Ode To Flamenco

Last night was one of those evenings that I will not soon forget.  I went to a flamenco act and left completely blown away.  Dance.  Song.  Art.  Story.  The performers - Miguel Infante, Celedonio Garrido, and Ricardo Diaz - are from Spain, and together with local performers they put on a show that stole my heart.

Flamenco captivates my soul like few other things.  Canto (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance), jaleo (vocalizations and rhythmic sounds), palmas (clapping), and pitos (finger snapping) are all part of the flamenco experience.  Add to this the elements of traditional dress and musical instruments, and the experience becomes intensely physical.

Something from the spiritual realm draws me into the experience, I'm sure.  Maybe it's the human story that's told in this beautiful art form.  Stories of delight and ecstasy, and stories of loss and despair; stories of connection and stories of loneliness; stories of triumph and stories of defeat; stories of thriving and stories of suffering.  

Come to think of it, it's the stories of heart wrenching hardship that resonate deeply within me.  Mysteries.  The unresolved and unresolvable.  The broken.  The stuff of this world.  These are realities I'm well familiar with not only in my life but also in what I see all around me.  Longing - for connection with the world around me, with my fellow neighbour, and with God.  Longing for the next world.  Heaven.  These are good desires that I yearn to have fulfilled.  And yet, they are not...yet.

I haven't read or studied much about the origins of flamenco but I''ve heard there are Indian, Arabic, and Spanish links.  The wailing sounds of jaleo, for example, are present in all 3 cultures.  This is, in my mind, a great example of the fluidity in space and time of ideas and ways of living.

Equally intriguing is the gipsy connection.  The Roma or gitanos are nomadic, always on the run, never settling, never finding a place to call home.  This makes for an easy connection with people of faith.  We too are nomads, pilgrims, on the run.  On our way somewhere else. One could also state it positively: pilgrims are at home everywhere.  They are resilient, able to deal with whatever comes their way.  The world is their home.  Whatever the case may be, pilgrims are on the go.

Flamenco is a celebration of life.  The colours of the dresses, the powerful guitar riffs, the intense clapping, finger snapping and foot tapping, the trance-inducing rhythms, the stories shared, the elegance and dignity in dance movements, the "oles" and smiles of approval by and between both, performers and audience, these are all attributes that in a simple yet profound way encapsulate the human experience: in good times and in bad, we're all in this together, let's make the best of it...

And to that I would add the exhortation: ...pursuing all that is good, true, and beautiful.