WELCOME TO THE BLOG SITE OF FLAMENCLORICO: LORE OF THE MINERS / PASIÓN FLAMENCA

Singer Antonio Urban Ruger has been replaced with the award-winning singer from Jerez de la Frontera, Sara Salado.  Two additional performers also join the cast of Pasion Flamenca: Maria Benjumeda (from Jerez de la Frontera), and narrator Puy Navarro (from Valencia).

About Sara Salado
An award winning artist, Sara Salado of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, sings for the dance company of Ruben Olmos.  She has made several recordings including Sabor Jerez and El Puerto Por Navidad with Rancapino,  and  sang as special guest artist on Calixto Sanchez’s most recent CD. She  has worked with Moraito Chico, Diego Carrasco, Carmen Linares,  and Fernando Terremoto, among many others.  She performs at the tablaos, peñas, and flamenco festivals in Spain and Switzerland, and is a regular on Spanish television Canal Sur Andalucía’s program, “La Llama Viva.”  Ms. Salado placed first in Andalusia’s “Saeta de Jerez” competition.


About Puy Navarro

Theater: La Casa del Jubio (Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA); Los detalles de Silencio (Symphony Space, NYC); Mujeres Ligeramente Alteradas (American Globe Theatre, NYC); La Extraña Pareja (Stage East Ensemble, NJ); Los Sueños de Einstein (Culture Project Theatre, NYC); Lejos (dir. Steven Daldry, New York Theatre Workshop); Musica Lasciva (dir. Michael John Garcés, Abingdon Theatre, NYC); Bodas de Sangre, Yerma, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Doña Rosita la Soltera, Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada, El Quijote (Repertorio Español, NYC); El Poder y La Gloria (Dramatist Guild, NYC); Encuentro en el Parque Peligroso (Newark Symphony Hall, NJ)  Film: Todos a la Carcel (dir. J.L. Berlanga); Upside Down; Inner Glow of Things; Devoured by her Enigmatic Smile; Stripping Away (independent filmmakers).  Ms. Navarro has also performed in Spain, France, and Japan.  She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York in 2001.

Flamenco derives from the southern Spanish region of Andalucía, once a melting pot of Arabian, Persian, Sephardic Jewish, Greek Byzantine, and Iberian cultures.  The last to arrive in Andalucía were the migrants from India (the “Romani”), called “gitanos” (“gypsies”) by the Spanish because of the mistaken belief that the settlers came from Egypt.  These latecomers catalyzed the art form, adopting the musical and dance elements of their new neighbors and combining it with their own folkloric style.

The conditions under which flamenco arose were chaotic.  The Romani arrived in southern Spain (a 1,000 year journey) in the late 1400’s, during King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s conquest of Grenada and commencement of the Spanish Inquisition.  The Romani suffered the same fate as the Jews and Arabs there before them: massacre, humiliation, persecution, extermination, and expulsion.  Thus, while Christopher Columbus was in 1492 sailing the ocean blue, conquering new terrain and making the way for the “New World,” the old world of southern Spain was coming to an end.  Those who were not slaughtered or exiled, escaped to the caves of Andalucía, to live out their lives in utter desperation and extreme poverty.  They suffered great hunger, fear, and isolation.  It was there that the first flamenco songs were conceived, in desolate lands by a forelorn people.

Some of the earliest documentation of flamenco suggests that it existed originally only in song, without instrumental accompaniment.  A blend of medieval Moorish and Castilian ballads, liturgical psalms, Ladino chants, and folk tunes, flamenco’s first development was the cante jondo (a flamenco lament).  The vocal stylizing of cante jondo makes flamenco song instantly recognizable, with its soulful wailing and elongated lyrics.  In the flamenco heartlands of Andalucía, the song is the most important aspect of the art.  It is also the least understood outside the region because the lyrics are sung in a mixed language of Spanish and Rom (the language of the Romanis).

Flamenco, however, has little recorded history.  Its innovators being largely illiterate, the tradition was passed along through familial lines.  Additionally, most of the earliest recordings were written only within the last two hundred years, when flamenco began making its way out of the Romani enclaves to the cities and towns where it was publicly performed.  The writings at this time evidenced the incorporation of guitar and dance into flamenco presentations, but when this occurred is a mystery still.

Even the origin of the word “flamenco” is unknown.  Some scholars contend that the word hails from the Spanish word for “Flemish,” recalling the defeated mercenaries of Flanders who sailed the Spanish Armada, returning to Spain in 1588.  Without work, they settled in the poorer quarters of Andalucía, mingling in the underworld of poverty, taverns and gypsies, where the music and dance of what we now call flamenco had taken hold.  Yet others say it is a derivation of the Arabic fellah mencu, which they contend means “banished peasant,” suggesting a connection to the flight of the Moors in the late 15th century.  This latter theory fails because of the incorrect translation of the term.  In classical Arabic, fallah means “grower” and mencu means “sick.”

In any event, the word flamenco refers today to a style of music and dance that has transformed into a forceful and engaging art form, incorporating the rhythms of Africa, Cuba, and South America (as evidenced by the flamenco forms of tangos and guajira, among others).  The Spanish territorialists brought home with them not only gold and spices, but music and dance.

Given the vast geographical background of the people whose influence helped form flamenco, it is no wonder that it maintains such wide appeal.  Flamenco, ultimately, is an expression of the human experience.  We can not help but be drawn to it and moved by its message.

The following are some common jaleos that you can call out during Flamenclorico: Lore of the Miners: 

Dishes include:

• Bombay Talkie’s “Patatas Bravas”
  
• Shrimp with Chili
  
• Spiced Lamb Meatballs 
  
• Chicken with Saffron Topped with a Masala Sauce
  
• Raan (Lamb dish with almonds, yogurt and brown sugar)
  
• Saffron Rice with Nuts and Currants
  
• Date Chutney
  
• Beef in a Cumin Curry
  
• Warm Eggplant, Onion and Tomato Salad 
  
• Almond Halwa
  
• Preserved Sweetened Orange with Yogurt

Arising out of the midst of the surrounding greenery, the giant opencast mines of Rio Tinto create a surreal, almost lunar landscape. The removal of layer upon layer of soil and rock, in the search for iron ore, copper, silver and a host of other mineral ores, has tinted this part of the world in hues of dusty pink, brown, yellow, red and grey. So great is the scale of operations, that the depression created resembles a man-made crater that measures several kilometres across. From the edge of the ‘crater’, a giant space opens up before you, and the trucks at work far below appear toy-sized when in reality most are the size of a house. Walls of terraced rock, streaked with the unusual colours of mineral ores create the impression of a natural amphitheatre of gargantuan proportions, that could easily be mistaken for the set of a Star Wars movie. 

Rio Tinto is, however, more than an isolated cavity on the earth’s surface. Its growth has consumed not only mountains and valleys but even entire villages, whose populations had to be resettled in specially built towns nearby. Named after the river which flows through the region-itself named for the reddish streaks that colour its water-Rio Tinto has become a landscape within a landscape. The unearthed minerals give the soil and waters of the region odd, otherworldly shades of blue, green, yellow, red and brown, so it is not unusual to see bright orange or green rivulets trickling past. The predominant ores, however, are the ferrous ones, which oxidise when they come into contact with the air and colour land and river alike in shades of reddish brown. Even as far as Niebla, roughly 50 kilometres to the south-east, the waters of the Rio Tinto still flow past the town’s ancient fortified walls in an eerie trickle of blood-red.
 
Reputed to be the oldest mines in the world, Rio Tinto has a particularly rich history. Their mineral wealth was already legendary in ancient times. According to myth, these are the fabled mines of King Solomon, and a section of the area is still known as Cerro Salomón today. The nearby villages of Zalamea la Vieja (now called Nerva) and Zalamea la Real are also named after the biblical king. It was tales of the Iberian Peninsula’s mineral wealth that drew Phoenician merchants to its shores, laying the foundations for a succession of Greek, Carthaginian and Roman invasions. The Rio Tinto mines they worked so intensively were among the most prized rewards that control of Iberia yielded.
 
For all this, the region was inexplicably abandoned after the Roman era and in time was all but lost to collective memory, until it was rediscovered in 1556. It was, however, to take until 1724 for the mines to be reopened, and even then frustration and inefficiency dogged their exploitation. Fed up with this situation, the Spanish government finally sold the mines to a British syndicate in 1871 for a sum well below their real value. In true Anglo-Saxon style, the company’s British managers soon had the mines running at full steam, making this one of the most important sources of copper and sulphur in the world. Also true to form was the way in which they built Bella Vista, a purpose-built village for British employees only. Known as the “colonia inglesa,” the British style houses, neatly trimmed gardens, tennis lawns and social club of Bella Vista can still be visited. This ‘British’ village in the middle of the Andalusian countryside also features a Presbyterian Church and mining museum. Several kilometres away is the Spanish town of Rio Tinto, built to replace an older settlement that was swallowed up by the mine’s expansion.
 
In its heyday, the Rio Tinto Mining Company was quite an innovator. The football pitch and golf course built here were among the first on the European continent, and the half-timbered bungalows built for company employees at the Punta Umbria, on the Huelva coast, are the forerunners of the modern Costas.
 
A similar impact was made in the City of Huelva, which flourished as Rio Tinto’s export harbour. The Rio Tinto pier remains one of the city’s greatest architectural monuments, along with the so-called barrio ingles, a small residential district built for British company workers. The superb archaeological section of the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes has a collection of findings from the Rio Tinto area.
 
From http://www.andalucia.com/province/huelva/riotinto/home.htm. This article is subject to copyright and is re-published here with permission from the Fundación Río Tinto.  Photo is  courtesy of the Museo Minero de Rio Tinto:  http://www.parquemineroderiotinto.com.

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