Lorquianas
Origin and history
The lorquianas are, like the lorqueñas, cantes built on poems by Federico García Lorca, part of that singular 20th-century current in which the work of the poet from Granada, a great admirer and scholar of cante jondo, was brought into the flamenco field by different performers. Unlike the lorqueñas, which are developed por bulería, the lorquianas are built on the compás of the milonga, which places them within the group of cantes de ida y vuelta of American roots.
This double path of adaptation of Lorca’s poetry to flamenco—one festive, the other via the cantes de ida y vuelta—reflects the versatility of texts that, thanks to their musicality and closeness to Andalusian popular tradition, lent themselves to more than one musical reading within 20th-century cante.
As with other cantes of recognized authorship within flamenco, the lorquianas do not stem from the usual anonymous oral transmission of the genre, but from a conscious and datable creation, which makes them an interesting case study on the relationship between highbrow poetry and popular cante.
Musical characteristics and compás
The compás of the lorquianas is that of the milonga, a binary rhythm of American origin related to the habanera and the guajiras, with a rocking gait and generally major key, thus very different from the amalgam compás of the bulería that characterizes the lorqueñas. This rhythmic base lends Lorca’s lyrics an evocative, nostalgic atmosphere, consistent with the general character of the cantes de ida y vuelta.
The guitar accompaniment follows the usual patterns of these aflamencado American cantes, with a soft strumming and a simple melodic structure that leaves the poet’s words at center stage.
Representative cantaores and performers
The lorquianas belong to that same 20th-century current of performers who brought the poetry of García Lorca into cante, a field in which cantaores linked to the renewal of flamenco and to an interest in poetry as a source of new lyrics stood out, thus continuing the path opened by la Niña de los Peines herself with the lorqueñas.
Relationship to other palos
The lorquianas belong to the family of cantes de ida y vuelta, together with the milonga, the habanera, the guajira and the colombiana, from which they take their compás and melodic feel. Their most direct relationship within the Lorca-based repertoire itself is with the lorqueñas, with which they share a literary source though they differ clearly in compás and in the cante family to which they belong.