UC Riverside Department of Music presents:

The Black Voice Shouts in Flamenco

Nobody knows the day Flamenco was born. After developing for many centuries, it has become a collection of movements, sounds and steps of very different origins and pasts. Flamenco is the result of a development of associations which are continuously energized and enhanced by innovative contributions. It is a chronicle of dances that are dying and ignored and recent dances that emerge, remaining current as a portion of what had corresponded to its ancestors.

In the gypsy’s repertoire of dances, names of dances of black origin appear almost from the first moment in which the first news tells us about their adventures begin to appear. The gypsies not only incorporated into their repertoire of dances that they learned from their black neighbors, but they preserved their movements and even their names when the other Andalusians had already forgotten them.

I argue that flamenco scholars have mostly investigated the important participation of gypsies in the genesis of flamenco while ignoring the essential black contribution. Furthermore, I claim that blackness in flamenco is not African music transferred to Andalusian music culture and consequentially to flamenco but rather its adaptation developed by artists who comprehended how to renovate those remote creations and exhibit them to their residents.

The black slaves fought to keep their dances, and the Andalusians still do it today. The success of such songs, dances and rhythms was of extraordinary importance for Andalusian music, since it allowed these African elements to become part of what would become known as flamenco. This is how the black contribution to flamenco refuses to be ignored and continues to emit its presence through its shout in flamenco.

Part of the 2024-2025 Florence Bayz Music Series

The Florence Bayz Music Series offers online concerts, lectures, and presentations of academic research by Department of Music faculty, postdoctoral researchers, students, and international guest artists and scholars.

Paulo Chagas, coordinator.

Events are free and open to the public.

BIOS

Victoria Romano is a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the University of California, Riverside, where she previously earned her Master's in Ethnomusicology. Namely, she composes for film, theater, and collaborates on pop music arrangements for a wide array of artists and bands.

Dr. Ricardo Paz, born in Mexico City, is an accomplished guitarist who has performed extensively across Mexico and the United States, including notable appearances at institutions like Weber State University and on National Public Radio. Renowned for his precision and clarity, Street Magazine praised his performances as “a privilege to see and hear.” He serves as the Director of the Guitar Program at Phoenix Elementary School

District #1 and founded the Herrera Panther Guitar Ensemble. Dr. Paz holds a Bachelor’s degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a M.M. and D.M.A. from Arizona State University. He has received numerous awards, including scholarships from Arizona State University and the prestigious Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts. He is currently pursuing a PhD. In Musicology at the University of California, Riverside.

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