A hundred years ago flamenco was completely confined to certain regions of southern Spain, but in recent years it has become known throughout the world. Flamenco is a somewhat abstract sound to the Western listener and yet has sufficient contact with Western musical expectations to be immediately appreciated.

One tends to think of flamenco solely as a music of fire and temperament, without being aware that is more than that. It is a complete way of life, and is the expression of a deep feeling which has to do with happiness, love, sadness, death, hardship and struggle for life.

The music originated among the people of Andalucía as an outlet for all these emotions, in rather the same way jazz started among the Blacks of the southern States of America.

The Andalucians are a fusion of many different races, cultures and civilisations, and so is their music. Some of the roots of flamenco are found in the rhythms and chants of the Moors, who ruled the south of Spain for many centuries, in Jewish liturgical music, and in the music brought by the Gypsies.

In the 15th century, many tribes of gypsies found their way into Andalucía as a branch of immigrants who, around 1447, entered Spain via Catalonia. They lived in the fields, nomadically, and in poor conditions. Traditionally the gypsies were not great poets – hardly surprising considering their circumstances – but they had a remarkable facility for rhythm and music, and in Andalucía they found rich, colourful folklore of exceptional poetic charm. Unlike any other music they had come across elsewhere in Spain, this folklore suited their character, and it came to form part of their lives. They assimilated it and added something different to it. This marriage gave rise to the phenomenon of cante flameco – neither “gypsy music” nor Andalucian folklore, but both.

So, it can be said without a doubt, there are two main elements in flamenco: Andalucian with its old musical background, and the gypsies. Without both, flamenco would never have existed.

Historians have attempted to classify flamenco rhythms into various groups. This resulted in divisions being made into the cante grande or jondo and the cante chico or flamenco, the first meaning “big” or “deep song” and the second, “little song”. However, neither this, nor any other way of categorising flamenco, has meaning for the artists who perform it. They feel that all flamenco music is just that: flamenco.

There are three main periods in the recent history of flamenco. From the beginning of the 19th century to 1860 it was part of the life of Andalucian gypsies and poor people who kept it for themselves and never performed outside their communities. From 1860 to 1910 it was the era of the “Café Canatantes”, special tablaos or places dedicated wholly to flamenco music. Since then, flamenco has emerged from its original environment to become known and loved the world over.

No evidence exists that guitars were used during the first period. But as flamenco emerged the guitar, which was already the instrument of Spain, was brought in to accompany and enhance the human voice.

Paradoxically, it is the guitar as a solo instrument, rather than the singing, which has made flamenco popular when in fact the guitar, like the dancing, derives all its inspiration from the cante jondo – flamenco singing – the purest form of Andalucian art.

We have learned from our elders what they have learned from their elders – we assimilate the music as they did and treat it in our own way. Flamenco is not a museum piece but a living, developing art form, and as such it allows (though within rhythmic rules) for the personal interpretation of the artists.

The music is both disciplined and emotional. Indeed that mixture underlies the character of the Andalucian people. Flamenco’s concern is, however, with man’s feelings, and it is therefore universal. Its distinctive quality lies in its ability to capture these emotions in a strict but highly expressive structure (the compas) within which the artist improvises his own variations. It is this element of improvisation that makes each performance truly unique and alive.