Flamenco

What it is

Flamenco is a way of making music and dancing that belongs to southern Spain, especially Andalusia, with older traces in Extremadura and Murcia. People often call it a folk or oral tradition, yet it also works as a serious musical system. A performance can rest on a rhythmic cycle called compás, on modal or tonal harmony, on ornamented melodic lines and on improvisation. A single palo, the name for one flamenco form, may be recognised by its rhythm, its mode, its chord pattern, its verse shape, where it comes from and how it is usually performed. Singers, guitarists and dancers each carry part of it.

Origins and history

The earliest known written mention of flamenco music comes from 1774, in the book Las Cartas Marruecas by José Cadalso. Most accounts place its beginnings at the end of the 18th century, among city and farming communities of lower Andalusia, with Jerez de la Frontera as the first place recorded. Gitano families and other marginalised Andalusians turned it into a distinct art. In 1881 Silverio Franconetti opened the first café for flamenco singing in Seville, a competitive setting that helped shape professional singers. In 1922 Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla held a cante jondo contest in Granada, where an eight-year-old boy, Manolo Caracol, was among the winners.

Song, guitar and dance

The word flamenco covers three linked things: cante, the singing; toque, the guitar; and baile, the dancing. Voices, handclapping, the guitar, castanets and the wooden cajón box all take part. Dancers work with footwork and claps, guitarists build falsetas, short melodic passages, and vary them. Well-known forms include alegrías, bulerías, soleá, siguiriyas, tientos, tangos, fandangos, malagueñas, sevillanas, rumba flamenca and verdiales. Songs and tunes pass from one performer to the next, and each one changes them a little. Later styles such as new flamenco and flamenco rock mix the tradition with other kinds of music.

How the name arose

The name flamenco was used first for the Romani people of Spain, not for a music. An English traveller, George Borrow, wrote in the 1830s that gitanos were also called Flemish, which in Spanish is flamenco. The scholar Cristina Cruces-Roldán notes that a gitano party in Madrid was already described by that word before Borrow wrote. A newspaper piece in El Espectador in 1847 appears to be the first place where the term names the music, and it was called a gitano genre. Red, white and gold are the colours long linked with flamenco.

Shows and change

Between 1920 and 1955 flamenco shows moved into bullrings and theatres, advertised as flamenco opera, partly because promoters paid less tax under that name. Their success pushed some older and starker styles off the stage in favour of lighter ones. Under the Franco years the authorities at first treated flamenco with suspicion, then adopted it as a national symbol, while many singers had gone into exile or died in the Civil War. Later, concert guitar playing and teaching in conservatories brought flamenco to classical audiences, and in 2010 UNESCO recognised it as a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage.

How Flamenco is kept

Flamenco is kept going by singers, guitarists and dancers who learn from older performers and from one another. A gathering often starts with the guitar setting the rhythm, then the singer enters, and then the dancer takes the floor. Everybody joins in with palmas, the handclapping that holds the compás, and with calls of encouragement. In a café or a peña, a local club of aficionados, the audience sits close and knows the forms well. Families pass the songs down, and conservatories now teach them too. Recordings and festivals carry the art far past Andalusia, and each performer's own version is valued.

When and where

Flamenco has no single season. It is sung and danced all year in cafés, peñas, theatres and at festivals. Christmas has its own flamenco songs, both traditional carols and pieces whose words are adapted to the season, and these have stayed in use.

Andalusia is its home, and it is strongest in the cities and farming towns there, among them Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Granada, Cádiz, Málaga and Lebrija. Madrid became a major stage for flamenco shows. The art also has a long presence in Extremadura and Murcia, and from Spain it travelled to theatres in many countries.

What Flamenco means

Flamenco carries memory and pride for the people who keep it. Gitano families see it as a heritage they helped create, and one they held through centuries of persecution. Andalusians of every background treat it as a shared mark of the south. The singing is prized for holding hardship, love and loss in a form that is both strict and free. Because flamenco passes from person to person rather than from written scores, each performer's own stamp matters, and audiences judge a performance by how alive it feels.

Days Flamenco is marked

Questions people ask about Flamenco

See also

SevillanasA folk dance and song from Seville, kept at fairs and festivals across Andalusia.Andalusi classical musicA classical suite of vocal and instrumental music shared across North AfricaCante jondoA solemn and profound vocal tradition of Andalusian flamenco song.BertsolaritzaImprovised songs sung in Basque, rhymed on the spot at contests and gatherings

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• FlamencoUNESCO, Heritage listing
• FlamencoUNESCO, Article

• Flamenco on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.