Spain is a nation of intense regional identities, with 17 autonomous administrative regions (and two autonomous cities) reflecting the country's medieval history as a peninsula of small, competing kingdoms. Spain's modern borders were established in 1492, and in 1496 Queen Isabella commissioned the first collection of Spanish songs—known as the "Cancionero de Palacio"—partly to help bind her newly unified kingdom together with a common songbook. Yet Spain's various regions retain distinct cultural flavors all their own, to the extent that the Basque country and Catalonia each boast their own seperate languages. Spanish music too is intensely regional. The music of Galicia has more in common with its Celtic cousins in Ireland and France than with the unique Basque music right next door. While the traditional and pop music of Madrid is often poles apart from that of the city's longtime rival, Barcelona. And, though Andalucia's fiery flamenco tradition has been exported to every corner of the Iberian Peninsula, subtle local variations still persist.
Flamenco is Spain's signature musical export, and is as close to a "national music" as the nation comes. But despite its ubiquity, Flamenco is deeply rooted in the Southern province of Andalucia, where the city of Granada was the last Islamic stronghold to fall to the Christian reconquest in 1492. Flamenco was born out of the ashes of this conquest, and bore the mixed heritage of the refugees from the very beginning: blending together Arabic, Jewish, Christian and Gitano (or Gypsy) musical traditions. Over the next few centuries, the music would become the almost exclusive province of the gitanos, who would preserve and develop the tradition into the music we know today.
Rumba catalana is a popular style that's similar to flamenco, but not technically part of the flamenco canon. As it's name suggests, rumba catalana originated in Catalonia, specifically Barcelona. In that port city musicians had access to all sorts of new imports not yet available to their peers in Madrid or the interior. When the rumba and other Afro-Cuban styles arrived from Cuba in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Catalan performers adapted them to the flamenco format (swiping the Cuban cajon, or "rumba box," in the bargain) and made it their own. Though often dismissed by aficionados as "fake" flamenco, rumba catalana remains wildly popular to this day. Sevillanas are even more intimately related to flamenco, and most flamenco performers have at least one classic sevilliana in their repertoire. The style originated as a Medieval Castilian folk dance, called the seguidilla, which was slowly "flamencoized" during the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, the lively couples dance is popular in most parts of Spain, but most often associated with the city of Sevilla's famous Easter feria
Another popular style with its roots in Castile is the zarzuela, a light comic opera form. The zarzuela originated in the mid-17th century as a court theater to entertain the Spanish nobility. But the genre's broad humor, melodrama and lively music, soon became a popular form of street entertainment for the people of Madrid. The later half of the 19th century was the golden age of the zarzuela, and such composers as Francisco Asenjo Barbieri were as prolific and popular as their English contemporaries, Gilbert and Sullivan. The zarzuela thrived into the first decades of the 20th century, but was a spent force by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil war. Though full-scale zarzuelas are still occasionally produced today, the form lives on mostly through its songs, many of which have passed into the popular vernacular.
One of the most popular and successful folk styles is the jota, from the Northeastern region of Aragon. Like flamenco and sevillanas, jotas are now performed in every corner of Spain. The jota is a buoyant, uptempo song form accompanied by dancing, hand percussion (usually castanets or tambourines) and instruments that vary regionally.
North and West of Aragon lie the Basque regions of Spain, which have a unique and ancient music all their own, including such sui generis instruments as the txalaparta (a kind of musical wooden plank) and the alboka (a goat's horn clarinet). Basques on both sides of the Pyrennies have been known for their singing since the Middle Ages, and a resurgence of Basque cultural nationalism at the end of the 19th century led to the establishment of large Basque-language choirs that helped preserve their language and songs. Even during the persecution of the Francisco Franco era (1939–1975), when the Basque language was outlawed, folk songs and dances were defiantly preserved in secret, and today both traditional and pop sounds flourish in the Basque country of Spain.
Next door to the Basque country, in the far Northwest of Spain, is Gallicia, the country's last remaining Celtic stronghold, and it's music bears a strong Celtic stamp. The region's signature instrument is the gaita, a bagpipe that resembles the classic Highland bagpipe of Scotland. This instrument is often accompanied by a snare drum called the tamboril, and played in processional marches familiar to anyone in the Celtic diaspora. Other instruments include the requinta, a kind of fife; as well as harps, fiddles, and the zanfona, or hurdy-gurdy. The music itself runs the gamut from uptempo muinieras, which resemble lively jigs to stately marches.
Liturgical music also has a long history in Spain. The Catholic Church has been an enormous force in Spanish history, and on Spanish music, as well. One uniquely Spanish form of liturgical music was the "mozarabic chant"—a version of Latin plainsong that grew up seperately from the Gregorian chant used by the rest of the medieval Church. First documented by Isidore, Archibishop of Seville in 589 AD, the rite continued to evolve after the Muslim invasions of the 8th century. Christians living under Muslim rule (known as "Mozarabs") adapted elements of Arab and Moorish music and song into their worship. The result was a monophonic, a cappella chant that relied heavily on melismas and Arabic modal scales. As the Muslim kingdoms of Spain slowly fell to the Christian reconquest, the mozarabic rite was supplanted by the standard Roman rite and was finally banned by Pope Gregory VII in the 11th century. Though Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros published a Mozarabic Missal and Breviary in 1500 and 1502, the attempted revival was heavily influenced by the music of his day, and the original version of the music is largely lost to history.
Spain is also the home of a burgeoning pop music industry, which began to take off in the 1980s with la movida—a cultural reawakening that shook off the long, dull years of Franco's fascist rule. This era produced an explosion of new art, film and music that reverberates to this day. Once derivative and out-of-step with Anglo-American musical trends, contemporary Spanish pop is as risky and cutting-edge as any scene in the world, and encompasses everything from shiny electronica and Eurodisco, to homegrown blues, rock, punk, ska, reggae and hip-hop—not to mention all of the many living Spanish musical traditions that still manage to find radio airplay alongside of them.—Tom Pryor
