One Hundred Years of Concurso de Cante Jondo: The Art of Classical Flamenco at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
News from 11/17/2022
On December 14, flamenco singer Carmen Celada and guitarist Nikos Tsiachris will be putting new life into the history and music of cante jondo.
One hundred years ago, the first Concurso del Cante Jondo (‘deep song’ competition) was held in Granada, Spain, marking a turning point in the history of flamenco.
Cante jondo is the classical style of Spanish flamenco, more serious and melancholic than other forms. Love, death, guilt, and atonement are its dominant themes. As flamenco became popular in the early twentieth century and the lighter, more cheerful cante chico began to spread, champions of the original forms took a stand, among them well-known figures such as composer Manuel de Falla and poet Federico García Lorca. Together with other artists, they organized the Concurso del Cante Jondo to honor and celebrate the classical Andalusian art of flamenco.
Falla and García Lorca also wrote lectures and essays on the cante jondo, arguing that it influenced genres beyond flamenco and composers outside Spain, including Claude Debussy and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Another competition, the Concurso Nacional de Córdoba, was inaugurated in 1956, and it still exists today, if under the slightly different name of Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco de Córdoba.
Carmen Celada and Nikos Tsiachris will be breathing new life into the original cante jondo at a concert celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the first concurso. They will be playing and singing some of the pieces that won prizes in Granada in 1922, including songs by Diego “El tenazas” Bermúdez and a young Manolo Caracol, and they will show how these traditional cantes influenced classical Spanish composers and the Spanish musical theater of Zarzuela.
Concert on December 14 at 7:00 pm
in the Simón-Bolívar-Saal (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute), Potsdamer Str. 37, 10785 Berlin