#affective archive
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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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Flamenco as an affective archive
The history of flamenco is often presented as a tension between the ephemeral “lived” experience and the static, mechanical records of the past. However, a deeper reading of the art form’s transition into modernity suggests that flamenco does not simply exist in the archive; it functions as an affective archive in its own right. This…
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Flamenco and its dangers
To say I am in love with flamenco would be a significant understatement. My obsession began in the 1990s as a sudden, powerful fascination from which I have never quite recovered. However, I must also recognise a specific and complex danger within this passion: the risk that such love devolves into a fixation, a fetish,…