There are perhaps two things which immediately seem to come to people’s minds on the first hearing of flamenco: unusual melodic lines and the timbre of the singer’s voice. The crystalline tone developed and favoured in the conservatory or in many types of popular music is not usually the type of voice favoured in flamenco.
Due to mixing of various cultures, flamenco has, to Anglo-Saxon ears, strange and perhaps oriental sounds. Unlike other western European music, some flamenco melodies have smaller harmonic divisions between the notes. In other words, a European musical scale contains seven notes known as tones; in a European scale there are a maximum number of twelve notes, including all of the semi-tones. However, flamenco has smaller subdivisions which give the melodic lines a strange eastern quality. This aspect has been commented upon by classical composers – Manuel de Falla actively examined the musical structure of flamenco. Despite tireless attempts at transcribing the melodies of the “cante” he had to admit defeat: flamenco contains “microtones”, that is, divisions between musical notes that are smaller than those normally encountered in European music. The melodic structure of flamenco has more in common with Arabic and Indian melodies. This view is however in question in an interesting article by Sabas de Hoces Bonavilla in the Revista del Folklore.
Another characteristic commented upon by Manuel de Falla was the constant repetition of one note in the “cante”, often accompanied by a kind of ornamental “vibrato”, or wavering of the note. This same “wavering” characteristic was (to my mind) overused during the “opera flamenco” period to the extent that the ornamentation became more important than the “feel”, or basis of the particular “cante” being sung. It is for this same reason that many flamenco “purists” reject such ostentatious ornamentation that so characterized the “opera flamenco”.
This reference to Opera Flamenco serves to remind me that as in any other art form, in flamenco there are fads and fashions and that these fads and fashions are later judged as positive developments or negative developments.
