"Gitanos"

“La faraona ha muerto” (The Pharaoh has died); these words covered the front pages of all the Spanish newspapers May 16, 1995. The death of Lola Flores, a gipsy flamenco singer, was the turning point of a cultural process that ended with the ignorance of the gipsy folk culture in Spain. Currently, Spanish pop music is riddled with a wide amount of music groups that have sold their gipsy influences to the tastes of the mass audience. A few years ago, it was inconceivable that thousands of mindless screaming teenagers would pack football stadiums to see their gipsy idols. Groups like “Andy y Lucas”, “Los Caños” or “Fondo flamenco” with a clear gipsy and flamenco influence constitute a huge pop phenomenon in Spain. Other artists such as Sara Baras and Joaquin Cortés sell tickets to their shows for more than two hundred dollars all over the world, and they have exalted flamenco as a “high” cultural expression. Is this dialogue between the mass audience and the gipsy folk an enriching experience or is just another consequence of the capitalist standardization?


The Romani people, most known as “gitanos” (Spanish word for gipsy) migrated out of the Sindah, Rajasthan and Punkjab regions of the Indian subcontinent into Europe during the eleventh century. Although this is true, their life and their culture was highly influenced by the Moorish, Arabic and Sephardic Jewish traditions. All over the ages, political institutions in Spain have ignored the gipsy community and their culture. For about three hundred years Romanis were subject to a number of laws and policies designed to eliminate them from Spain as an identifiable group.


In his article “Publics and Counterpublics”, Michael Warner presents the counterpublic as the group that is conflicting with the dominant public; they are fully aware of their subordination to the dominant class. We can clearly consider the Spanish gipsy community as a counterpublic due to the centuries of social, economical and cultural marginalization. Warner also states that the counterpublic is a self-organized group where the members feel a sense of belonging. The gipsy community has always cultivated some distinctive signs from the rest of the Spanish society; for example, they usually call white Caucasian Spanish people “calés.” The idea of their racial and cultural differences is very important to them. The gipsy community has used their own signs to use a particular style. For example, they consider that only gipsy people can properly dance and sing Flamenco; white Caucasian people do not have the ability to perform it; they don’t have the “duende” as they say.


However, during the last decades we have witnessed an integration process of the Romani culture into the popular Spanish culture. Dick Hebidge presents two methods to restore “subcultures” into the dominant culture. The first method is the most effective in a capitalist society; it consists of taking the subcultural signs and converting them into the dominant culture. The second one consists of having dominant, authoritative groups identify any short of deviant behavior.


If we analyzed the musical characteristics of the now so-called “flamenco” groups (“Andy y Lucas”, “Los Caños”, “Fondo Flamenco” or ”Kiko y Shara”) we cannot tell the difference between this music and regular pop music. These groups’ music, apart from some of the classic flamenco guitar harmonious or some gipsy slang, has no difference from some other pop international groups. In fact, the quality of this music is low. Their lyrics tend to be cheesy and the melodies repetitive. We could take the structure of an international famous pop song, add some guitar harmonious, some clapping and a little bit of audible footwork and we would have a pop flamenco song. Nowadays, that is the formula for creating music hits in Spain.

Although they consider themselves as the new flamenco representatives, they have sold their roots to the trade interests. Flamenco and gipsy patterns have been widely simplified in order to satisfy the demands of screaming teenagers. Their music is a great example of what Adorno calls the “standardization” proper of the capitalist system. Once a musical and or lyrical pattern has proved successful it is exploited to commercial exhaustion, culminating in the “crystallization of standards”. Some rhythmical, catchy flamenco patterns and some outlines of the gipsy traditions that have proved successful are repeated again and again by these groups.







This success that some of these Romani artists have at the moment in the pop music industry in Spain could lead us to the conclusion that social and racial boundaries have been overcome. However, this repetition of conformed patterns and attitudes just help to build wrong stereotypes of the gipsy community. Although these stereotypes have nothing to do with the image that the white Caucasian community of Spain use to have centuries ago, the general acceptance of the “gitanos” has improved a lot during the last decades. There is still a general idea about what gipsy people can do. People think that the only thing they can do is sing and dance Flamenco. They have the role of entertaining the rest of the population. This stereotype is being fed by the capitalism and mass production of standardized flamenco music. If the industry sells pop Flamenco new star as a gipsy singer it will for sure have more success than if he is not sold as a gipsy, even though this artist has not gipsy background at all.

On the other hand we have the so called elite of gipsy artists, Joaquín Cortés, Sara Baras, Falete, Farruquito artist that have managed to perform in some of the most famous and prestigious theatres around the world and have exalted flamenco as a “high” cultural expression. Tickets’ prices can vary from 200$ to 500$. In my opinion, it is important to recognize their talent and the importance of the export of the gipsy culture; however, they also standardize these artistic expressions in order to make them more accessible to a wider international audience. For example, although Joaquin Cortes’ talent as a dancer is undeniable his performances tend to give more importance to the visual or audible aspects of the performance rather than proper Flamenco patterns.

In conclusion, I think that it is important to analyze the relationship between an ethnic group and a cultural expression and how this art can influence the social position of this ethnic group. If we want to understand real flamenco we should not look into fancy theatres all over the world or the last summer hit list. We have to search the streets of Andalucia and look at the way gipsy people dance or sing before these cultural expressions are totally contaminated by capitalists principles