The Flamenco Project

Before I left home, I got an information sheet about my school, CEIP Maestro Juan Apresa (CEIP stands for Colegio de Educacion Infantil y Primaria…I trust you can translate all those words pretty easily), including contact information and a tiny blurb about Arcos. At the bottom there was a line titled “special information;” following this designation was “This school has a flamenco project.” This, as might not surprise you, was exciting for me. But what would a “flamenco project” entail?

As it turns out, almost no one at Juan Apresa is completely sure either. Most of the teachers have little knowledge or interest in flamenco; one teacher told me she actually has a strong dislike for flamenco singing (I nodded politely, meanwhile thinking, “Are you kidding me, lady? This stuff is incredible!”) The flamenco project is basically a pet project of one teacher, Paco, whose passion happens to be all things flamenco. Paco is an elderly man—old enough, in fact, that he should be retired by Spanish regulations. He stays on at Juan Apresa simply because he enjoys teaching and because he wants to impart his love of flamenco to his students. He has set up flamenco guitar lessons after school for interested students and is teaching his fifth-graders the different categories of flamenco songs (I got overwhelmed by looking at his worksheet of classifications—there were at least forty different types of flamenco music listed).

Today, though, was a special treat. Or, at least, a special treat for Paco and me and perhaps a few of those students who are as in love with flamenco as we are. Paco invited a guitarist and singer to come perform for the fifth- and sixth- graders. I sat in the back, completely enthralled (and, at times, half-heartedly admonishing noisy students, though I doubt the look of utter joy on my face did much to intimidate them or assert my authority). The singer was a woman in her late twenties who was very beautiful as she was introducing songs, but whose face contorted with pain when she began singing. She also incorporated all the flamenco hand movements and general body language with her singing. After a half hour of Jenna-paradise, the woman announced that they were about to perform their last song. This was to be, she said, a “buleria.” She sang, she sang, and then…she danced. She got up and did the buleria steps. And I recognized them. She did the llamada, and I recognized it, the signature buleria “tiro-tan” as my dance teacher calls it, and I knew it, and the entrance and the exit…the whole sequence was familiar to me. I was beyond excited. Why? Because I am not a dancer. I am not a person who knows much about flamenco. But this was something, a small piece of the enormous puzzle of Andalusian culture that I now know how to place.