Traditional Spanish Flamenco Music
Flamenco in its strictest sense, is a professionalized art-form based
on the various folkloric music traditions of Southern Spain in
autonomous community of Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia.
In a wider sense, it refers to these musical traditions and more
modern musical styles which have themselves been deeply
influenced by and become blurred with the development of
flamenco over thepast two centuries. It includes
cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance),
jaleo (vocalizations), palmas (handclapping) and
pitos (finger snapping).
The oldest record of flamenco dates to 1774 in the
book Las Cartas Marruecas by José Cadalso.The genre
originated in the music and dance styles of Andalusia, of
much older origin.[3] Flamenco has been influenced by
and become associated with the Romani people in
Spain, however, unlike Romani music in Eastern
Europe, its origin and style is uniquely Andalusian.
In recent years, flamenco has become popular all
over the world and is taught in many non-Hispanic
countries, especially the United States and
Japan. In Japan, there are more flamenco
academies than there are in Spain. On
November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared
flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral
and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Greco