There are many different styles of playing, and while the guitar was gaining legitimacy in concert halls, a parallel evolution was taking place in the bars and cafés of nineteenth-century Spain. Flamenco has three aspects: singing, dancing, and guitar playing. It grew from the melding of Arab, Christian, Jewish, and Spanish folk music and the Middle Eastern influence of seven centuries of Moorish and Arabic occupation, particularly in Andalusia, in the north of Spain, where a large population of gypsies lived.

The Heartbeat of Spain

It was the Andalusian gypsies who turned flamenco into the heartbeat of Spain, although its roots are probably in Roman-occupied Spain. The composers Kodaly and Bartok discovered in their research into folk tunes that beautiful folksongs have a way of ending up as “beggars' songs.” In the same way, the outcasts of Spain — the gypsies — adopted and preserved the musical traditions of the Moorish Arabs who had once ruled the land.

What remained, and became idiosyncratically gypsy, were the traditions of whip-cracking dance rhythms, and the troubadour's ability to improvise, composing verses about anything and everything at the drop of a hat. In the underground jargon of eighteenth-century Andalusia, someone flamenco was a dazzler, a “dude with attitude.” And the music came to be popularized by performers considered by many to be the haughtiest and most flamboyant of the gypsies.

Spain is a dancing country, and the simplest nineteenth-century village dance orchestra might consist of a guitar and a tambourine, with dancers wielding castanets. By the 1850s and beyond, it was also a country at war with itself. But whether royalist or revolutionary, the tradition was never to shoot a man with a guitar — at least until he was given a chance to play, anyway.

Flamenco on the Move

The rhythmic and melodic early forms called seguidilla and rasgueado developed new and exciting forms in the café cantantes, bars with areas for performers. Gradually, guitar players developed short instrumental melodic interludes with variations called falsetas.

What had for centuries been campfire entertainment suddenly found itself on a stage attracting the attention and applause of Europe's leading writers, poets, painters, and musicians — including Chopin, Liszt, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, Edouard Manet, and Jules Verne — who discovered the joys and inexpensive excitement of Spain on their “grand vacations.”

The flamenco guitar sounds different from the classical guitar because instead of rosewood, cypress wood is used for the back and sides. The use of the capo (a clamp that goes around the neck and shortens the string length) also affects the tone, giving the strings a more treble sound.

Ramon Montoya is considered the father of modern flamenco guitar. He was influenced by Patino, Paco Lucena, and Javier Molina. Before his passing in 1949, Ramon Montoya pioneered the recording of the style and developed its traditions and techniques. In doing so, he enriched the music's vocabulary and established himself as one of the first flamenco virtuosos of the twentieth century.

His real contribution, however, was to be the first person to break free of the role of accompanist and become established as a solo instrumentalist. When he performed in concert in Paris in 1936, he met with great acclaim.

It has been said that as flamenco has moved from the cafés to the nightclubs, the players have become more circus-like in the manner in which they play the guitar — wearing gloves, putting the instrument behind their heads, anything to attract and hold an audience's attention. Nevertheless, the twentieth century has produced some stunning players, such as Sabicas, Carlos Montoya, Nino Ricardo, Paco de Lucia, and Paco Pena.