La Solea, la Caña y el Polo

La soleá

La caña y el polo

The soleá (flamenca) or loneliness tells us about this feeling that every human being knows, being alone. As the same word insinuates, the soleá is a stick that announces a state of intimate soul, of recollection, of reunion with oneself, of thinking alone and of talking to oneself. The sole is slow and serious. The soleá is one of the most fundamental styles of flamenco, since it brings together all the characteristic elements of this music, such as, for example, the soleá compass and the touch above. As a flamenco rhythm it is perhaps, along with the bulería and the joy, the most present in the tablaos and in the repertoire of flamenco dance. The soleares base their formal structure on a basic flamenco pattern that consists of the following sequence: guitar introduction, starting ayeo, preparation song, brave song and finishing, with the falsetas interspersing the different letters. The first notes of the song by soleá are a call to listen and attend to the human soul. The flamenco lyrics of the songs by soleá, even being popular, are of great literary category. The soleá speaks of sorrows, loves, rants, suffering, sadness, and absences and life. It is difficult to distinguish the great variety of soleares that exist, since the personality and flamenco character of the soleá permeates almost all the jonda music and the variants are very numerous. The soleá is usually performed by a solo dancer of great expressiveness. The soleá is very given to the display of the dancer, who can make typically feminine movements with the arms and body, accompanied by zapateados. The dancer draws attention with the movement of her hips, her rant and her seriousness, each and every one of these elements, are essential to the danceable aesthetic of flamenco. The guitar makes the opening of the Soleá, its first notes, they call the singer and dancer, who will be accompanied to the rhythm, throughout the soleá. I complain to my star That there is nothing in this world That I don't go out with her Cane and Polo The oldest references to the pole, we find them in the "Cartas Marruecas" epistolary novel by José Cadalso, published in 1774. The protagonist, tells what a flamenco revelry of that time could be: "the smoke of the cigars, the screams and claps of Uncle Gregorio, the noise of all the voices, the noise of the castanets, the untempered of the guitar, the scream of the gypsies about which one had to play the polo for Preciosilla to dance, the barking of the dogs and the disintune of those who sang, they did not let me close my eyes all night." In the Cadiz newspaper El Conciso of November 25, 1812, the year of the beginning of the War of Independence, and of the first Spanish Constitution, popularly known "La Pepa", the lyrics of a pole with fuss are published that tells us the historical situation that was lived under the shadow of the bombs of the French. The name of the cane has been the subject of discussion among experts, without an agreement having been reached, some attribute this name to an Andalusian song in which sugar cane is alluded to, others to the old custom that dates back to mediaeval times and that consisted of "singing to the reeds", that is, to the glasses of wine placed on the counter, or to the Arabic name of "gaunnia" (singing) that seems to be the one with the most followers. In the book of Escenas Andaluzas, published in 1847, by the costumbrist writer, and flamenco writer, Serafín Estébanez Calderón, data is provided on the mythical singer El Fillo, considering him the oldest stylist of this cante, in the time of El Fillo it seems that it was customary to splice the cane with the polo. The romantic traveller and writer, Jean Jacques Davillier, author of "Journey through Spain", published in installments between 1862 and 1873, also places the cane, as a usual dance next to the polo and the rondeña. Don Antonio Chacón, a popular Jerez singer born in 1869, who had a tenor voice, created a corpus of the first flamenco music that could be recorded, managing to provide the cane with a perfect musical quadrature, this singer made known the popular lyrics: They can send me To serve God and the King But leave your person The law doesn't dictate that In the flamenco present in which we find ourselves, it is easy to observe that very rarely the public and the fan who starts, knows how to distinguish between one and the other, so we want to offer a brief description of those distinctions. Although the cane and the pole are similar, the structure of the cante is different. The cane is composed of tempera, cane, male (which consists of repeating the last two thirds of the stanza) and short soleá. In the pole you don't play the macho and the soleá is apolá. The polo is of vigourous style compared to the most collected of the cane. Gentlemen, the song of the poles, sing of pure cepay, you must sing it only the one who knows it ‍‍