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The First Reviewers: Journalism and the Invention of Flamenco Criticism
When we look back at the Golden Age of flamenco (c. 1870–1930), analytical focus tends to rest entirely upon the performance spaces of the cafés cantantes or the private intimacy of the cuartos. Parallel to this musical practice, however, a significant textual industry was emerging within the daily press. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, journalists,…
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The Sacred and the Sonic: San Antonio de Padua and Flamenco Architecture in Cádiz
The annual celebration of San Antonio de Padua within the province of Cádiz forces an intense consolidation of liturgical veneration and vernacular performance. Whilst historically anchored in church liturgy and the seasonal rhythms of livestock trading, the modern iteration of this festival serves as an arena where regional identity is actively negotiated through highly specialised…
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The Flamenco Afición in the Golden Age: Understanding Audiences in the Cafés Cantantes
The afición, the dedicated, deeply knowledgeable community of devotees and expert amateurs whose collective passion and rigorous standards sustain the art form, was the driving force behind the reinvention of flamenco during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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The Modernist Invention of Tradition: Re-evaluating the 1922 Concurso de Cante Jondo
A persistent characteristic of the historiography of flamenco’s Golden Age (c. 1870–1930) is the tendency to impose a narrative of decline and rescue. The most prominent casualty of this approach is the Concurso de Cante Jondo, held in Granada during the festival of Corpus Christi on 13 and 14 June 1922. Standard historical accounts frame…
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Flamenco and Visual Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Spain
The history of flamenco is not merely a record of sound and movement; it is a complex narrative of how the art form was shaped by the visual “media regimes” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To understand flamenco’s place in visual culture, one must recognize the radical paradox introduced by the camera: while…
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Other geographies of flamenco: the Eastern traditions
As we have seen, while the historiography of flamenco frequently privileges the “golden triangle” of Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, and Cádiz (although often criticised for its rigidity and exclusion of key sites), the eastern Mediterranean territories make unique and striking contributions to the flamenco repertory. The cantes de Levante represent a distinct family of…
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José Domínguez Muñoz, “El Cabrero” (1944-2026), an obituary
José Domínguez Muñoz, the influential flamenco cantaor known as El Cabrero, has died at the age of 81. He passed away on 13 May 2026 in the Hospital San Juan de Dios del Aljarafe in Bormujos, Seville, following a prolonged illness. His son, Zapata, confirmed the news, stating that his father remained true to his…
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The urban crucible: Seville’s Feria de Abril and the star-system
The Feria de Abril began in 1847 as a practical cattle market, but it rapidly transformed into a complex social theatre where the city’s hierarchy was both reinforced and challenged. This transition from a rural exchange to an urban spectacle created a unique environment – a crucible where the modern star-system began to take shape. In this context, the star-system refers…
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May Day, flamenco, and the Andalusian left
In Andalusia, May Day (Fiesta del Trabajo, Día del Trabajador or simply Primero de Mayo) was a day when the labouring classes asserted both their presence and their economic demands. The origin of the day in Spain is rooted in the 1889 resolution of the Second International, which called for a global day of protest…
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Labour, industry, and the professionalisation of the cantaora
The transition of flamenco from domestic and communal spaces (of, for example, the juerga or the latifundio) to the commercial stage represents a significant shift in the socio-economic status of the cantaora and the cantaor. This process, in the last decades of the 19th century, was not merely a change in venue but a fundamental restructuring of…