Composition, Authorship, and Ownership in Flamenco, Past and Present

In this article I explore how some processes of composition have operated in the modernization of flamenco, in the various forms in which it has flourished over the last century. Paralleling developments in certain other genres, in commercial pop flamenco collective, oral-tradition recycling of stock musical materials can be seen to give way to mass mediated, pre-composed songs, as new dimensions of finance and copyright precipitate polemics and legal actions. At the same time, however, the new importance of compositions and composing in the realm of this mass-mediated “nuevo flamenco” (new flamenco) has been counterbalanced in mainstream, neo-traditional flamenco by a certain codification of the existing repertoire, which has become less accommodating to new creations. The contradictions and complexities of these processes acquire various sorts of importance—as revealed by polemics and disputes—involving issues of aesthetics, ownership, and even ethnicity (as concerning Gypsies and non-Gypsies). Their complexity derives in part from the heterogeneity of forms of flamenco—from traditional to pop—and from the way that even traditional flamenco (in some respects like jazz) defies categorization as folk, classical, or pop