What is Flamenco?                                                           Flamenco is a folk art from Spain: in fact, a whole culture. Furthermore, it is indigen, not to all Spain but to just one part of it - the province of Andalusia. Historically,         it has always been the musical outlet of the poor and oppressed. It passed on by oral tradition which the individual artist uses as the basis for his own variations.                                         Flamenco is a tripartite art, involving singing, dance and the guitar simultaneously - as well as rhytmic punctuation (by hand-claps and other methods) that is considered an art form in its own right.   There are hundreds of different types of pieces within flamenco, which have generic names such as seguiriyas, soleares, alegrías, malagueñas, fandangos, zapateado, rondeña, etc.        They are defined by characteristic melodic, rhytmic, and harmonic structures; each has a characteristic mood and many are regional variants of essentially similar forms.                                        Origins                                                           It his though that what was to evolve into flamenco existed as far back as the 16 th century. The flamenco song (or cante, as it is known) involves a synthesis of at least four cultures:                                      the Gypsies                             the Moors, or Arabs                             the Jews                             the indigenous Andalusians                                                           The first three were thrown together by the general persecution that followed the expulsion of the Moors in 1492. Flamenco was eventually created by the fusion of the cante gitano with Andalusian folk music.    The accompaniment of the singing by the guitar is a later phenomenon altough it is recorded by travellers in Andalusia in the 18th century. Andalucian folk songs had in the past been accompanied by different    instruments including bandurria, violin and tambourine, but now the guitar predominated.                                                     Flamenco first became a public, performing art in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of the cafe cantante. The first cafe cantante opened in Seville in1842,       and attracted very little attention. But by the 1860s similar cafés were established not only in the major cities of Andalucia but as far as Madrid, and beyond. An audience of aficionados       from all classes and occupations watched the performance. They could expect to be entertained by a group comprising perhaps one or two singers, three or four female and two male dancers,      accompanied by two guitarists. The second half of the nineteenth century was one of the great ages of flamenco performance. The cafés brought together the Gypsy singers (cante gitano)       (cante gitano) and the Andaluz singers (cante andaluz) which became masters of many different forms of flamenco. The cafés also expanded the role of the guitar, which became tremendously popular.    They would employ a regular first and second guitarist, who had to know how to accompany many different forms of songs and dance, and be able to follow the styles of different singers.      While the singer remained the leading figure, the guitarist came to take a less subservient part as time went on. Good guitarists were in great demand, the competition was fierce. In their      efforts to outdo each other, the players introduced new techniques, and sometimes even resorted to tricks and outrageous acts of showmanship such as playing with a glove at one hand or      with the guitar held above their head. But the cafés fostered a series of fine guitarists culminating in Rámon Montoya (1880-1949), who was later to be the founder of the modern style of flamenco solo guitar.                                 The cafés cantantes' greatest days were over by the turn of the century, and by the 1910's they were in serious decline. The years uo to 1936 were to be the years of the theatrical presentation of flamenco,   of the "Opera Flamenca" and "Flamenco Ballet". Public taste turned toward a smoother type of voice, as typified by Antonio Chacón, toward the lighter Andalusian cantes. The leading professional singers    of the time, Chacón, Torre were some of the greatest in flamenco history. There was no real shortage of true artists in the dance either, and such guitarists as Javier Molina, Ramón Montoya, Manolo de    Huelva, and Perico del Lunar were all active.                                                         War in Europe and the aftermath of civil war in Spain made the 1940's an unpropitious decade for flamenco, with little opportunity for paid performance outside the Americas. However, a concern for true     flamenco began to reappear in the 1950's bringing with it opportunities for serious performance. Festivals in Cordoba, Jerez and Malaga in the late fifties and early sixties stimulated public interest and    encouraged a new generation of artists.                                                         The modern flamenco guitar