Abstract
Flamenco has only existed as such since the mid-nineteenth century, yet the sung and danced poetry out of which it grows is rooted in medieval Iberia. This essay focuses on a flamenco gesture, the pellizco (pinch), as a flash of recognition that leaps across the supposedly impermeable barrier separating our present from the distant past. The lyric forms that emerged in ninth-century Islamic Iberia were courtly pastorals, representing Christian vernacular songs for Muslim audiences. Ironically, as the balance of power flipped, so did the politics of representation: at Christian courts, these verse forms now portrayed Muslims as uncouth country bumpkins. Post-Iberian reconquest and eyeing American colonization, this parody of religious difference would come to represent the Blackness of race-based slavery, not only in Spain but throughout Europe and its former possessions. Thus, the medieval Iberian lyric illuminates important aspects of our political present. And, although it does not register in the textual record, flamenco as a body of knowledge archives layers of meaning and memory that are often blanketed by the politics of whiteness.
Resumen:
El flamenco como tal sólo ha existido desde mediados del siglo diecinueve, pero la poesía cantada y bailada de la que el flamenco nace está arriagada en la Iberia medieval. Este ensayo se centra en un gesto flamenco, que yo llamo el ‘pellizco’. Más allá de ser un simple movimiento o motivo dancístico, yo propongo que el pellizco flamenco es una sinapsis de percepción y de memoria corporal que salta la barrera supuestamente impermeable que separa nuestro presente del pasado lejano. Las formas líricas que surgieron en la Iberia islámica del siglo IX fueron representaciones cortesanas de lo pastoral, de lo villano; es decir, interpretaban cantes indígenas cristianos para las élites musulmanas. Irónicamente, la inversión del equilibrio de poder entre musulmanes y cristianos cambió a su vez las políticas de representación; en las cortes cristianas, estas formas líricas sincréticas ahora retrataban lo moruno y lo morisco como villano, gracioso y tosco. Terminada la reconquista ibérica y con una mirada codiciosa hacia la conquista americana, esta parodia de distinción religiosa se tornaría en representación de lo que concebimos hoy como ‘raza’—la condición de ser susceptible a la esclavitud, el exilio y el genocidio. Así, la lírica ibérica medieval ilumina importantes aspectos de nuestro presente político. Y aunque deja pocas huellas en el registro textual, el flamenco como episteme corporal encarna significantes y memorias que están a flor de piel pero que no percibimos, porque a menudo son ocultados por la blanquitud.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Even before flamenco’s mid-nineteenth century emergence as a named genre, pre-flamenco forms—from the sixteenth-century zarabanda/sarabande to the eighteenth-century fandango—have led a double life, toggling between money-making enterprises (ranging from street performance, to elite ballrooms and dancing schools, to the concert stage) and communal festivities (Goldberg 2019).
For a genealogical study of one such gesture, see my talk, ‘Tracing Duende: On Digging Our Embodied History,’ part of the series ‘Sonic Conversations in the Western Mediterranean’ (Goldberg 2021).
All of this pedagogic terminology is very squishy. All of us who teach flamenco to those not brought up in that tradition make up our own terminology.
I have made a short video explaining the way the pellizco functions as a rhythmic signal. See Goldberg (2023b) and Goldberg and Hayes (forthcoming).
In the dance manuals and treatises of the Siglo de Oro, the term ‘mudanza,’ meaning a dance variation that roughly corresponds to the ‘tañido,’ or musical variation, is commonplace. See Yepes and Romaní (forthcoming) and Goldberg and Hayes (forthcoming).
To my knowledge, Cortés García (1996) is the only published translation and analysis of this epistle (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Pococke 206, f 221b-222a, digitized at digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/). It is catalogued in Amnon Shiloh’s The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings (c. 900-1900) (G. Henle Verlag, 1979, 48).
Flamenco24h, ‘OLE LOS OBREROS FLAMENCOS,’ Facebook (October 25, 2022), https://www.facebook.com/Flamenco24h/videos/507543414525476. I have made a video explaining how this verse works (Goldberg 2023a).
On rhyme in Iberian forms, see Reynolds (2021, 29).
English translation from the Arabic in Heller-Roazen (2002, 107–8).
In what follows, I omit all diacritical marks in Arabic transliterations, and use the Latinized ‘Avempace’ in preference to variants of ‘Ibn Bājja.’ Of the many variants of specialized words such as zéjel (zajal), xarcha (kharja), and moaxaja (muwashshah), I use the Spanish spellings. All translations from Spanish are mine.
The zéjel and moaxaja share the strophic structure of mudanza+vuelta+estribillo/xarcha; Menéndez Pidal (1973, 19–20) uses them interchangeably in this context.
On the Arabic qasida, which could have up to one hundred lines, see Zwartjes (1997, 127–31).
Cohen (2018, 44) notes that ‘the same general strophic form, α + α′+ β, albeit in quantitative meter without rhyme, is found in Greek texts dating from the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.’
Beltrán (e.g., 1984) is the authoritative source on this process of syncretisation and transmission.
See Monroe’s discussion of the Romance word ‘vino’ (wine) used for comic effect in Ibn Quzmán’s Zéjel #90 (1973, 82–83, 95).
Butterfield (1991, 19) finds ‘the refrain acting as a source material for the piece as a whole’ in the thirteenth-century French refrain as well.
Many of these artists were qiyan, or enslaved women. See Reynolds (2021, 198–204).
On contrafacta in ninth-century Arabic lyrics, see Sawa (2019, 82–92).
The xarcha’s English translation is Monroe’s.
A similar shorthand is found in Hebrew moaxajas in the Cairo Geniza: after the vuelta, either the estribillo’s incipit or simply the word ‘pizmon’ (estribillo/refrain) is written (Beltrán 1984, 241–42).
The Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Oxford University database, https://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/, is an excellent resource on the cantigas.
Amin Chaachoo, a practitioner, teacher, and scholar of the Moroccan Andalusí lyric tradition whose family traces its roots, as al-Ha’ik does, to al-Andalus, generously provided this image, along with the explanation of its structure. On ‘girdle,’ see Zwartjes (1997, 27–31).
Stanza XI, CSM 419, Cantigas de Santa María, Códice de los músicos, Real biblioteca del monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial, RBMECat b-I-2, B-1-2_009v. Lyrics: Oxford Cantigas de Santa María Database, ‘Cantiga 419 Lyrics: Des quando Déus sa Madre aos céos levou,’ https://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/ .
Lopo Lías, ‘En este son de negrada/farei un cantar,’ Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional (Cancionero Colocci-Brancuti) 1342, Cancioneiro da Vaticana 949.
For the lyrics, see ‘Cantiga 419: Des quando Déus sa Madre aos céos levou,’ http://www.cantigasdesantamaria.com/csm/419. To listen, see Capilla Antigua de Chincilla, topic, ‘Cantiga 419: Des quando Deus sa madre (arr. J. Ferrero),’ YouTube (March 25, 2020), https://youtu.be/CL0AAxj8mrA. Accessed May 6, 2023.
To listen, see Savall, Jordi – Topic. 2015, ‘Tres Morillas,’ YouTube (February 21, 2015), https://youtu.be/ovR1tf1aBS4. Accessed May 6, 2023.
On this villancico, see Goldberg (2014); on villancicos in the construction and performance of race, see Goldberg (2019). To listen, see Belarmo, 2011, ‘Eso Rigor e' Repente - Gaspar Fernandes (ca. 1566 - 1629),’ YouTube, https://youtu.be/7bmsb-VcRv8. Accessed May 6, 2023.
On the importance of ‘the way things end’ in creating and satisfying audience expectations, see Cohen (2022).
When teaching, I always compare the pellizco to the sensation of stepping into a warm bath, or taking the first sip of hot chocolate (Goldberg 2023b).
Liu (2004, 91–92), citing philologist Juan de Valdés’s 1535 treatise on the emergence of Spanish from Latin.
References
de Alcalá, Pedro. 1505. Vocabulista arauigo en letra castellana. Salamanca: por Iuan de Varela de Salama[n]ca.
Armistead, Samuel G. 2003. ‘Kharjas and Villancicos.’ Journal of Arabic Literature 34 (1/2): 3–19.
Armistead, Samuel G. and James T. Monroe. 1985. ‘Beached Whales and Roaring Mice: Additional Remarks on Hispanic Arabic Strophic Poetry.’ La Corónica 13 (2): 206–42.
Albert I. Bagby, Jr. 1970. ‘Some Characterizations of the Moor in Alfonso X’s “Cántigas.”’ The South Central Bulletin 30 (4): 164–67.
Albert I. Bagby, Jr. 1971. ‘The Jew in the Cántigas of Alfonso X, El Sabio.’ Speculum 46 (4): 670–88.
Barthes, Roland. 1988. ‘The Grain of the Voice.’ In Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 179–89. New York: Hill and Wang.
Beltrán, Vicente. 1984. ‘De zéjeles y dansas: orígenes y formación de la estrofa con vuelta.’ Revista de Filología Española 64: 239–66.
Brooks, Ethel. 2013. ‘Reclaiming: The Camp and the Avant-Garde.’ In We Roma: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art, edited by Daniel A. Baker and Maria Hlavajova, 114–39. Utrecht: BAK; Amsterdam: Valiz.
Butterfield, Ardis. 1991. ‘Repetition and Variation in the Thirteenth-Century Refrain.’ Journal of the Royal Musical Association 116 (1):1-23.
Caldwell, Mary C. 2022. Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Catlos, Brian A. 2018. Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain. NY: Basic Books.
Chinoy, Clara. 2022. ‘Flamenco Is Gitano: Reflections on the Expression of Gitano Identity in the Flamenco Fiesta.’ In Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions, edited by K. Meira Goldberg and Antoni Pizà, 319–40. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Clotelle Clarke, Dorothy. 1944. ‘The Early Seguidilla.’ Hispanic Review 12 (3): 211–222.
Clotelle Clarke, Dorothy. 1988. ‘The Prosody of the Hargas.’ La Corónica 16: 55–75.
Cohen, Rip. 2003. ‘Songs About Singing: A Metapoetics of the Cantigas d ’Amigo.’ 500 Cantigas D’ Amigo: Edição Crítica / Critical Edition, 1–57. Porto: Campo das Letras.
Cohen, Rip. 2012. ‘From Folksong to Lyric Theater: The Evolution of the Cantigas d’amigo.’ In Por S'entender Bem a Letra: Homenagem a Stephen Reckert, edited by Manuel Calderón, José Camões, and José P. Sousa, and Stephen Reckert, 637–63. Lisboa: INCM.
Cohen, Rip. 2018. ‘The Metrics of Martin Codax.’ In The Vindel Parchment and Martin Codax / O Pergamiño Vindel e Martin Codax. The Golden Age of Medieval Galician Poetry / O esplendor da poesía galega medieval, edited by Alexandre Rodríguez Guerra and Xosé Bieito Arias Freixedo, 39–49. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cohen, Rip. 2022. ‘Designing Satisfaction: <Hidden> Technology in the Cantigas of Pero Meogo.’ Abriu: Textuality Studies on Brazil, Galicia and Portugal 11: 221–238.
Correas, Gonzalo. [1626] 1903. ‘Del verso de 5 sílabas, i de las seguidillas.’ Arte grande de la lengua castellana: Compuesto en 1626 Por El Maestro Gonzalo Correas…, 270–84. Madrid: Cipriano Muñoz y Manzano Viñaza.
Corriente, Federico. 2009. ‘The Kharjas: an Updated Survey of Theories, Texts, and Their Interpretation.’ Romance Philology 63 (1): 109–29.
Cortés García, Manuela. 1996. ‘Sobre la música y sus efectos terapéuticos en la Epístola sobre las melodías de Ibn Baŷŷa.’ Revista de Musicología 19 (1–2): 11–23.
de Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián. 1611. Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española. Madrid: Luis Sanchez, impressor del Rey N.S.
Fernández Manzano, Reynaldo. 2015. Música de al-Andalus. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.
Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. 2002. ‘Indícios de contactos poético-musicais entre a cultura trovadoresca e a cultura árabo-andaluza.’ Xarajîb — Revista do Centro de Estudos Luso-árabes de Silves 2: 107-13.
Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. 2014. ‘Paródia e contrafactum: em torno das cantigas de Afonso X, o Sábio.’ Cantigas trovadorescas da Idade Média aos nossos dias, edited by Graça Videira Lopes and Manuele Masini. Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais.
Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. 2016. ‘The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song.’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 69 (2): 295–353.
Filgueira Valverde, José. 1975. ‘La ’seguida’ en la lírica galaico-portuguesa medieval.’ In Homenaje a D. Agustín Millares Carló, vol. 2, 435–52. Las Palmas: Caja Insular de Ahorros de Gran Canaria.
Foster Wallace, David. 2005. ‘This is Water.’ Kenyon College. https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/.
Galvez, Marisa. 2011. Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
García Lorca, Federico. [1975] 1998. In Search of Duende, edited and translated by Christopher Maurer. NY: New Directions.
García Gómez, Emilio. 1962a. ‘Estudio del Dar «at-tiraz».’ Al-Andalus: Revista de las Escuelas de Estudios Árabes de Madrid y Granada 27 (1): 21–104.
García Gómez, Emilio. 1962b. ‘Una extraordinaria página de Tifasi y una hipótesis sobre el inventor del Zéjel.’ Études d’ orientalisme dédiées a la memoire de Lévi-Provençal, vol. 2, 517-23. Paris: Maisonneuve.
García Gómez, Emilio. 1972. Todo Ben Quzmán. Editado, interpretado, medido y explicado por Emilio García Gómez, 3 vols. Madrid: Gredos.
Goldberg, K. Meira. 2014. ‘Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco.’ Dance Chronicle 37 (1): 85–113.
Goldberg, K. Meira. 2019. Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco. NY: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, K. Meira. 2021. ‘Tracing Duende: On Digging Our Embodied History. Musical Encounters Across the Strait of Gibraltar.’ YouTube (November 18, 2021). https://youtu.be/jefBLs6e-Ps.
Goldberg, K. Meira. 2023a. ‘Anatomy of a pataíta: pellizco.’ YouTube (January 22, 2023a). https://youtu.be/_vvH4tS1hek.
Goldberg, K. Meira. 2023b. ‘On the pellizco: American Musicological Society presentation, 10-27-20.’ YouTube (April 5, 2023b). https://youtu.be/Mr0jLJaHitw.
Goldberg, K. Meira. Forthcoming 2023c. ‘El cuerpo de la memoria: Hacia una lectura anacrónica de Manuel de Falla sobre la pureza (1922).’ In Congreso Internacional El Concurso de Cante Jondo de Granada (1922). Procesos, Crítica y Contextos, ayer y hoy, edited by Miguel Ángel Berlanga. Granada: Universidad de Granada.
Goldberg, K. Meira and Michelle Heffner Hayes. Forthcoming. Flamenco: History, Performance and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gómez Muntané, María del Carmen. 2001. La música medieval en España. Kassel: Reichenberger.
Muhammad b. al-Husayn al-Ha'ik al-Titwani al-Andalusi. [1789] 2003. Kunnas al-Ha'ik = [Cancionero de al-Ha'ik], Signatura: 398-POP-hai — Nº de registro: 3311, presentación: Manuela Cortés García. Granada: Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía.
Heng, Geraldine. 2018. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller-Roazen, Daniel. 2002. ‘Speaking in Tongues.’ Paragraph 25 (2): 92–115.
Liu, Benjamin M. 2004. Medieval Joke Poetry: The Cantigas d’Escarnho e de Mal Dizer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Liu, Benjamin M. and James T. Monroe. 1989. Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition: Music and Texts. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Loar, Matthew P., Carolyn MacDonald, and Dan-el Padilla Peralta, eds. 2017. Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1924. Poesía juglaresca y juglares. Aspectos de la historia literaria y cultural de España. Madrid: Tip. de la ‘Rev. de Archivos.’
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. [1941] 1973. Poesía árabe y poesía europea: con otros estudios de literatura medieval. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
Menocal, María Rosa. 1987. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Menocal, María Rosa. 1993. Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham: Duke University Press.
Monroe, James T. 1973. ‘Hispano-Arabic Poetry of the Almoravid Period: Theory and Practice.’ In Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Volume 4, edited by in Lynn White, Jr., 65–98. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Monroe, James T. 1979. ‘Prolegomena to the Study of Ibn Quzman: The Poet as Jongleur.’ In El romancero hoy: Historia, comparatismo, bibliografía crítica, edited by Samuel G. Armistead, Antonio Sánchez Romeralo, and Diego Catalán, 77–129. Madrid: Gredos.
Monroe, James T. 1986. “Poetic quotation in the Muwassaha and its implications: Andalusian Strophic Poetry as Song.” La Corónica 14: 230–450.
Monroe, James T. 1987. ‘The Tune or the Words - Singing Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry.’ Al-qantara: Revista de estudios árabes 8 (1-2): 265-318.
Monroe, James T. 1988–89. ‘Maimonides on the Mozababic Lyric (A Note on the Muwaššaha).’ La Corónica 17 (2): 18–32.
Monroe, James T. 1989. ‘Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššḥa? Some Evidence for the Oral Origins of Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry.’ Oral Tradition 4: 38–64.
Pope, Isabel and Paul R. Laird. 2001. ‘Villancico (Sp., diminutive of villano: ‘peasant’).’ Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.29375.
Pope, Isabel, revised by Emilio Ros-Fábregas. 2001. ‘Estrambote [estribote] (from Sp. estribo: ‘stirrup’; Old Fr. estrabot; It. strambotto; Provençal estribot).’ Grove Music Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09039.
Ibn Quzmán and James T. Monroe. 2017. The Mischievous Muse: Extant Poetry and Prose by Ibn Quzmān of Córdoba (d. Ah 555/ad 1160). Leiden, Boston: Brill.
Reynolds, Dwight F. 2000. ‘Arab Musical Influence on Medieval Europe: A Reassessment.’ In A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, edited by Suzanne C. Akbari and Karla Mallette, 182–98. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Reynolds, Dwight F. 2021. The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ribera y Tarragó, Julián. [1912] 1928. Disertaciones y opúsculos. Edición colectiva que en su jubilación del profesorado le ofrecen sus discípulos y amigos. Con una introducción de Miguel Asín Palacios de las Reales Academias Española, de la historia y de ciencias morales y políticas, edited by Miguel Asín Palacios. Madrid: Imprenta de Estanislao Maestre.
Richardson, Kristina L. 2022. Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration. London: I.B. Tauris.
Saltzstein, Jennifer. 2013. The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
Sawa, George. 2019. Musical and Socio-Cultural Anecdotes from Kitāb Al-Aghānī Al-Kabīr: Annotated Translations and Commentaries. Leiden: Brill.
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge.
Shiloah, Amnon. 1995. Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-cultural study. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Stern, Samuel Miklos. 1974. Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry: Studies, edited by L P. Harvey. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Stevens, John. 1986. Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yepes, Ana, and Anna Romaní. Forthcoming. La danza del Siglo de Oro español. Introducción a las fuentes de la danza del Siglo de Oro español y sus relaciones con la danza francesa e italiana. Paris: Label COM, colección Les cahiers de bal de la Compagnie Outre Mesure.
de Zayas, Rodrigo. 1995. La música en el vocabulista granadino de Fray Pedro de Alcalá: 1492-1505. Sevilla: Fundación El Monte.
Zwartjes, Otto. 1997. Love Songs from Al-Andalus: History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja. Leiden: Brill.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my colleague and co-author of Flamenco: History, Performance, and Culture (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), Michelle Heffner Hayes, for her seminal collaboration in the development of these ideas. Thank you to Kathryn Dickason for inviting me to participate in this special edition of postmedieval, and for both moral and intellectual/editorial support. Thank you also to friends and colleagues Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Amanda Moelenpah, Karen Silen, Jim Tuller, Emily Winerock, and other members and organizers of the Early Dance Writers Group for generous and thoughtful engagement with these ideas, to Henry Burnham, Hallie Voulgaris, Ana Zayaruznaya, Ardis Butterfield, and the rest of the Yale Medieval Song Lab for welcoming me and teaching me, to my teacher of Andalusí music, Amin Chaachoo, to Vicente Beltrán, Guillermo Castro, Rip Cohen, and Reynaldo Fernández Manzano for their generous comments, to Nicholas R. Jones and Michelle Hamilton, to three anonymous readers for postmedieval, as well as to Julie Orlemanski, postmedieval editor, for her astute and sensitive final edits.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Goldberg, K.M. Singing of and with the Other: Flamenco and the politics of pastoralism in medieval Iberia. Postmedieval 14, 393–418 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-023-00274-2
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-023-00274-2