Archive: July 2024

Cafés Cantantes: Where Flamenco Got a Stage

How the 1860s commercialised an oral tradition

Until the mid-19th century flamenco lived in private. Then a singer named Silverio Franconetti opened a café in Seville, and within twenty years the entire art had been professionalised, theatricalised, and irrevocably changed.

The Romani Roots of Flamenco

How a centuries-long migration ended in Andalusia

Flamenco is uniquely Andalusian, but the people most responsible for shaping it had been on the road for a thousand years before they arrived in Spain. A short history of the gitanos and their music.