Music of Andalusia

The Music of Andalusia encompasses a range of traditional musical genres which originate in the territory of Andalusia in southern Spain. The most famous are copla and flamenco, the latter being sometimes used as a portmanteau term for various regional musical traditions within Andalusia. Andalusia has a rich and thriving musical scene which draws from its own musical traditions as well as from external influences such as salsa and blues rock music.

Andalusia was probably the main route of transmission of a number of Near-Eastern musical instruments used in classical music; the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara and naker from naqareh. Further terms fell into disuse in Europe; adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal,^[1] the balaban, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,^[2] the xelami from the sulami or fistula(flute or musical pipe),^[3] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,^[4] the gaita from the Rhaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,^[5] geige (German for a violin) from ghichak^[6] and the theorbo from the tarab.^[7]

According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.^[8] Trend ^[9] acknowledges that the troubadors derived their sense of form and the subject matter of their poetry from Andalusia. The hypothesis that the troubador tradition was created, more or less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was also championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early twentieth-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis.^[10] Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."^[11] Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited

Andalusia is a modern autonomous community of Spain that is best known for flamenco, a form of music and dance that is mostly performed by Andalusian people.

Improvised flamenco songs of ancient Andalusian origin are called cante jondo, and are characterized by a reduced tonal ambiance, a strict rhythm, baroque ornamentation and repetition of notes. Cante jondo is sung by a single singer (cantaor).