It is enough to say that music itself became a constant companion. I won't indulge myself here by recalling all the reasons why I took on the project of translating Poema del Cante Jondo, or the obstacles I encountered along the way. Death sings and sings a song with her ancient white guitar. In "Description of the Petenera," Lorca dispenses with the narrative strategies of the songs, but the poems pay beautiful homage to the cry of their highly-charged metaphors.ĭeath travels down a road crowned with withered orange blossoms. The petenera, in fact, evolved from Sephardic-Jewish synagogue song, and the Jews perfected its form. It resembled the incantatory medieval singing of the Sephardic synagogue that I grew up in. And I was drawn to one particular book of his, Poema del Cante Jondo / Poem of the Deep Song, in part because I was drawn to the music it pays homage to, which also, strangely and surprisingly, was familiar to my ear. I can read the poetry of Federico García Lorca in the original. So I understand Spanish, can speak it somewhat, and am still studying its nuances. I come from a household of three languages-Ladino, Hebrew, and English-one that I could understand but not speak, one that I could sing but not understand, and one that is the language of my country, at some distance, always, from my own home.
For myself, the romance and Semitic languages, the languages of the Mediterranean and the Middle East are familiar to my ear, as opposed, let's say, to Slavic and Asian languages. The illustrious Falla, who studied the question attentively, affirms that the gypsy siguiriya is the song type of the group cante jondo and declares that it is the only song on our continent that has been conserved in its pure form, because of its composition and its style and the qualities it has in itself, the primitive songs of the oriental people.I'm convinced that some languages, languages we neither speak nor understand, are familiar to the ear.
It is also a rare example of primitive song, the oldest of all Europe, where the ruins of history, the lyrical fragment eaten by the sand, appear live like the first morning of its life. The cante jondo approaches the rhythm of the birds and the natural music of the black poplar and the waves it is simple in oldness and style. The following is translated from the conference notes by Lorca: In 1931, García Lorca presented a conference devoted to keeping the rich tradition of the cante jondo alive. Lorca had evidently used the title Poema del cante jondo for a 1921 collection of poems, although he did not publish it for ten years.
#EL CANTE JONDO SERIES#
The result was the memorable series of flamenco performances held at the Alhambra during June. Many classical musicians, cultural and literary figures, including the young poet Federico García Lorca, participated in the program. In 1922 the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla led in the organization of the Concurso de Cante Jondo for Granada. It is generally considered that the common traditional classification of flamenco music is divided into three groups of which the deepest, most serious forms are known as cante jondo.Ĭultural references to cante jondo The name means "deep song" in Spanish, with hondo ("deep") spelled with J ( Spanish pronunciation: ) as a form of eye dialect, because traditional Andalusian pronunciation has retained an aspirated H lost in other forms of Spanish. Cante jondo ( Andalusian Spanish: ) is a vocal style in flamenco, an unspoiled form of Andalusian folk music.