Fandanguillos
The fandanguillos are a Levante cante belonging to the popular fandango styles spread across Andalusia. They are marked by being longer than other fandangos, which gives them a broader, more unhurried melodic development.
Besides being sung, fandanguillos are danced in every district, and they even came to be performed with orchestral accompaniment in the style of pasodobles, a sign of their popular reach beyond the strictly flamenco world.
Origin and history
The fandanguillo has its roots in the folkloric fandango that, from the 18th and 19th centuries, was danced at festivals and pilgrimages across much of the southeastern peninsula and the Levante. Unlike other fandangos that were refined into free listening cante, the fandanguillo kept its popular, festive vocation, tied to couple dancing and community celebrations.
With the arrival of variety shows and ópera flamenca in the early decades of the 20th century, the fandanguillo became very popular in theaters and at open-air dances, where it was performed with orchestral arrangements that brought it close to the pasodoble and other genres of light Spanish music, broadening its audience far beyond flamenco enthusiasts.
This double life, between the traditional root cante and its flamenco-adapted, orchestrated version, explains why the fandanguillo is one of the most recognizable fandango styles for the general public, although in more purist flamenco circles it is regarded as a variant of popular reach rather than of jondo depth.
Musical characteristics and compás
It is a cante with compás, of ternary rhythm and generally a slower, more extended tempo than other fandangos, which gives rise to coplas of greater melodic development. This rhythmic breadth facilitates dance accompaniment and explains its name, which points to a more expanded form of the traditional fandango.
The flamenco guitar accompanies it with the characteristic “por medio” toque, although in its more widely spread orchestral versions it incorporated arrangements with other instruments, moving away from traditional flamenco accompaniment.
Representative cantaores and performers
The fandanguillo was part of the regular repertoire of many cantaores of the ópera flamenca era, and it became especially popular through artists linked to copla and to the variety shows of the early decades of the 20th century, when the genre experienced its greatest reach with the general public, in theaters and shows across Spain.
Relationship with other palos
The fandanguillo belongs to the great family of fandangos, alongside the fandangos de Huelva, with which it shares its danceable character and ternary compás. It differs from the personal or cantaor’s fandangos, which are performed in free compás, and is related to other popular cantes of folkloric root which, like it, moved into flamenco without entirely losing their vocation as a festive dance.