Not For Women
On Flamenco and Gender
Flamenco is internationally associated to beautiful red skirts and pretty women dancing with flowers in their hair. It is perceived as sensual and feminine and a man who endeavours to become a bailaor (a flamenco dancer) will be seen as a man who is defying gender-based traditions, entering a world of women and earning his place within it.
That’s just wrong. Flamenco belongs to men. Women have (rightfully) earned their place in it.
Flamenco is first of all music, it was born in the form of various styles of music and it revolved exclusively around singers. It took a while before Gypsies (along with other peoples) actually began to dance to that music. Now who were the voices of flamenco? Men. Those singers were men. Then women began to sing, but in such a strictly patriarchal society, they would only be allowed to sing in private contexts. Even after that changed and the voices of women began to be heard in public, it was men who decided where, how and for how much money those women should have sung. Like every form of art, flamenco has changed through the centuries, but even today most of the famous singers are men. Achieving fame won’t be easy for a woman.
As for dance. It was women who gradually stepped into this dance, bringing new influences into it, taking the movements of men and changing them, making them more ‘feminine’. Actually they went well beyond that. When performing, Carmen Amaya would often dress like a man and in such occasions she would adopt the energetic, strong movements that would have otherwise belonged to men alone. She did this in early twentieth-century Spain.
Carmen Amaya performing for American troops at Hollywood Canteen, 1943.
As I said, music is the essence of flamenco, not the dance. Or you could say the dance itself is simply another way of creating music, through the sound of the shoes.
Now I’ll leave here some lyrics from flamenco songs. They speak of women, in a way which was not uncommon.
“Una mujer fue la causa de la perdición primera; que no hay mal en este mundo que de mujeres no venga.”
“A woman was the cause of the original perdition; for there is no ill in this world that does not come from women.”
“Agujitas y alfileres le clavaran a mi novia cuando la llamo y no viene.”
“May needles and pins sting my fiancée when I call her and she doesn’t come.”
“Te den un tiro y te maten
como sepa que diviertes
a otro gachó con tu cante.”
“May someone shoot you and kill you
if I find out that you entertain
another man with your songs.”
The translation could be better, but I hope it is good enough to show what place has been given to women, for a very long time, both inside of flamenco and outside of it. Of course this has changed, but not completely.
Flamenco essentially belongs to men. What women have done, like elsewhere, was struggling to win a place within this art. It was never the other way around.
[sources: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 ]
