and music. CASTANETS which had come to Greece from Egypt and Crete would be the most typical accompaniment to the dance.
According to Cervantes: "they danced with honey in their hips and were called delicias Andaluces" (the Andalusian delights). The Spanish inquisition started in 1391.

The Gypsies’ country of origin was India. Their home region was located in the river valley around the Indus river and they belonged to the lowest caste, comparable to "Pariahs".
The Aryans (the most influential class in India) persecuted them, and that was the cause of their nomadic existence.
For several centuries they led a nomadic life in Asia, Europe and North Africa. An estimated 180,000 gypsies crossed the Estimated to Spain (Andalucia). Gypsies who came to Spain from the south (Gibraltar) came from Egypt where they mixed with the Egyptian people.
The arrival of the gypsies in Spain was first recorded at the time of the unification of Spain, under Isabel and Fernando, "the Catholic Kings". Also occurring at the same time was the conquest from the Moors and the discovery of America in 1492.
Recorded as early as 1370 in Corfu, in 1422 in Bale, Switzerland, with a troupe of one hundred horses. In 1427 they arrived in Paris, crossed the Pyrenees and in 1477 in Barcelona. (Same time as when the Jews were persecuted).
They claimed to be pilgrims from a mystical place called, Little Egypt. Other claimed to come from India, Pilgrimages to Rome and Santiago de Compostela were welcomed and generously assisted. All these groups were led by chieftains, who rode on horseback and possessed hunting dogs; clear attributes of indisputable nobility. They were said to carry letters of protection from the Roman Emperor, Sigismund and from Alfonso the 5th of Aragon.
The reasons the Gypsies gave for their pilgrimage varied widely: some claimed their Egyptian ancestors had failed to succor Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus when they fled Herod’s vengeance. Others claimed their ancestors had forged the nails which were used in the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Others went back to the prophesies of Ezequiel (29-12): "I will scatter the Egyptians among all nations and will disperse them". Other gypsy’ groups claimed apostasy under the duress of Moslem rules. All of them started the period of wandering and penance, which was supposed to be seven years, but it seemingly went on forever.
During the earlier migratory period the gypsies had been received with tolerance and generosity. However, because of their real or alleged and pilfering, their fortune telling and practice of magic, and their dances, led to their ostracism. But in 1499 under the Edict of Medina del Campo, the Catholic kings of Spain proclaimed that "to contain the gypsy course, they were caused to be destroyed". They were given sixty days to leave the Kingdom.
In 1539, Charles V condemned the Gypsies found on Spain to six years of force labor. Those that they were allowed to remain, under special license, were forbidden to wander, to speak their languages, to wear their distinctive costumes, to trade in horses, to work as blacksmiths, to tell fortunes or to congregate. They were forced to live in special gethos (gitanerias), like "El Sacromonte" in Granada.
Spaniards were anxious to maintain "limpieza de sangre" (mythical purity of blood), untainted by Moorish, Jewish or Gypsy’s blood. Pure Gypsies call themselves CALE . A non-Gypsy is called PAYO.
Gypsies suffering from the hate and unjust by the ruling class, behind closed doors, were given form and content in the songs of lamentation which were the origin of all Flamenco. These lamentations were the building blocks on which Flamenco were set. It is in flamenco that the Gypsies find an outlet for their rebellious instincts and expression in their singularity. (CANTE JONDO (hondo-deep)).

Originally, Flamenco and many Andalusian dances were performed as solos. Today, traditional steps and techniques choreographed for large corps of ballet, accent organization and discipline. As good luck tradition, a flamenco dancer performs a solo in the presence of an anxious torero (bullfighter), before a corrida. Until relatively recently a true flamenco dancer never used castanets.
The first well-known flamenco singers date from 1800 until 1860. Their names are "El Planeta" from Cadiz and "El Tilo" (his student).
The "Cafe Cantantes", (colorfull establishments) began around 1842 and lasted almost a century. They were the important link in transposing flamenco from the caves and barrios to the stage.
In the world of flamenco two types of flamenco song can be identified:
1-Cante Flamenco Andaluz (song by a payo (non-gypsy)).
2-Cante Flamenco Andaluz (song by a cale (pure gypsy)).
The flamenco Andaluz started to spread during the middle of different folkloric and musical song styles. The Spanish inspired songs from South America and the Caribbean are also an enrichment of Andalusian flamenco.

JONDO: (hondo) Song of lamentation, the birth of Flamenco’s primitive basic songs.
TONAAS: are sung "a palo seco" (no music, no palms or zapateados. (songs from the force, songs from the prison).
SAETA: (solo voice) It is sung at Easter during the religious’ processions.
SEGUIRIYA: The most popular of Cante Hondo, created by the gypsies at the 18th century. The basic rhythms alternates 3/4 and 6/8; which it is very difficult to hear where starts and ends.
SOLEA: (soledad-solitud) It expresses melancholy and pain over loneliness ( in the mine or in prison). It requires dancers of high artistic integrity.
CANTES FLAMENCOS: The lighter songs.
CANTES AFLAMENCADOS: Andalusian folk songs and alien songs.
FARRUCA and GARROTIN from Galicia in Northern Spain.
RUMBA FLAMENCA of Afro-Cuban rhythms influence.
GUAJIRA of Cuban and Colombian rhythms influence.
MILONGA of Argentina’s music influence.
BULERIAS: the music is rapid and rhythmic in 3/8, time with palmas, jaleo and festival songs and can be buffoonery and burlesque.
ALEGRIAS: (joy) Melodies from Cadiz. Expression of the optimism. Invitation to smile and live. One of the most difficult to perform.
TANGOS FLAMENCOS: The oldest form and expression of the genuine "Gypsy Myrth". danced in two steps.
TANGUILLOS: Lighter form like Rumba Flamenca or Rumba Gitana.
TIENTOS: Slow tango. some times call "Tango Sentimental" .
FANDANGOS: Dance of Arabic origin, to which the song was added later. There is a Fandango in practically every region in Spain.
FANDANGUILLO: Like Fandango de Huelva and Lucena.
SEVILLANAS: Pure Andalusian traditional song and dance. It is very popular in Seville on April (Easter week), where they celebrate "El Festival de Sevilla".

The most revered of the century were Jose Otero and Manuel Otero (his nephew).
Vicente Escudero (1885-1980) who paid no attention to strict rules regarding tempo and rhythm for the flamenco dances. He wanted to dance freely and naturally, exactly as he felt at the moment.
Antonia Merce "La Argentina" (1886-1936).
Encarnacion Lopez "La Argentinita" (1900-1945).
Pilar Lopez (1906) La Argentinita’s sister.
Francisca Gonzalez "La Quica" (1905-1967).
Carmen Amaya (1913-1963) Who dressed in traje corto and men clothes.
Antonio Ruiz and Rosario: (1914-1921).
Antonio Gades and Cristina Hoyos Famous for the Carlos Saura’s movies (Carmen, Bodas de Sangre y Amor Brujo)
Antonio Canales from Sevilla (1962).
Manolete from Granada (1945).
Manolo Marin.
Maria Pajes

Bibliography