Resumen de El fandango en Málaga: del cante bailado al cante desgarrado
- español
El fandango en Málaga se manifiesta de muy diversas formas: como verdiales, interpretados por agrupaciones llamadas pandas, que incluyen cante y baile y están acompañadas de guitarras, panderos y platillos; como fandangos abandolaos, que se cantan solo con guitarra y ritmo ternario y desvinculados del baile; como malagueñas, derivadas de los anteriores pero sin ritmo; y como fandangos personales, estilos surgidos a partir de la década de 1920, en la llamada Ópera flamenca, y que son de gran aceptación por el gran público. Desde la figura de Juan Breva (18441918) hasta el actual Álvarez (1947–), de quien se ha rodado una película recientemente, el fandango ha sido unos de los estilos folklóricos y flamencos más cultivados en Málaga.
- English
Málaga—both the capital and the province—occupies a place of singular importance in the birth of flamenco, a musical genre that began to develop in parts of Andalusia from earlier musical traditions in the midnineteenth century. The fandango in this southern Spanish province manifests in a diversity of forms unknown in other regions. Its oldest variants are still practiced—with great vitality—in the pandas de verdiales, groups with guitars, tambourines, cymbals, song, and dance. They originate in the agrarian regions of the Málaga countryside, growing out of the roots of pre Christian fertility rites. Around 1860 the music of these danceable fandangos slowed down and lost their orchestration, to become, with only guitar accompaniment, what are now called: fandangos abandolaos, one of the first forms of flamenco song of which we have notice. At the end of the nineteenth century the fandangos definitively lost their basic rhythm and the personal fandangos were born, reaching the height of popularity until the end of the cafés cantantes (the music halls where flamenco was born), in the decade of the 1920s. Both the fandangos abandolaos and also malagueñas make up the customary repertory of cantaores —flamenco singers—of today. The 1920s saw the birth of the era of “Flamenco Opera”—an era in which many singers created numerous styles of fandangos, the earliest of which were elaborations of folkloric fandangos. In Málaga these fandangos, the fandangos personales, were widespread and popular. Today there lives in the city of Málaga the greatest living representative of fandangos personales, El Álvarez (b. Málaga, 1947), a singer of great expressivity who, despite never having worked professionally, has been admired by figures like Chano Lobato, Camarón, Luis el Zambo, and Duquende. In 2010 a full length documentary film directed by Vicente Pérez Herrero, titled Válgame Dios, qué alegría tiene esta gente qué fatigas tengo yo, was released by RTVE, a portrait of El Álvarez’s life and singing.
