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Assignment: Spain's flamenco on the edge

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Spain's flamenco on the edge

22/12/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - Assignment, Spain's flamenco on the edge

Can Spain's most iconic live music and dance recover from the pandemic?

How Spain's most iconic music and dance tradition has suffered as a result of the Covid lockdowns, and what performers and club owners are doing to revive its fortunes

To many, the passionate music and dance known as flamenco is an important marker of Spanish identity, and perhaps even synonymous with it. So much so, that Unesco has recognised the art form as part of the world’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. Yet its place within the country of its birth is both more complicated – and more precarious - than this might suggest.

During the Covid lockdowns, a third of all flamenco venues closed down, and with many yet to reopen, training opportunities for new artists remain in short supply. The pandemic has also exacerbated the struggle of many singers and dancers to make ends meet. Meanwhile, to the outrage of purists, other practitioners see a future in fusing traditional flamenco with new, more commercially viable genres, such as pop and hip-hop. Still others see flamenco as a stereotype, and unhelpful to their country’s modern image.

The BBC’s Madrid correspondent Guy Hedgecoe takes us on a colourful journey, reflecting on flamenco’s intriguing origins among the downtrodden folk culture of southern Spain, its difficult present, and its possibly uncertain future.

Presenter: Guy Hedgecoe
Producer: Mike Gallagher

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Spain's flamenco on the edge

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