La relación jazz-flamenco: Una visión panorámica a través de su historia (1932-90)

Abstract

During recent years, there has been a remarkable increase in academic publications on different musical manifestations involving elements from jazz and flamenco which began to appear at least from the late 1950s. This has come about in response to the lively Spanish scene, in which there began to emerge clearly new kinds of musicians capable of performing in both styles, with a deep knowledge on the flamenco music and skilled at improvising and playing using the melodic—harmonic vocabulary of jazz. The artistic output of these and other musicians has been labelled jazz-flamenco or flamenco-jazz, but the lack of academic consensus shows the need for more studies that help to define the contours of this potential hybridization. In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to examine the way jazz and flamenco have interacted since their first encounters in the twentieth century. This paper offers a wide but detailed discussion of the most important contacts occurred between jazz and flamenco in the period between the emergence of the Flamenco saxophone in 1932, and 1990, when the album Zyryab by Paco de Lucía with the collaboration of Chick Corea appeared. The way both styles have interacted during this period have been approached from different points of view, establishing a wide basis for new research that can help to define and preserve this new artistic reality.