What you may hear
Flamenco palos: a listening guide
Six flamenco styles you may hear at a small Valencia show, from slow soleá to festive tangos, with the rhythms and moods that tell them apart.
Book the café show ↗Quick answer
A palo is a named flamenco style, and Wikipedia counts more than fifty. Soleá and siguiriya are the deep, serious ones, both built on a twelve-beat cycle. Tangos and tientos are looser and more festive. Fandangos and tarantos can run free of any beat. With the artists picking the programme on the night, this guide is a way to listen, not a forecast.
Reading the word palo
A palo is a flamenco style, close to what other music calls a genre, with a rhythm, a mode and a mood of its own. Wikipedia sorts palos by their beat pattern, their scale, their chords, the shape of their verses and the region they come from, and notes that some are sung alone, some with guitar and some danced. Traditionally there are three groups: cante jondo, also called cante grande, the gravest; cante chico, the lighter forms; and cante intermedio, for the ones in between. You can enjoy a show without the names, though they explain why one song sounds heavy and the next sounds light.
Soleá: the deep one
Soleá follows a twelve-beat cycle in triple metre, and Wikipedia files it under cante jondo, the most serious of the three groups. That name means deep song, and the soleá is one of its central forms. Listen for a steady, weighty cycle kept by the guitar and the clapping, and for the way the singer lets each line settle before the next. If a song feels like a long breath held, it may belong to this family.
Siguiriya: the deepest song
Siguiriya runs on twelve beats like the soleá, yet its heavy beats land on different counts. Start counting a soleá at its eighth beat and the siguiriya rhythm appears, which makes the two cousins that sound unalike. Siguiriya is filed under cante jondo as well. Manuel de Falla, as Lorca cited him, called it the song of that deep tradition. In a small room it is a good moment to watch the audience go still.
Read next: What duende means in flamenco
Tangos and tientos
Tangos belong to a family with a four-beat cycle, in duple metre, and are among the fast, festive cantes, according to Wikipedia. Tientos are a slower, more syncopated form of tangos that recalls the rhythm of the habanera. If the room warms up and the clapping gets louder, you are probably hearing a tangos family song. If the pace drops and the accents lean, it may be tientos. Both are danced as well as sung, so they are a good place to watch how the dancer answers the guitar.
Fandangos and tarantos
Fandangos began as popular folk dances in eighteenth-century Spain. Played with a regular rhythm they follow a three or six-beat pattern, and some are sung as free songs with no regular rhythm at all. Wikipedia lists the taranta or taranto among the free forms of the fandango group, and it also describes a set of eastern fandangos from eastern Andalusia and Murcia. Murcia lies just south of the Valencian Community, so this eastern strand is the nearest on the map, though the programme still depends on the artists each night.
Farruca and the rest
The farruca sits in the four-beat tango family. Wikipedia says it probably originated in Asturias and Catalonia and was brought to Andalusia, where it took on flamenco character. The venue's own page on the art names a longer list, among them tientos, seguiriyas, tarantos, tangos, cantiñas and fandangos, and says the palos carry life's joys and sorrows, work and festivity, love and heartbreak. No page sold with this ticket promises any of these on your night.
Who this isn't for
A palo guide cannot name the songs you will hear on a given night. The programme changes by date and the artists choose it. If you prefer a fixed running order, a theatre show with a printed programme is a better fit than a café room, and the booking page for any show is the only place to check what is on offer.
Frequently asked questions
How many palos are there?
Wikipedia says more than fifty. Most shows use only a few, chosen by the artists on the night.
Which palos will I hear?
Nobody can say in advance. The venue's programme changes by date and the artists choose it. Use this guide to listen, not to expect.
What is cante jondo?
It translates as deep song, and it is the gravest of the three traditional groups of flamenco styles. Soleá and siguiriya are filed under it.
Do I need to know the names?
No. The names help you describe what you heard afterwards, but the rhythm, the voice and the dance carry the show without them.
Sources