First Dutch Flamenco Biennial

In 1922 poet Frederico Lorca en composer Manuel de Falla organised the Concurso de Cante Jondo, the first official flamenco contest. They wanted to save ‘the art, the cry of the Andalusian people and the gypsies’ from extinction. In 2006 their fears would seem to have been unfounded. Flamenco is experiencing a golden age, both in Spain and abroad. New York, London, Berlin and Paris all have their own flamenco festival. Amsterdam and Utrecht are about to join them.

This flamenco biennial marks the beginning of a resounding flamenco festival tradition in the Netherlands. In seven days, with no less than 17 performances, films, documentaries, workshops and masterclasses, this festival marks the fact that in the past few years a new generation of artists is creating a new flamenco idiom from the roots of the art. Their blend of flamenco may sometimes be idiosyncratic, but it is always the reflection of a personal quest. The Dutch Flamenco Biennial intends to chart this development. The festival presents flamenco as an open and contemporary artform, in which tradition resounds richly and inevitably, but which also gives room to new developments.

No artform has such a delicate relation to its tradition as flamenco. The festival has no preconceptions about what is or what is not true flamenco. We concur with Lorca, for whom ‘real flamenco’ was natural music, ‘which is like the crow of the cock, like the rustling of poplars, like the murmur of the waves’. Good music knows no time or place. It moves whom it must move.

Ernestina van de Noort (Foundation PerpetuumM)
Maarten Rovers (World culture centre RASA)