(Sp.: ‘deep song’).
A generic term encompassing the purest and oldest strata of songs of the flamenco tradition, which originated in the provinces of Andalusia in southern Spain. While cante hondo (or, in its aspirated, Andalusian form, jondo) refers, more appropriately, to a particular vocal timbre, the term has been used erroneously to designate a form. Hondo connotes a deep or profound feeling with which the singer expresses his or her innermost thoughts, emphasizing the tragic side of life.
Cante hondo includes the following song types: cañas, carceleras, deblas, livianas, martinetes, polos, saetas, serranas, siguiriyas, soleares and tonás. Although they vary in style and structure, they constitute an important sub-category of flamenco known as cante grande and are further distinguished by their textual stanzas, melodic strophes, microtonalism, tempo, metre, phrase lengths, ornamentation, restricted tessitura and characteristic vocal timbre. Several cante (i.e. the caña, polo and soleá) enjoyed an independent evolution while others derived from the basic hondo forms (i.e. debla, liviana, martinete, sigueriya and saeta from the toña). Several also bear similarities in melodic and formal structure, literary content and manner of performance. Further subdivisions can be found, for example, among the martinete, which includes two types, the natural and redoblado, and the soleá (pl. soleares) which comprises three forms: grande, corta and soleariya. Moreover, many of the songs exist in both their original and modern versions. Songs that are accompanied by the guitar may be danced, but unaccompanied songs (indicated as a palo seco) are not. Unaccompanied songs include the carcelera, debla, martinete, saeta and toná. The cantaores (singers) rarely accompany themselves. The tocaores (guitarists), who usually provide introductions to establish the mood for a particular song, enhance the performances with both harmonic and heterophonic accompaniments. At times they add falsetas (extended solo interludes) between verses. There is an important contrast between the guitar part and the metrical and tonal freedom of the singer.
Except for the saeta, a traditional performance of cante hondo, as succinctly described by N.C. Miller (1978), begins with
the temple, a guitar introduction or prelude during which the singer accompanies the guitar by modulations of his voice, often without the use of words other than the repetition of ‘ay’ (or ‘leli’, rendered as long vocalizations or melismas). Secondly, we find a planteo or tercio de entrada, the introduction of the song itself, which is then followed by the tercio grande, the main part of the cante. Next comes a tercio de alivio which lessens the emotional quality of the preceding phrase. Finally, there is often a cambio or remate, the closing of the song with a thematic variation. This phase may be substituted by a macho, the personal refrain or individual touch that the singer gives the traditional lyrics. This series of phrases can be interrupted at any point by various exclamations which, when used to denote sorrow, are called quejíos (‘laments’).
In addition, microtonal alterations on certain notes of the scale (other than the tonic or dominant) are quite deliberate. The melodies, generally confined to a hexachord, emphasize certain vocal pitches. Vocal ornamentation is sometimes profuse and complicated, particularly at phrase and cadential endings, and generally highlights certain words. The descending Phrygian cadence (A, G, F, E) figures prominently.
Except for the saeta, audience participation is important: shouts of ‘olé’ express both approval and encouragement. Such characteristics were also common to the music of major Arab centres in North Africa, at least until the mid-20th century. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia groups of musicians believe that their repertory, referred to collectively as música andaluza, originated in southern Spain. A possible link between the word ‘olé’, a transformation of ‘Allah’, and the Arabic term ‘lelí’ suggests the earlier Moorish influence. Yet the most stringent arguments linking these musical traditions lie in their manner of performance rather than their musical structure.
For almost three centuries, from the time the Gypsies arrived in southern Spain during the latter half of the 15th century to the latter decades of the 18th, they intermingled their musical traditions with the native Andalusian folk music. It was during this lengthy period that the initial phase of cante hondo began to take shape. The period from the late 18th century until the end of the 19th marked its flowering. Thereafter cante hondo began to decline in popularity. Cante flamenco now came to designate the more modern ‘Gypsified’ form of cante hondo that was current in Andalusia, and which scholars prefer to call aflamencada to explain it more clearly.
In Granada in June 1922 Falla, Zuloaga and García Lorca, who established the Centro Artístico de Granada, organized a cante hondo competition intended to stimulate the perpetuation of the ancient songs of Andalusia which had begun to be forgotten. The event attracted a number of singers and musicians, among them the great Manolo Caracol [née Ortega], whose memorable renditions of the cante hondo tradition gave renewed impetus to its revival. The unsigned pamphlet accompanying the event was written by Falla, who suggested that cante hondo was influenced by two historical events: Spain's adoption of Byzantine liturgical chant and the Moorish occupation. With the arrival of the Gypsies in southern Spain, the intermingling of their music with elements of Byzantine chant and Moorish music brought about the primitive cante hondo. Moreover, it should be mentioned that García Lorca, who opposed the divisions cante hondo and cante flamenco, was influenced by Falla's opinions.
Kahn maintained that cante hondo was a corruption of the Hebrew word yom tov (‘feast day’, ‘good day’), and that the Jewish conversos (‘converts to Christianity’) designated as cante flamenco those religious melodies which their co-religionists brought to the Netherlands and Flanders, where they could sing them without fearing the Inquisition. He further cited names of liturgical pieces, among them the famous Kol-nidre tune, which he believed were similar to the siguiriya gitana, fandanguillo and saeta. This connection has continued to be made on aural rather than musicological grounds, and it is particularly for this reason that García Matos, a renowned authority on flamenco, discounted Kahn's theory.
M. de Falla: El ‘cante jondo’: canto primitivo andaluz (Granada, 1922); repr. in Escritos sobre música y músicos (Madrid, 3/1972), 137–62
G.M. Vergara: El cante jondo (Madrid, 1922)
M.J. Kahn [Medina Azara]: ‘Cante jondo y cantares sinagogales’, Revista de occidente, viii/88 (1930), 53–84
M. García Matos: ‘Cante flamenco: algunos de sus presuntos orígenes’, AnM, v (1950), 97–124
J. Amaya: Gitanos y cante jondo (Barcelona, 1957)
Talismán: Teoría del cante jondo (Granada, 1958)
J.M. Caballero Bonald: Diccionario del cante jondo (Madrid, 1963)
E. Neville: Flamenco y cante jondo (Málaga, 1963)
E. Halffter: ‘L'influenza oriental sulla musica europea, ii: “Cante jondo”’, La musica occidental e le civiltà musicale extraeuropee, ed. E. Gavin and others (Florence, 1971), 157–64
A. Carrillo Alonso: La poesía del cante jondo (Almería, 1978)
F. Grande: ‘Manuel de Falla y el flamenco: notas sobre el Concurso de cante jondo en Granada’,Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, no.331 (1978), 40–74
N.C. Miller: García Lorca's ‘Poema del Cante Jondo’ (London, 1978)
F. García Lorca: ‘Cante jondo’, ‘Arquitectura del cante jondo’, Obras completas, ed. A. del Hoyo, iii (Madrid, 1986), 195–216, 217–22
J. de Persia: I concurso de cante jondo: Edición conmemorativa 1922–1992 (Granada, 1992)
T. Mitchell: Flamenco Deep Song (New Haven, CT, 1994)
J.B. TREND/ISRAEL J. KATZ