Lorca’s legacy for flamenco music

In spite of the abrupt end and the fact that after the first Flamenco Song Contest when there were neither a second one nor singing schools, the contest is an indisputable part of the history of deep song that, since then, has the absolute recognition of world culture.

Andrés Soria, in the preface to Molina Fajardo’s book published by the University of Granada, praises Federico García Lorca’s collaboration on several fronts: He left a lecture of extraordinary value; he wrote a memorable book, the Poem of the Deep Song; he participated closely in the contest looking for singers, and deep song filled to a greater or lesser extent both his poetry and plays. Ricardo Molina and Antonio Mairena, in their study World and forms of flamenco singing, say: “It can be said without fear of error, that neither before nor after him was there a poet who has more deeply captured the world and the spirit of flamenco”. The writer and flamencologist Felix Grande, on the other hand, maintains that Lorca did not “suffer confusions when celebrating the essence of flamenco. Federico suffered certain confusions that prove little frequentation of the flamenco world, much improvisation and abundant candor in the accumulation of data, and this along with an undoubted musical, poetic and dramatic sense of smell to understand the basics”.

The lecture on February 1922 at the Centro Artístico ended as follows: “Do not let die the precious living jewel of the race, the immense millenary earth that covers the spiritual surface of Andalusia and meditate under the night of Granada on the patriotic significance of the project that some Spanish artists present”.

Home edition of Lorca's lecture on the Deep Song appearing by delivery.
Handwritten cover by Antonio Gallego y Burín of the conference “El Cante Jondo. Primitivo Canto Andaluz” signed by Federico García Lorca and preserved by Manuel de Falla. Originally, it was published in seven parts in the newspaper ‘Noticiero Granadino’ in February 1922. Courtesy of Manuel de Falla Archive.