Flamenco and the Afro-Roma Presence in Spanish History

Catalog description

Dance history and performance traces the African and Roma-Gypsy origins of Flamenco in its artistic, ethno-religious and political formation. Together, we trace the cultural origins of Flamenco: ethnic, religious, cultural, and geographic. Flamenco is a transhistorical form of guitar (tocque), spoken word or rapped song (cante), and dance (baile) that dates to the Hispano-Arab, African, and Roma (Gypsy presence in Al Andalus, southern Spain. A transatlantic form of performance art performed by artists worldwide, Flamenco is the visual, musical, and corporeal embodiment of exile. An expression of resistance to homelessness and persecution, Flamencos texture, look, and feel are reminders of the diasporic wandering of the Roma people.