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nrique talks as he works, plunging iron rods into the fiercely burning flames until they are red and smoulder- ing then rhythmically bashing them with a hammer on an anvil. The origins of the martinete, one of the most ancient flamenco song-forms spring vividly to life.
“The martinete,” he says, “is a difficult song to sing. It is very strong and has a lot of feeling, from the story it is telling, because it is always a tragic story full of pain. And the martinete is not sub- ject to any rhythm, only to the rhythm of the hammer.”
Flamenco is in his blood. If anyone in his family doesn’t sing “they dance or play the guitar. A couple sing professionally, but flamenco is just a part of our lives.” Will he sing for us? He smiles. “I’m not a good singer. All these men are going to sing.” And he gestures to some of his family members who, having whiled away some hours drinking and smoking and playing guitar under the shade of the big tree outside, are now standing in the forge, lis- tening respectfully to Enrique. And together they burst into song. It’s completely unselfconscious, unrehearsed, of the moment.
Celebrating the moment is, I realised as our trip took us to the big flamenco cities of Granada, Córdoba, Seville, and the heart- lands – the small rugged countryside towns of Lebrija and Morón
de la Frontera and eventually to Jerez and the port of Cádiz – is key to expressing the music. I knew from meeting the brilliant Estrella Morente on our first day in Málaga, and singer Miguel Astorga Anaya and guitarist José Naranjo Fernández on the beach the next morning, that flamenco is not just the preserve of the Gypsies. Indeed some of its most famous exponents, guitarists Paco Peña and Paco de Lucía, are from payo, non-Gypsy families. But whilst the origins of the music are still highly contested, there is no doubt that the Gypsy experience is fundamental to the music.
Sitting in the courtyard of a community centre in the heart of
the Tres Mil estate, in the south of Seville (a sun-drenched take on the North Peckham Estate) where the Gypsies were forced to live as Franco drove them out of Triana in the city’s centre, writer/jour- nalist Antonio Ortega tells me:
“Through flamenco the Gypsies have always told their own problems. The lyrics of flamenco tell the whole history, not just of the Gypsy population but the people of Andalucía. It is a way of expressing yourself. As well as celebrating their worth covertly, Gypsies have told of their woes through flamenco forever. Flamen- co for the Gypsies is a way of life, a type of religion, a spirit of the soul. The Gypsy needs flamenco to express himself. Not all Gypsies sing flamenco, not all Gypsies sing flamenco well, neither are all flamenco artists Gypsies, this is true, but it is also true that flamen- co culture is tightly linked to Gypsy culture from the very begin- ning. Since the very first references of flamenco, the Gypsy is always present.”
And so our trip centred on their story. We met up with an ordinary Gypsy family in the backyard of their Tres Mil home. We saw as they danced, played and sang, how everyone picks up the songs, their young children watching, listening and clapping the twelve-beat rhythms – faultlessly accenting the right places. They said: “without flamenco we couldn’t live. For us flamenco is a part of life that we need, that we breathe. There is no money for food. Without flamenco we wouldn’t have the joys that we have.”
The point was rammed home when we met up with members of the riotous Del-Gastor clan in Seville. Explaining the constraints of limited time and area on flamenco performance, they invited us to a place where these wouldn’t be an issue, a family fiesta in their hometown of Morón de la Frontera.
The party kicked off with up-tempo bulerías, and anyone who felt like it got up and danced. It’s fabulously egalitarian and inclu- sive: young and old relish the music and their own spirit, and demonstrate with gusto that they’ve still ‘got it’. And they do. They have it in spades. As the night rolls on, the slow sorrowful soleás and seguiryas are sung. Pouring another drink the family patriarch, singer Juan del Gastor, (brother of revered guitarist Diego) explained the key role alcohol plays in flamenco. “It frees the throat, releases inhibition, but no-one drinks to get drunk. That ruins the performance.”
The slow numbers have their roots in cante jondo, the ‘deep song’ of the South, initially the unaccompanied songs of the labourers who worked the fields. One of cante jondo’s finest expo- nents, El Cabrero, refuses to give up his day job as a goatherd despite his iconic status as a flamenco singer. We met him in his house in the dusty hills between Seville and Morón. He is deeply
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