FlamencoFlamenco music refers to a genre characterized by very precise and rapid musical passages. Flamenco dancing uses this music to inspire flourishes of audible footwork. Forming as a part of Spanish culture, Flamenco dancing was also shaped by the local Arabic, Gypsy, and Sub-Saharan African cultures. This energetic melding of several cultures helped to create this unique, dramatic, and energized dance.
Flamenco music, as an inspiration for the dance, contains many unique elements, including:
- Harmony: as opposed to most Western European and American music’s use of major and minor modes, flamenco uses the Phrygian mode much more frequently. As well, Flamenco typically uses descension rather than the much more common ascension of Western European and American music.
- Melody: there are several things that are found in flamenco melodies. The first is the presence of ranges smaller than a semitone known as microtonality. Another component of flamenco melodies is the smooth transitions from one note to another known as portamento.
- Short tessitura or range: limited to a sixth in range, the impression of greater range results from the microtonality of its musicians.
- The use of an enharmonic scale: the use of enharmonics, notes which are identical in name but spelled differently to crate microtonal intervalic differentation.
- Baroque ornamentaion: this ornamentation creates an expressive rather than solely aesthetic function.
