Fandangos
The fandangos are a cante belonging to the whole region of Andalusia, with an origin that reaches back to the Arab cantes and that has been spreading and transforming in every corner of Andalusian geography ever since. More than a single style, they form a great family with a shared musical trunk.
Their richness shows in the enormous number of personal and local styles that have emerged from province to province, giving rise to variants as different as they are recognizable under the same generic name of fandango.
Origin and history
The fandango, in its primitive form, was not born within flamenco but as a popular dance and song spread across much of the Iberian Peninsula from the 18th century onward, with parallels in other European couple dances of the time. Its connection to Arab-Andalusi roots can be seen in the use of the Phrygian scale and in the melismas of the vocal line, features that link it to other cantes jondos.
During the 19th century the folkloric fandango gradually joined the flamenco repertoire, first as a dance for parties and fairs in different parts of Andalusia, and later, already moving into the 20th century, as a cante for listening, stripped of its danceable compás in many of its local variants. This process of turning the fandango into flamenco gave rise to dozens of styles with their own name.
Each district and each cantaor left their own particular mark, so that the fandango became the cante with the greatest number of geographic and personal variants in all of flamenco, from the fandangos de Huelva, which keep the compás and the dance, to the personal or cantaor’s fandangos, which are sung freely and serve as a vehicle for vocal display.
Musical characteristics and compás
The fandango moves in Phrygian mode, usually with the tonic on E, and allows two broad forms of performance. On one hand there are the fandangos with a ternary compás (generally in 3/4 or 6/8), danceable and with a marked guitar accompaniment, typical above all of Huelva. On the other, the “natural” or personal fandangos, sung in free compás, without rhythmic constraint, allowing the cantaor to extend the melodic ornamentation.
The copla is usually made up of a quintilla or a redondilla, and the guitar accompanies with a characteristic introduction before each sung tercio, leaving room for the ayes and the vocal ornaments typical of the style.
Representative cantaores and performers
The personal fandango reached its greatest prestige in the early 20th century thanks to cantaores such as Antonio Chacón, creator of several of the most admired forms, and Manuel Torre, whose way of singing fandango is counted among the deepest of the genre. Later, figures such as Manolo Caracol, Pepe Marchena and Juan Valderrama left their own personal styles, and already in the second half of the century, Fosforito, Enrique Morente and Camarón de la Isla kept the tradition alive.
Relationship with other palos
The fandango is itself one of the great families of cante flamenco, and from it derive styles such as the granaína, the malagueña, the rondeña, the murciana and the various fandangos de Huelva, all of them related by the Phrygian mode and by a common origin in the popular Andalusian copla. Its influence also reaches the verdiales and other cantes from the Levante and the southeastern part of the peninsula.