The next flamenco

Juan VERDU, a graying bohemian with a lean, quixotic look, knows the secret places haunted by the ghosts of flamenco.

He strolls across the lively Plaza Santa Ana in the heart of this Spanish capital, an area once frequented by intellectuals, bullfighters and the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Past sidewalk cafes, he comes to Los Gabrieles, a historic bar and tourist stop famed for its walls of colorful ceramic mosaics.

But in the bar’s dank, abandoned basement, closed to the public, only memories remain of all-night flamenco jams held for the pleasure of celebrities such as Manolete, the legendary bullfighter who kept a bed here. In arched alcoves no bigger than jail cells, revelers carried on as if the sun never came up. Now illuminated in the dark by a lighter, humorous names of these hidden hideaways appear, one labeled “The Bull Ring,” another “The Infirmary.”

Today, Verdu says, in the time-honored tradition of lamenting the demise of flamenco as each era reshapes the art, the glory days are gone.

But later that evening, a new style of music pours from the nearby nightclubs of a modern Madrid that never sleeps. Here, young Spaniards still dance to sounds of flamenco, now a 21st century blend of rock guitars, Caribbean rhythms, syncopated clapping and gypsy intonations.

The new flamenco blares from car stereos on the streets of Spain and captures international acclaim on prestigious world stages, flourishing in forms as varied as the hip-hop fusion of the band Ojos de Brujo, the thrilling choreography of Maria Pages’ “Flamenco Republic” and the endless innovations of fabled guitarist Paco de Lucia. All are marked by the art’s irresistible rhythms and its primal emotional power.

Whether pure or progressive, traditional or fusion, it’s flamenco’s deeply rooted authenticity that has always resonated with listeners, perhaps never more so than in this era of global homogenization and cultures shaped by marketing campaigns.

South of Madrid in the region of Andalucia, where the music was born as a cry of the persecuted and the dispossessed, the essence of flamenco still permeates the culture that produced it, revealing itself in the most mundane details. It’s in the stylish hand gestures and emphatic clapping of everyday folks in casual conversation. It’s in the guttural calls of vendors selling fish at the farmers market. It’s in the rhythmic pattern tapped out by a diner at a sidewalk cafe.

From Granada to Cadiz, new artists are being nourished through hundreds of local festivals, fairs and competitions. The practice of passing the art down through generations in the same family lives on with the rise of flamenco’s brightest new star, singer Estrella Morente, the beautiful and respected daughter of veteran vocalist Enrique Morente, whose Moorish-style home overlooks Granada’s historic Alhambra. And amid Spain’s normally sterile pop music mainstream, a just-released album by Spanish pop star Alejandro Sanz prominently reflects his flamenco roots and includes a guest performance by the great de Lucia himself.

Driven by a growing international interest, especially from Japan and the United States, flamencos have never been busier, providing a powerful draw at annual gatherings such as the New York Flamenco Festival and Irvine’s New World Flamenco Festival.

In a sign of the world’s intensifying affair with flamenco, the World Music Expo, the premier showcase for the world music industry, chose the Andalusian capital of Sevilla as the site of this year’s five-day event, starting Oct. 22.

“It’s the big thing,” says Cindy Byram of the World Music Institute, which sponsors the highly anticipated New York festival. “There’s more interest now than ever in flamenco, and it just hasn’t peaked yet.”

None of this is particularly comforting to Verdu, who has tried without success to interest Madrid officials in restoring the Los Gabrieles bar as part of a historic flamenco zone.

“What I don’t understand, and what gets my goat, is that important musicians from all over the world go crazy for flamenco,” says Verdu, who hosts a flamenco radio show and manages the small flamenco label Tablao. “They get excited and become aficionados. But we have so many yokels in this country who still don’t give this music the respect it deserves. This is music that comes from the soul, that was born in poverty and has required tremendous sacrifices of artists who have kept it alive.”

The traditional search for pure expression continues, but for many of today’s artists, especially those inspired to change, the biggest struggle lies in finding acceptance from the flamenco world itself.

A TOUGH CROWD

In the early morning hours of a hot summer night, Ojos de Brujo (Wizard Eyes) takes the stage in an open-air amphitheater on a hill overlooking the ancient port city of Cartagena. The Barcelona-based group stirs up an unconventional mix of musical styles, hip-hop, salsa, funk, flamenco, a multiethnic fusion that seems suited to a city layered with remnants of successive civilizations -- Carthaginian, Roman, Muslim and Spanish Christian. Castles, churches and old fortifications dot the mountains surrounding the bay

Ojos de Brujo electrifies the night with a crack percussionist who studied in Cuba, a chorus singer who doubles as a sensual flamenco dancer, a scratcher on turntables, and a guitarist who also does a show-stopping break dance.

The crowd is here for a world music festival called Mar de Musicas, representing an eclectic sea of styles. Like young people everywhere, these fans are open to something new, and Ojos de Brujo delivers.

“By creating a mix with hip-hop and funk and other elements, what we’re doing is opening the minds of fans who may have trouble appreciating that nostalgic, traditional flamenco,” Ramon Gimenez, the break-dancing guitarist, explains in an interview before the show. “I’ve received messages on our Web site from fans who hated flamenco. They associated it with a culture of folklore, of tambourines and saying ‘ole’ all the time. And they didn’t want to have anything to do with that national stereotype. But thanks to Ojos de Brujo, they start lending an ear to flamenco and they learn to see it through another prism.”

Many in the young audience sing along with lead singer and songwriter Marina Abad, who gives the band its striking gypsy image with her ruffled gowns, turban-like headgear and piercing eyes. At 2 a.m., the roar for an encore -- otra! otra! -- must carry all the way to Istanbul.

But the warmth that greeted the band on Spain’s Mediterranean coast was nowhere to be found just five days earlier when they performed in the Atlantic port of Cadiz on the opposite coast, 300 miles and a world away.

In part, that’s because Spain is still a sort of confederation of competing cultures. In the northern region of Catalonia, the band’s home base, some consider flamenco a foreign art form. But in the south, flamenco is a flag of identity. It’s roots music, and some traditionalists see innovation (and newcomers) as an affront.

That’s particularly true within the so-called Flamenco Triangle, a southern Gypsy region that includes Cadiz, Sevilla and Jerez de la Frontera, all flamenco strongholds in Andalucia. A stunning number of flamenco artists come from this rich terrain, including the late singing idol Camaron de la Isla, whose memory is enshrined in his hometown like the Graceland of flamenco.

Standards are high here. And audiences, as Ojos de Brujo discovered, can be demanding, even cruel. There are those who believe that real flamenco is the exclusive domain of Andalucia and especially of Gypsies. A band of non-Gypsies from Barcelona would have a lot to prove.

Abad has dealt with these barriers before. Despite her gypsy attire, she is actually a paya, as non-Gypsies are known, and from Valencia.

The singer was puzzled, and clearly hurt, by the cold and critical silence from most of the crowd in Cadiz. “Why,” she wondered, “would people go to a show if they’re just going to stand there with their arms crossed?”

Gimenez, the only Gypsy in the band, reacted with a subtle tone of defiance.

“We run up against a lot of stereotypes out there,” the guitarist says. “Because normally people associate flamenco with Gypsies and Andalucia, when the truth is flamenco belongs to no one.”

Javi Zarco, the band’s manager, added a sarcastic parting shot before leaving Andalucia behind: “It’s the Bermuda Triangle of Flamenco.”

FLAMENCO SPINOFFS

For a genre steeped in tradition and “purity,” flamenco is a most malleable music. It has the capacity to absorb a variety of styles without losing its identity, or at least its flavor. Rooted in the cultures of Jews, Moors and Gypsies, flamenco is like a fountainhead, constantly yielding new fusions, creating a dialectic between past and future that keeps the genre energized.

Today, there’s a flamenco spinoff to suit almost every taste. There’s the flamenco jazz of Chano Dominguez, flamenco chill of Chambao, flamenco pop of Las Ninas, flamenco salsa of Ketama, the flamenco rock of Elbicho, and even the flamenco-billy of Martires del Compas.

Americans normally associate flamenco with dancing, especially flashy footwork and melodramatic matador poses. But nowadays, it is growing as three distinct fields -- dance, song and guitar -- each with its own stars and styles.

“Before, all three parts of flamenco moved forward as a block,” explains dancer-choreographer Pages, speaking calmly in her dressing room moments before closing night of her company’s recent run on Madrid’s Gran Via. “Today, they each have their own process. And that is opening an enormous world of development for flamenco.”

In the biggest surprise of the year, the hottest flamenco-related record in Spain is by the unlikely duo of aging Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes, who lives in Sweden, and long-haired Gypsy singer Diego El Cigala, who renders startling interpretations of Cuban standards in “Lagrimas Negras.”

Yet for purists, true flamenco can’t be found on sales charts or even at popular tablaos, the flamenco venues that often cater to tourists. The quest for the real thing must lead to the source. Experiencing the music’s deepest and most spontaneous expression can be elusive, though, even in the tablaos of Andalucia.

“They’re OK, but you won’t really feel flamenco atmosphere there,” says Francisco Benavent of the Centro Andaluz de Flamenco in Jerez. “You feel it when you become a part of it, even as a spectator. That’s the difference. There’s flamenco atmosphere, and there’s something more.”

A WAY OF LIFE

Jerez is an all-day ride from Cartagena. This is the town that calls itself the cradle of flamenco, home to Spain’s only center devoted to the study of the art form, Benavent’s Centro Andaluz, whose collection of recordings includes wax cylinders more than 100 years old.

In this gritty provincial city, famous also for its sherry and its show horses, flamenco is fused into the fabric of daily life. In the gypsy barrios of Santiago and San Miguel, flamenco is a way of life, the soundtrack to baptisms, weddings and Passion plays at Easter time.

Instead of honoring mayors or military men, many Jerez monuments pay tribute to great flamenco singers. In the plaza outside the Church of Santiago, teenagers on scooters zoom past the busts of the legendary Terremoto and Sordera.

For the town’s traditionalists, the rules of what makes good flamenco are also cast in stone. Some purists complained when Paco de Lucia crossed his legs to play the guitar or when he added the Peruvian cajon to the traditional guitar-only instrumentation, though today, the cajon is a standard part of most flamenco groups.

Don’t try to tell Parrilla de Jerez, an esteemed traditional guitarist, that flamenco was not the exclusive creation of Gypsies. The stern but likable old man will tell you the experts are wrong with all that melting-pot business.

“It’s clear that most of the great flamenco was made by Gypsies,” Parrilla says in his modest Jerez home. “And those who aren’t Gypsy, most can’t keep the rhythm, whether singing or dancing or playing guitar.”

For a newcomer, and especially a non-Gypsy, seeking respect as an artist in Jerez can be an impossible quest. Yet that was the goal of Maria Bermudez, a Mexican American dancer from Los Angeles, when she moved there almost 15 years ago. She knew she could master the technical aspects anywhere. But to grasp the soul of flamenco, she was convinced she had to live it.

“I made it my choice to go to the source, to the most difficult place,” she says while on a stop in Los Angeles recently. “Everybody said, ‘Forget it.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to show you.’

She claps her hand with a crisp flamenco snap, to accentuate her determination.

“Then I got a pie in my face.”

Bermudez says she was sabotaged at first. She suspects rivals ripped her dress and loosened her heels before shows. At one time, she says, she actually felt physically threatened. But her perseverance -- and stubbornness -- paid off. This summer, she led a group of top flamenco traditionalists from Jerez in a show called Sonidos Gitanos, presented at the Ford Amphitheatre.

“For me to artistically direct a company of gitanos from Jerez -- me! -- I had to pay a lot of dues,” she says. “I needed to make myself worthy for them to say, ‘Ole.’ ”

IS IT PROGRESS?

Bermudez found a soul mate among the Gypsies in her adopted town. Pele de los Reyes, her husband of 10 years, was an aspiring singer-songwriter who would also have to confront flamenco’s conservative forces, including his family.

“In Jerez, you either sang traditional or you didn’t sing,” says Pele, who had worked as a butcher in slaughterhouses. “I think that’s why I kept quiet for 20 years.”

He and guitarist Francisco “Curro” Carrasco, also from a long flamenco lineage, co-founded the flamenco-rock group Navajita Platea in 1992. He recalls the day he and his wife played the group’s first album for his father, who speaks the gypsy dialect called calo and favors the so-called primitive flamenco style, the most traditional.

In one song, Pele declares his independence by calling himself a Gypsy American who likes to have “Coca Cola and hot dogs (perritos calientes) ... and a Winston between my teeth.”

His father, a flamenco songwriter in his own right, reacted honestly: “I personally don’t like it, son, but I’m sure that this is what people want.”

Navajita Platea went on to have big hits with remarkably appealing pop melodies, such as “Noches de Bohemia.” Pele also continued writing songs with a social message, such as “Un Grito al Aire,” a protest against racial discrimination.

“What flamenco needs most is to update its themes because we’re sick and tired of hearing the same lyrics all our lives,” says Pele, who today cruises around town in his vintage VW bug with the top down. “If you always sing the same thing, it all becomes technique. But flamenco is more than that. It’s living in the moment.”

The couple and their struggles are the subject of a documentary by Hollywood producers Aaron Gross and Marisa Lloreda Catlin, who spent weeks in Jerez capturing the flamenco atmosphere in the town’s streets, tablaos and penas, or cultural centers.

During the making of the film, Bermudez says she discovered the true motivation behind her mission to succeed in Jerez. Her older brother, Alfonso, had also been a flamenco dancer who moved to Spain during the Franco years, bucking his father’s disapproval. But his career was cut short when he died of cancer in 1980 at age 29.

Bermudez realized she seeks to “continue my brother’s journey.” Through her dancing, she connects with “the pain he must have been in.” At rare times when she dances, she even feels his presence as her “duende,” the mystical flamenco muse.

“My journey all the way to Jerez showed me that I had to get in touch with deep stuff,” she says. “This is one of the things about flamenco that attracts people. Whatever your background, whatever your country, whatever your culture, there’s always that cry behind it.”

IN THEIR BACKYARD

Back in Madrid, Verdu breaks for lunch at Casa Patas, a popular restaurant and flamenco nightclub. In a dining room decorated with hanging ham legs and portraits of flamenco figures of yesteryear, he sips a glass of Sangre de Toro (Blood of the Bull) wine, then lights up a cigar.

“People kill to get in this place at night,” he says. “But it’s mostly for tourists.”

Afterward, Verdu makes one last stop on his flamenco rounds -- a store that specializes in flamenco records, books and clothing, optimistically named Flamenco Lives.

A sole customer is browsing the CDs on this hot afternoon. He’s an American named Don Martin, a golf pro and working guitarist from Florida.

“I’m a flamenco-puro kind of guy,” says Martin, dressed in a red golf cap, shorts and sneakers with no socks. “But I need someone to show me how to get the rhythms right, to be more authentic.”

Spaniards are friendly, he says, but he’s surprised how little they know about their own scene.

“You can be a block away from a flamenco tablao and ask somebody for directions,” Martin says. “But they have no idea, and it’s right around the corner.”

In fact, it’s everywhere.

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Windows into an expansive world

Here are some resources for more information on flamenco culture, history and artists:

www.flamenco-world.com: Excellent bilingual site with extensive articles, interviews and reviews.

www.elflamencovive.com: A selection of CDs, books and clothing from Madrid retailer El Flamenco Vive, but shipping is costly. In Spanish.

https://caf.cica.es: The official site of the research center Centro Andaluz de Flamenco, with a glossary of Gypsy terms and searchable databases of thousands of books and recordings. In Spanish.