Traditional Spanish Flamenco Music

Flamenco in its strictest sense, is a professionalized art-form based on the various folkloric music traditions of Southern Spain in autonomous community of Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia. In a wider sense, it refers to these musical traditions and more modern musical styles which have themselves been deeply influenced by and become blurred with the development of flamenco over the past two centuries. It includes cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), baile (dance), jaleo (vocalizations), palmas (handclapping) and pitos (finger snapping).

The oldest record of flamenco dates to 1774 in the book Las Cartas Marruecas by José Cadalso.The genre originated in the music and dance styles of Andalusia, of much older origin.[3] Flamenco has been influenced by and become associated with the Romani people in Spain, however, unlike Romani music in Eastern Europe, its origin and style is uniquely Andalusian.

In recent years, flamenco has become popular all over the world and is taught in many non-Hispanic countries, especially the United States and Japan. In Japan, there are more flamenco academies than there are in Spain. On November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.