OLE! IT’S PURE FLAMENCO

Affectionately known as “the frying pan of the south,” this most sensual of cities serves up flaming pink bougainvillea, perfumed jasmine and wrought-iron balconies, even as it simmers in the summer heat. Seville inspires more passion than reason.

And it wasn’t reason that brought my husband, Frank, our daughter, Marina, and me to Spain on a 90-degree morning last August. It was a passion for flamenco, the powerful music and dance that thrives in the Andalusian summer, when weaker spirits wilt. That was my inspiration as we began our two-week trip, arriving at the Hotel San Gil in Seville’s old Macarena district. The windows were shuttered; a dog sniffed lazily along the hotel’s ochre-colored walls. All was quiet except for the tolling of church bells.

I’d been bitten by the flamenco bug several years before when I’d happened on a festival in Ronda, high above Malaga in the mountains facing the Mediterranean. It was my first brush with real flamenco, the thrilling, bone-shaking kind. The festivities began at midnight, when dancers, singers and guitarists mounted a stage in the park to share a tradition as sacred as a Gregorian chant and as gritty as break dancing. Their shadows towered over the little park like spirits from an ancient, elemental world. Then, all too quickly, it was over.

I wanted to find flamenco again--not the theatrical kind you’re likely to see on the Madrid stage, or tourist stuff, but the real thing, flamenco puro.

From May through September, towns all over Andalusia hold flamenco festivals like the one in Ronda. Though they aren’t much publicized outside Spain, they often feature the region’s finest performers. Since we had just two weeks to find flamenco puro, the festival circuit seemed like our best bet. So we headed for that triangle of flamenco country that counts Seville as its northern border, with the Mediterranean on the southeast and the Atlantic on the west.

But before heading south to Arcos de la Frontera, in the center of the triangle, we meandered through Seville’s old neighborhoods. Our friend Encarna Jimenez, who lives in the Macarena, led us. Knowing my love of flamenco, she showed us the Alameda de Hercules, where 60 years ago matadors and flamenco artists partied in mansions under shady poplars. Alas, today the gracious boulevard is the haunt of junkies and prostitutes. Between the Alameda’s imposing marble pillars stands a bust of the great Gypsy singer Manolo Caracol, covered with graffiti. And that, said Jimenez sadly, is the history of flamenco.

*

In fact, there are many histories of flamenco. Every Andalusian tells a different one. Nobody knows much for sure, not even how or when flamenco began. We do know that around the year 1400 the Gypsies, a nomadic people believed to have originated in India, arrived in Andalusia. They’d brought little with them but their own folkways and a flair for dance and music. Tinkers and smiths by trade, they soon settled on the outskirts of poor neighborhoods. Flamenco may have gotten its start in those early barrios, where Gypsies absorbed local folk music--rooted in the musical traditions of the ancient Roman, Jewish and Islamic cultures--and then made it their own. Flamenco as we know it probably developed in the 16th century. Its earliest forms may well have been the songs blacksmiths sang.

Today, when most people think of flamenco, they imagine women dancing sevillanas, castanets clicking, their flounced dresses rising as they spin. But the flirtatious sevillana, a lighthearted music and dance favored at Andalusian fairs and often danced by couples, is just one flamenco form among dozens. Each form is defined by its rhythmic structure and emotional color. Alegrias are festive and showy, a favorite among young dancers. Soleares are deep and passionate, the perfect vehicle for a woman who has lived long and well. Siguiriyas can be the most anguished and profound. Like the “sorrow songs” of American slaves, the siguiriyas grow out of intense suffering. Best-loved is the buleria, a dark, yet boundlessly joyful form.

Song and music are integral parts of flamenco. It’s not uncommon for musicians to dance and dancers to sing. There is no standard choreography; the dancers improvise. Everyone, especially those with a flamenco background, is encouraged to participate, even if only to clap or call out an encouraging Ole!

*

It took several days before we encountered flamenco puro. First, there was the inevitable blunder, when we headed for a festival simply because it was a little more than an hour’s drive away.

The morning after arriving at the Cortijo Fain, a wonderful old ranch-cum-inn near Arcos, we were sitting by the pool, consulting maps and lists. The Atlantic port city of Cadiz was hosting a festival that night, Frank pointed out. Why not watch flamenco and enjoy the sea breezes at the same time? It sounded perfect.

But the Cadiz festival was held in a yacht club, and the best seats went to diners at its expensive restaurant. This precluded most Gypsies and hard-core flamenco types.While Enrique Soto sang a wrenching siguiriya, forks clinked and champagne bottles popped.

The Cadiz festival was nothing like the one in Ronda. Ronda had been riveting. The audience’s spirit had seemed to match the performers’ fierce emotion, and in some way, we all had taken part in the flamenco. Now I wondered whether Ronda was an anomaly.

At Cadiz, a flamenco aficionado from Belgium told me that one problem was the location. “These performers are from Jerez [de la Frontera],” she said, “which, although it’s a 40-minute drive, might as well be across the Atlantic to the people of Cadiz. People here don’t understand the flamenco of Jerez.”

A few days later in Jerez de la Frontera--inland and northeast of Cadiz--we were lucky enough to see Jerezan~os performing on their own turf. This festival was held at an outdoor cinema in the heart of old Jerez, just up the street from the little Plaza Plateros, where we sat after dinner, watching children play around the fountain.

The Jerez festival attracted many of the area’s renowned Gypsy clans. They talked animatedly as they waited to buy tickets: dark-skinned men in bright shirts; grandmothers, their gray hair pulled into buns, dressed in polka-dot blouses and ankle-length skirts; little black-haired girls wearing lace and jewelry.

In front of the cinema, under a string of lights, peddlers sold tapes of local flamenco artists, and Gypsy vendors fried potatoes in vats of olive oil. On the balconies of nearby buildings, families set out chairs and poured wine, waiting for the show to begin.

That night, the audience was in sync with the performers. One of them, a red flower pinned in her black hair, sang salty bulerias as the crowd showered her with oles. Then local favorite Salmonete, an intense blond youth with a face years older than his body, walked to the microphone. He closed his eyes, clenched his hands and sang an anguished siguiriya. The crowd seemed to bow its collective head and pray for deliverance.

Sometime after 2 a.m, an 18-year-old dancer named Juan Antonio Tejero stepped into the spotlight. With his impeccable sense of rhythm, his upright posture and ferocious attack, he seemed to shake the old buildings around the cinema. The audience roared in appreciation. He was a hometown boy, and people called his name again and again, egging him on. He furrowed his brow and cut up the platform with his heels, ending with a perfectly timed stamp, then strode off the stage with an almost careless shrug.

Later, in Arcos, as the sun rose over the old walls of our hotel, we headed to bed, tired and happy. And yet, as I sank into the cool white sheets I mused dreamily that the night lacked a certain something, a kind of intimacy you find only in the very finest flamenco. My search for flamenco puro hadn’t ended yet.

*

During the next few days, we visited some of the beautiful pueblos blancos--the whitewashed towns in the Andalusian mountains bordering the Mediterranean. We’d missed the annual flamenco festival in Ronda by a week. But I comforted myself with the thought that this would just be a visit to admire the old town perched over a gorge and the fairy-tale landscape stretching below. To our surprise, we found ourselves in the midst of the summer feria. Floats full of costumed children wound their way up Ronda’s main street. Little boys in broad-brimmed hats and girls, displayed like dolls in their bright fiesta dresses, waved and tossed confetti at the crowd.

In Andalusia, a fair wouldn’t be a fair without flamenco. The sevillana is always the dance of choice. Couples whirl the night away, dancing under canvas tents. When you tire of dancing, there are wines and tapas, thoroughbred horses to admire and, for the children, carnival rides. We headed for the gaudy heart of the fair, where Gypsies sold balloons, roasted almonds and staffed the amusements.

We missed Seville and decided to make it the base for the rest of our trip. But the Ronda feria was such fun that two days later we headed for another--this time in austere Utrera, an ancient town that rises from the plains about 50 miles south of Seville. We had a double interest in going there. Utrera is also the hometown of La Fernanda, probably flamenco’s purist singer. She and her sister, Bernarda, are part of a flamenco dynasty that’s produced many of the finest artists of the century.

Fernanda had a special tent at the Utrera fair, but to be invited in you needed to be well connected. That morning we had called to ask our friend Evelina, a hard-core aficionado we’d met on a trip to Seville several years before, about visiting Fernanda’s tent. She warned us off.

We couldn’t complain. On a trip to Seville in 1990, we’d had the honor of spending a whole night with Fernanda. We’d sipped sherry with her on Evelina’s candle-lighted patio. Fernanda had talked, nonstop, from 9 p.m. until sunrise. She’d told stories, offered her history of flamenco, outlined her family tree. We’d listened intently, respectfully--catching one word in five. Through that long August night, Fernanda never once sang a note.

But at 7 the next morning, after we’d roamed the Macarena, looking for breakfast, and finally settled into a greasy spoon, a waitress recognized Fernanda. “I’ve seen your photograph, and I have a tape of yours,” she told Fernanda, and boldly asked for a song. Fernanda pushed aside her coffee cup, rapped her knuckles on the metal bar and sang an a cappella solea that could drive you to your grave.

It would have been greedy to hope for another such moment in one lifetime.

*

In our remaining days in Spain, we could manage only one more all-night festival. I consulted my friend Jill Snow, an American who married noted flamenco guitarist Pedro Bacan. If anyone could send us in the right direction, she could.

Over pumpkin soup, garlicky roast chicken and wine, we looked over my list of festivals. “You know,” Snow said, “the most promising festival isn’t even on this list. Pedro and his sister Inez will be at a festival in Las Cabezas de San Juan, and I have a feeling it’s going to be good. I’d even consider going to that festival myself.”

I knew of Pedro Bacan, and had one of his CDs. He was born into a family in Lebrija (55 miles south of Seville) that traces its flamenco lineage through four generations. Fernanda and Bernarda are aunts of his. Pedro had done his share of experimentation, fusing flamenco guitar with jazz and classical traditions. But in the right mood, with the right people, he could play puro with the best of them. (Bacan later died, in January, in an automobile accident, as he headed home from a flamenco performance.)

Until that week, I’d never heard of Inez. Just a few days before, Evelina had told me about her. “She was a timid housewife who never said a word. I’ve known her since she was a kid. Then one day, a few years ago, she opened her mouth and song poured out. Nobody, not even Pedro, ever had an inkling! Now people are saying she’s the best thing to happen to flamenco in years.” We didn’t need any urging. We decided to drive the 30 miles out from Seville--all of us, including Evelina and a bunch of flamenco fans. It was after midnight before our four cars reached Las Cabezas de San Juan, a small town built on two hills.

The festival was in full swing when we took our seats about 1 a.m. A stage had been erected in the corner of a small plaza. The audience of family, friends and assorted hard-core fans was squeezed together on rows of folding chairs. Evelina set out in that direction and was back soon with a bottle of sherry and shot glasses for everyone.

We silently toasted as the singer Carmen la Cantarota pronounced the final notes of her song. With her womanly figure zipped into a tight red and black dress, she was the very picture of flamenco. But it was the dancer Carmen Ledesma, her dark skin glowing against pink ruffles, who cut loose Gypsy-style, her knees and elbows a fury of angles as she danced.

As the night wore on, the dancing got funkier, with family and friends of every age and shape joining the professionals on stage. Luisa Torran, in her baggy housedress, was summoned to join her son Diego Margara for bulerias, then did a turn with the star of the evening, El Lebrijano.

It was late. A moon had risen over the ancient Moorish tower of Las Cabezas de San Juan. I downed the last bit of sherry in my cup and settled in. Marina, tired of running through the aisles, had fallen asleep in Frank’s arms as Pedro and Inez Bacan set off on the journey of their siguiriya. It is said that the siguiriya is best heard in the hour before dawn. Its landscape is the craggy plateau, bisected by a deep, slow-moving river. Its light is the tarnished silver of moonlight passing through clouds. Or the dim gold of a single flickering candle. From the brightly lighted little plaza, Inez and Pedro brought us to that place.

Her throaty voice pushed off into darkness, sure as the wind, dry as the finest sherry. His guitar rose and fell under her. Together they moved as a single performer. After the last note sounded, a perfect quiet filled the plaza, a quiet that followed us through the night, down the dark highway back to Seville and into the sticky Andalusian morning.

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GUIDEBOOK

In Step in Spain

Getting there: There’s connecting service only from LAX to Seville on Iberia, and LAX-Malaga on Iberia, Swissair and Lufthansa (all changing planes on the continent). Round-trip fares begin at about $1,090, including tax.

Where to stay: In Seville: Hotel San Gil (Calle Parras 28, telephone 011-34-5-490-6811, fax 011-34-5-490-6939) is an intimate hotel in the old Macarena area with modern rooms and a courtyard with orange trees. Rates: $123 per double in spring, $100 during summer. In Arcos de la Frontera: Cortijo Fain (Carretera de Algar, Km. 3, tel. 011-34-5-623-1396, fax 011-34-5-623-1396) has simple rooms in a charming 17th-century farmhouse; wonderful country cooking. Rates: $111 per double room.

Where to eat: In Seville: Modesto (Calle Cano y Cueto 5, local telephone 441-6811) has wonderful fried seafood and tapas; great for people-watching. Dinner for two, food only: $29-$37. Egnan~a Oriza (San Fernando 41, local tel. 422-7211) offers gourmet Spanish cuisine. Dinner for two, food only: $59-$74.

Seeing flamenco: Festival and event information can be obtained from the Centro Andaluza de Flamenco, Palacio Pemartin, Plaza de San Juan 1, Jerez, Spain; local tel. 634-9265 or 632-2711, fax: 632-1127 (English spoken). The Junta de Andalucia, Conserjia de Cultura in Jerez; local tel. 421-6349, fax 421-3307. Seville’s most puro flamenco bar is probably La Carboneria, Calle Levies 18; local tel./fax 456-3749. Arrive after 10 or 11 p.m. No cover charge. Flamenco center in Jerez: Centro Andaluza de Flamenco ( Palacio Pemartin, Plaza de San Juan 1; local tel. 635-5197) has a collection of recordings, videos and books.

For more information: Tourist Office of Spain, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 956, Beverly Hills, CA 90211; (213) 658-7188, fax (213) 658-1061.