Cante Flamenco

Forms of flamenco expression
Toque (guitar)
Cante (song)
Baile (dance)

Foreigners often think flamenco is primarily a dance form.
However, the origin, and heart, of flamenco is the song (cante).
Although to the uninitiated, flamenco seems totally extemporaneous,
these cantes (songs) and bailes (dances) follow strict musical and poetic rules.
The verses (coplas) are often beautiful and concise poems,
and the style of the flamenco copla was often imitated by Andalusian poets.

Garcia Lorca is perhaps the best known of these poets.
In the 1920s he, along with the composer Manuel de Falla and other intellectuals,
crusaded to raise the status of flamenco as an art form and preserve its purity.

Diego Ramón Jiménez Salazar, known as El Cigala (Spanish for 'Norway lobster'),
is a famous Spanish Romani Flamenco singer. As he himself has said,
the nickname was given to him by three guitar players, Los Losada,
for being very thin, not by Camarón de la Isla as commonly believed.

One of his great albums is 2003's "Lágrimas Negras",
a cooperation with then 85 year old Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés.
The easy fusion of Cuban rhythms and flamenco vocals
made this record an international success.

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Bebo Valdés (born Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro in Quivicán, Havana, 9 October 1918)
is a Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger.
He was a central figure in the golden age of Cuban music,
led two famous big bands, and was one of the 'house' arrangers for the Tropicana Club.