“After decades of flamenco fusions and mestizo mélanges, Spain is probably in dire need of some raw, honest roots music […] Folk group Vigüela have the ultimate credentials.” 

Since I read these words by Chris Moss in Songlines, it has been in my mind the idea of how needed it is to disseminate the traditional music from the center of Spain. A music that is so unknown, not only abroad (that is logical, as very few efforts have been done so far to explain it for the international audiences), but also very neglected inside our country.

I won’t hide how much perseverance this vision made us develope, but also what a pleasure is for us to share it: the music from this land, from this landscape, that inspired such big epitomes of the creation of histories, from Don Quijote to some of the most inspired images of Pedro Almodovar films. In the last months Juan Antonio Torres and me are creating some videos with a didactic approach and now we wanted to share with you this one, made specially for not Spanish people, that explains, from the basic, the style that is the most popular: jota. Here you are the video and, below, you’ll find some concepts that will be useful if you want to delve more.

Concept of style vs. repertoire

This concept must be explained using a term that would like a kind of opposite: the repertoire. Style is not a song, it is not a corpus of songs. It is a language of communication through music.

Style has some rules, codes, ingredients, let’s say. When performing style, the rehearsal is not present. The performers use the code to create a conversation. It is like when you speak English: you don’t know the conversation from before and you don’t make rehearsal of the conversation. You just talk with the other and you wouldn’t say the same things if you were talking with other people in any other moment. It is a conversation between all the people involved. What will be said, is not predetermined. So you have to pay attention to what is been said. Also the moment to end is not set in advance. Style is fluid. Anyone who speaks the language / knows the code of the style can participate. That’s what it makes it so thrilling.

But, in the opposite, the repertoire concept is prefixed. Songs are premade. Only the ones who know the song can participate. The song has the lyrics, melodies… already predefined. In traditional music in Spain sometimes it is used the term “jota of the village X”. And what is performed under this name is like a still picture of the stream of a river. The style is the stream, moving and unpredictable. The repertoire is the still picture. Moreover, that denomination of “jota XXXX whatever name” is most of the times product of a deliberate creation in order to have something to rehearse and to put in a stage.

Other styles

Jota is one of the styles. You find jota all over Spain in the peninsule and also in the Islands. It is probably the most disseminated and popular of the styles. The others are: