Music's Mirrors: Identity, Tradition, and Modernity in Spanish Popular Music

• Autores: Héctor Fouce Rodríguez, Fernán del Val, Linda Grabner (trad.)
• Localización: The Routledge Hispanic studies companion to twentieth and twenty-first century Spain: ideas, practices, imaginings / coord. por Eduardo Ledesma, Luisa Elena Delgado, 2025, ISBN 978-1-032-96468-3, págs. 669-680
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Since the 19th century, popular music has been a privileged space for the negotiation of Spanish cultural identity. Respect for tradition and the need to modernize the country, appealing to a foreign, cosmopolitan legacy, were constantly clashing, as shown in this chapter. In addition, it explores the tension between a hegemonic view of Spanish culture and a viewpoint that recognizes regional diversity (and its political and cultural consequences). Flamenco has been the musical culture that has identified Spanishness in recent centuries; the descriptions of travelers during the Romantic period created a dynamic that would mark the way Spanish identity was constructed in the musical discipline. It would be a dynamic of mirrors, in which tradition was observed and valued according to foreign opinions, in contrast to the constant search for models of modernity in the surrounding countries. This chapter examines the weight of the flamenco tradition, its different appropriations, and its dialogue with rock’n’roll, punk, and other styles of popular music. The authors also consider the heavy burden of cultural isolation imposed by the Franco dictatorship, together with the dynamics of modernization and the recuperation of a musical tradition that characterized popular music during Spanish democracy, connecting each political era with discourses on Spanish identity and its growing insertion into globalization.