Iller Bedogni

Collection:

Flamenco

To be flamenco is to have another flesh, another soul, other passions, another skin, other instincts, other desires; it is to have another vision of the world, with great meaning; destiny in the conscience, music in the nerves, independent pride, joy with tears; it is pain, life and love that darken.
To be flamenco is to hate routine and the method that castrates; to immerse oneself in song, wine and kisses; to transform life into a subtle, capricious and free art; without accepting the shackles of mediocrity; to gamble everything in a gamble; to savour, to give oneself, to feel, to live!

Iller Bedogni

The FLAMENCO

Even today, at the dawn of the 21st century, the Gitano people represent the main source from which information on the true origin of Flamenco can be drawn.
Spain could be defined as a land that was already home to multiple ethnic forms in the 1600s, contributing to the fusion of melodies and rhythms that the Gypsies themselves, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, undertook to shape in order to recreate a new musical identity.

Flamenco thus arose from the fusion of Moorish, Hispanic and Afro rhythms, with reference to the African population that increased in number due to the slave trade to the American colonies, giving rise to Amulatada music (Hispanised African roots), and from the folklore of the Spanish colonies overseas with Cuban music, which fed Spain with the rhythms and gestures of the Habanera (which influenced the Gypsy Tango), the Guajira and the Milonga, generating the group of styles known as ‘Ida y Vuelta’ (round trip).

Spain is not humiliated in the face of countless imported influences, because the Gypsy people, who still today represent a substantial part of Spanish society, represent the hand that has been able to knead what was musical in Andalusia.
For obvious reasons, Flamenco finds its true paternity in the Gypsies; its expression reflects the condition of this nomadic people who, in order to achieve equality within society, were forced to sacrifice their identity.
In the chant, a form of expression that sees the Andalusian variant of Castilian, we find the specifically gypsy malaise, in which joy, sorrow, death, love are encompassed, united in the ‘Duende’ (fruit of the gypsy soul’s aching jolt).

With the spectacularisation of flamenco, the gypsy complaint is recognised, remunerated and acclaimed.

In the Cafés, flamenco artists performed, sharing the stage with bolero artists, which triggered a current of exchange and borrowing, from which the first choreographic solutions and technical characteristics emerged.
Today, flamenco can be recognised in theatres as always new, because it is always capable of dialogue and integration with new trends, as happened with Jazz, Rock, classical guitar and Blues.
It can therefore be considered as an art that is born and evolves thanks to ‘contamination’.