Flamenco's passion is clear to anyone who has heard its melancholic strains in the background of a crowded Spanish bar or during an uplifting live performance. And yet, flamenco can at times seem like an impenetrable world. If you're lucky, you’ll experience that single uplifting moment when flamenco's raw passion suddenly transports you to another place (known as duende), where joy and sorrow threaten to overwhelm you. If you do, you'll quickly become one of flamenco's lifelong devotees.
Flamenco's origins have been lost to time. Some have suggested that it derives from Byzantine chants used in Visigothic churches. But most musical historians agree that it probably dates back to a fusion of songs brought to Spain by the Roma people, with music and verses from North Africa crossing into medieval Muslim Andalucía.
Flamenco as we now know it first took recognisable form in the 18th and early 19th centuries among Roma people in the lower Guadalquivir valley in western Andalucía. The Seville, Jerez de la Frontera and Cádiz axis is still considered flamenco's heartland and it's here, purists believe, that you'll encounter the most authentic flamenco experience.
A flamenco singer is known as a cantaor (male) or cantaora (female); a dancer is a bailaor or bailaora. Most of the songs and dances are performed to a blood-rush of guitar from the tocaor or tocaora (male or female flamenco guitarist). Percussion is provided by tapping feet, clapping hands, and sometimes castanets.
Flamenco coplas (songs) come in many different types, from the anguished soleá or the intensely despairing siguiriya to the livelier alegría or the upbeat bulería. The first flamenco was cante jondo (deep song), an anguished instrument of expression for a group on the margins of society. Jondura (depth) is still the essence of pure flamenco.
The traditional flamenco costume – shawl, fan and long, frilly bata de cola (tail gown) for women, and flat Cordoban hats and tight black trousers for men – dates from Andalucian fashions in the late 19th century.
The great singers of the 19th and early 20th centuries were Silverio Franconetti and La Niña de los Peines, from Seville, and Antonio Chacón and Manuel Torre, from Jerez de la Frontera. Torre's singing, legend has it, could drive people to rip their shirts open and upturn tables. The dynamic dancing and wild lifestyle of Carmen Amaya (1913–63), from Barcelona, made her the Roma dance legend of all time. Her long-time partner Sabicas was the father of the modern solo flamenco guitar, inventing a host of now-indispensable techniques.
After a trough in the mid-20th century, when it seemed that the tablaos (touristy flamenco shows emphasising the sexy and the jolly) were in danger of taking over, flamenco puro got a new lease of life in the 1970s through singers such as Terremoto, La Paquera, Enrique Morente, Chano Lobato and, above all, El Camarón de la Isla (whose real name was José Monge Cruz) from San Fernando near Cádiz.
Some say that Madrid-born Diego El Cigala (b 1968) is El Camarón's successor. This powerful singer's biggest-hitting albums are Lágrimas negras (Black Tears; 2003) and Dos lágrimas (Two Tears; 2008), which mix flamenco with Cuban influences.
Paco de Lucía, born in Algeciras in 1947, is the doyen of flamenco guitarists. So gifted is he that by the time he was 14 his teachers admitted that they had nothing left to teach him. De Lucía has transformed the flamenco guitar into an instrument of solo expression with new techniques, scales, melodies and harmonies that have gone far beyond traditional limits.
Possibly the most important flamenco singer of all time, José Monge Cruz (aka Camarón de la Isla; Shrimp of the Island) did more to popularise flamenco over the last 30 years than anyone else. Born to Roma parents, Camarón started his career at a young age by singing in local bars. Eventually he met that other great of flamenco, guitarist Paco de Lucía, with whom he recorded nine much-praised albums between 1969 and 1977. Later in his career Camarón worked with one of Paco's students, Tomatito.
Camarón was an intense introvert and hated publicity, but so extraordinary was his talent that publicity was to hound him everywhere he went and, so many say, it was eventually to lead him to an early grave in the best live-fast, die-young rock-star fashion. He was idolised for his voice by flamenco fans across the world, and it was his fellow Roma who really elevated him almost to the status of a god.
He died of lung cancer in 1992 at the age of just 42. It's estimated that more than 100,000 people attended his funeral. The Shrimp's best recordings include La leyenda del tiempo, Soy gitano and Una leyenda flamenca.
Rarely can flamenco have been as popular as it is today, and never so innovative.
Universally acclaimed is José Mercé, from Jerez. Estrella Morente from Granada (Enrique's daughter and internationally best known for being the 'voice' behind the 2006 film Volver), Miguel Poveda (from Barcelona) and La Tana from Seville are young singers steadily carving out niches in the first rank of performers.
Dance, always the readiest of flamenco arts to cross boundaries, has reached its most adventurous horizons in the person of Joaquin Cortés, born in Córdoba in 1969. Cortés fuses flamenco with contemporary dance, ballet and jazz in spectacular shows with music at rock-concert amplification.
Among guitarists, listen out for Manolo Sanlúcar from Cádiz; Tomatito from Almería; and Vicente Amigo from Córdoba and Moraíto Chico from Jerez, who both accompany today's top singers.
What started with the experimentation of Paco de Lucía has seen musicians mixing flamenco with jazz, rock, blues, rap and other genres.
The seminal recording was a 1977 flamenco-folk-rock album Veneno (Poison) by the group of the same name, centred on Kiko Veneno and Raimundo Amador, both from Seville. Kiko remains an icon of flamenco fusion, mixing rock, blues, African and flamenco rhythms with witty lyrics focusing on snatches of everyday life. Amador later formed the group Pata Negra, and produced four fine flamenco-jazz-blues albums before going solo.
The group Ketama, originally from Granada, has successfully mixed flamenco with African, Cuban, Brazilian and other rhythms for two decades. Cádiz' Niña Pastori arrived in the late 1990s with an edgy, urgent voice singing jazz- and Latin-influenced flamenco.
Eleven-strong Barcelona-based band Ojos de Brujo mixes flamenco with reggae, Asian and even club dance rhythms, while Málaga's Chambao successfully combines flamenco with electronic beats on its albums such as Flamenco Chill (2002) and Pokito a poko (Little by Little; 2005) and En el fin del mundo (At the End of the Earth; 2009).
Concha Buika, a Mallorcan of Equatorial Guinean origin, possesses a beautiful, sensual voice. Her albums Buika (2005) and Mi niña Lola (2006) are a captivating melange of African rhythms, soul, jazz, hip hop, flamenco and more.
Probably nobody upsets the purists quite as much as Mala Rodríguez does with her socially aware combination of flamenco and rap. Malamarismo (2007) is a classic of her unique genre; she’s since released Dirty Bailarina (2010) and Bruja (2013).
Flamenco is easiest to catch in Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Granada and Madrid. The best places for live performances are peñas (clubs where flamenco fans band together). The atmosphere in such places is authentic and at times very intimate, proof that flamenco feeds off an audience that knows its flamenco. Most Andalucían towns have dozens of peñas, and most tourist offices have lists of those that are open to visitors. The other, easier, option is to attend a performance at a tablao, which hosts regular shows put on for largely undiscriminating tourist audiences – the quality can be top-notch, even if the gritty atmosphere of the peñas is lacking.
Festivals also attract the best artists. The following are some of the best flamenco festivals: