Music
Williams: This, to most of us, is flamenco
The fiery tap and stern looks of a serious, yet stirring, performance.
Music
Williams: For those who can master its intricate power there’s money in it – even in winter, tourists turn up at Seville’s biggest flamenco show to what’s seen as a very Spanish art form.
Music
Williams: Yet flamenco is in essence a foreign import, starting as the lament of an oppressed people who many believe left India hundreds of years ago before some settled here in southern Spain – they are the gypsies.
Music
Williams: For centuries, the city of Seville thrived as one of the world’s great cultural crossroads.
Moors, Jews, Catholics and traders from Spanish America have all left their mark to create the city’s exotic fusion.
Music
Williams: Founded by the Phoenicians and infused with five centuries of Islamic culture, Seville is seen by many to be the romantic heart of southern Spain.
Home to its most famous food -- tapas -- and its most notable music, flamenco – a music borne from the suffering of a minority in this area – the gypsies.
Today’s inspiration for real flamenco and its future stars is still not in the pretty courtyards and middle class bars of this town, but in a place very much on the wrong side of Seville.
Music
Williams: On the city’s southern outskirts is a government housing estate called the Tres Mils Viviendes – literally, the three thousand homes.
Music
Williams: It was built to house Seville’s gypsies, but is now so run down the state no longer collects the rent. Unemployment, crime, drugs and violence are so rife the police barely patrol – outsiders enter only with permission.
Music
Williams: Ramon Quilate, on the right, and Jose Bobote, are the gatekeepers -- gypsy dons who decide who gets in to estate, and at what price.
Their days usually start with a potent coffee and a laugh -- today’s joke about the café’s overpriced chicken.
Ramon: What do you feed it for that price? Prawns? Just prawns, or king prawns?
Williams: Ramon and Bobote are not elected leaders – they’ve earned their respect partly through their command of flamenco. Ramon as a singer/composer, Bobote as a dancer.
Bobote: I started dancing when I was very young -- eleven years old. I had to buy my own shirts.
But I became a star, and as a result today neither my son nor my grandson are suffering the hardships I went through.
Williams: Their persistence has been good to them -- together they’ve toured the globe with flamenco shows and featured on numerous CDs. Their success, among many others, has helped put the estate on the map as Spain’s Flamenco Factory – home to some of the best new talent around.
Bobote: Here if you se a child walking along the street and you say, play the drums, he would play it because here are the best flamenco artists all the essence of flamenco is in this neighbourhood
Music
Williams: While many songs are about love both found and lost, Flamenco’s real power is rooted in gypsy history.
Music
Williams: Many of their songs recall centuries of racist abuse – especially in Spain – where speaking the language could once have your tongue ripped out and any expression of gypsy culture was strictly forbidden.
Ramon: Flamenco was the way to express our oppression in the past.
Back then, we gypsies couldn’t express ourselves with words, so we had to express ourselves in this way – by singing. With flamenco we sing our sadness, our joys and all our feelings
Williams: Real flamenco is a spontaneous art, occurring when the spirit moves – and of course -- the right lubricant is applied.
Today Ramon and Bobote are joined at their favourite bar by two of the estate’s leading flamenco stars.
Now 35, Martin Chico has played guitar since he was a child.
Martin: Flamenco is a way of living. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always listened to flamenco. My mother sang, my father sang, my uncle played guitar… Flamenco, guitar, singing, dancing – that’s how I’ve lived. That’s what I’ve listened to all my life.
Williams: Now known worldwide, Enrique Moreno has been singing since he was ten.
Singing
Williams: For him flamenco’s power is deep within – a force called duende – the spirit – that can be moved by great sadness or joy.
Enrique: Flamenco is the most beautiful thing on the whole planet. All singing is beautiful but for me the flamenco is the most beautiful thing there is -- the most beautiful thing that exists.
Singing
Enrique: Flamenco is feeling. Feeling means the heart is living it. The lyrics are real – they come from real life -- not from the imagination but from real life. And I express them like this.
Music
Williams: In the Tres Mil Viviendes real life means lots of things – most of them harsh. But the gypsy ability to sing their hardships is offering a new generation a way out, and nowhere is that being more vigorously pursued than here at the estate’s community centre.
These gypsy students are part of a new program trying to keep them off the streets and in the classroom by tapping the one unique asset they all possess – flamenco.
Ramon: In our neighbourhood, every five metres you can see a boy or a girl singing flamenco on their own,
or they just walk along singing flamenco. Williams: Bobote is one of their chief instructors –- he believes flamenco can give them an alternative to the streets.
Singing
Bobote: To become a flamenco singer you need discipline. They are like diamonds, and you just have to polish them bit by bit.
Singing
Bobote: Listen to me! There is a lot of noise!
Ramon: There’s a lot of noise. Listen to me, please! The piano is very loud, and the voice very low.
Williams: Ramon is their other main tutor, and while the kids are enthusiastic they must be taught to feel the flamenco.
Ramon: This is noise… and this is music and it’s the same with singing. Understand? Don’t shout. It should be creamy. Don’t go fast. Go slowly. Let’s do it again. Okay Antonio.
Williams: With the lesson learnt, promising 18 year old Emil Jimenez belts out a song popular with the girls.
Singing
Williams: For her, flamenco is not just a singing style -- it’s an identity.
Emil: For me flamenco is a wonderful culture born in our hearts.
We were born flamenco, we’ll continue to be flamenco, and we’ll die being flamenco. Williams: Twenty-five year Isabel Jimenez sees flamenco as a way to change her world.
Isabel: I think it’s going to help us a lot because of the teachers who show us how to dance and sing. We’re starting to leave the neighbourhood to see another world -- other things and other cultures.
That helps us a lot. We’re a troupe now – the singers have learnt they didn’t know how to sing and the dancers have learnt they didn’t know how to dance.
Williams: With the money they made from one of their first commercial gigs, the kids buy a decent lunch.
It’s a glimpse of what music might be for them – most live in poverty, few have finished enough school to get a well-paid job, and some have even lost their parents to drugs.
Isabel’s motivation to succeed is not just for her – she has a three-year-old daughter.
Isabel: I would like to earn a lot of money to give my daughter a good education and overcome our community’s barriers because it’s always said that gypsies don’t study and that they don’t do anything which is not related to flamenco.
Williams: Success is far from certain – but the class is not just about music.
Ramon: I want them to have something in the future, so apart from flamenco we give them formal education, and we give them extra classes preparing them to sign a contract when they get a job.
Music
Williams: For the gypsies of the Tres Mils achieving any goal is not easy -- poverty, crime and unemployment will hold many back.
Singing
Williams: For all the hardships there is an exuberant pride among these gypsies which is simply infectious
Singing
Williams: The music is their voice, and for the class of 2004, a song they wrote captures something of their hopeful spirit
Singing
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Mark Slade
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Research: Mavourneen Dineen and Alberto Letona
Williams: This, to most of us, is flamenco
The fiery tap and stern looks of a serious, yet stirring, performance.
Music
Williams: For those who can master its intricate power there’s money in it – even in winter, tourists turn up at Seville’s biggest flamenco show to what’s seen as a very Spanish art form.
Music
Williams: Yet flamenco is in essence a foreign import, starting as the lament of an oppressed people who many believe left India hundreds of years ago before some settled here in southern Spain – they are the gypsies.
Music
Williams: For centuries, the city of Seville thrived as one of the world’s great cultural crossroads.
Moors, Jews, Catholics and traders from Spanish America have all left their mark to create the city’s exotic fusion.
Music
Williams: Founded by the Phoenicians and infused with five centuries of Islamic culture, Seville is seen by many to be the romantic heart of southern Spain.
Home to its most famous food -- tapas -- and its most notable music, flamenco – a music borne from the suffering of a minority in this area – the gypsies.
Today’s inspiration for real flamenco and its future stars is still not in the pretty courtyards and middle class bars of this town, but in a place very much on the wrong side of Seville.
Music
Williams: On the city’s southern outskirts is a government housing estate called the Tres Mils Viviendes – literally, the three thousand homes.
Music
Williams: It was built to house Seville’s gypsies, but is now so run down the state no longer collects the rent. Unemployment, crime, drugs and violence are so rife the police barely patrol – outsiders enter only with permission.
Music
Williams: Ramon Quilate, on the right, and Jose Bobote, are the gatekeepers -- gypsy dons who decide who gets in to estate, and at what price.
Their days usually start with a potent coffee and a laugh -- today’s joke about the café’s overpriced chicken.
Ramon: What do you feed it for that price? Prawns? Just prawns, or king prawns?
Williams: Ramon and Bobote are not elected leaders – they’ve earned their respect partly through their command of flamenco. Ramon as a singer/composer, Bobote as a dancer.
Bobote: I started dancing when I was very young -- eleven years old. I had to buy my own shirts.
But I became a star, and as a result today neither my son nor my grandson are suffering the hardships I went through.
Williams: Their persistence has been good to them -- together they’ve toured the globe with flamenco shows and featured on numerous CDs. Their success, among many others, has helped put the estate on the map as Spain’s Flamenco Factory – home to some of the best new talent around.
Bobote: Here if you se a child walking along the street and you say, play the drums, he would play it because here are the best flamenco artists all the essence of flamenco is in this neighbourhood
Music
Williams: While many songs are about love both found and lost, Flamenco’s real power is rooted in gypsy history.
Music
Williams: Many of their songs recall centuries of racist abuse – especially in Spain – where speaking the language could once have your tongue ripped out and any expression of gypsy culture was strictly forbidden.
Ramon: Flamenco was the way to express our oppression in the past.
Back then, we gypsies couldn’t express ourselves with words, so we had to express ourselves in this way – by singing. With flamenco we sing our sadness, our joys and all our feelings
Williams: Real flamenco is a spontaneous art, occurring when the spirit moves – and of course -- the right lubricant is applied.
Today Ramon and Bobote are joined at their favourite bar by two of the estate’s leading flamenco stars.
Now 35, Martin Chico has played guitar since he was a child.
Martin: Flamenco is a way of living. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always listened to flamenco. My mother sang, my father sang, my uncle played guitar… Flamenco, guitar, singing, dancing – that’s how I’ve lived. That’s what I’ve listened to all my life.
Williams: Now known worldwide, Enrique Moreno has been singing since he was ten.
Singing
Williams: For him flamenco’s power is deep within – a force called duende – the spirit – that can be moved by great sadness or joy.
Enrique: Flamenco is the most beautiful thing on the whole planet. All singing is beautiful but for me the flamenco is the most beautiful thing there is -- the most beautiful thing that exists.
Singing
Enrique: Flamenco is feeling. Feeling means the heart is living it. The lyrics are real – they come from real life -- not from the imagination but from real life. And I express them like this.
Music
Williams: In the Tres Mil Viviendes real life means lots of things – most of them harsh. But the gypsy ability to sing their hardships is offering a new generation a way out, and nowhere is that being more vigorously pursued than here at the estate’s community centre.
These gypsy students are part of a new program trying to keep them off the streets and in the classroom by tapping the one unique asset they all possess – flamenco.
Ramon: In our neighbourhood, every five metres you can see a boy or a girl singing flamenco on their own,
or they just walk along singing flamenco. Williams: Bobote is one of their chief instructors –- he believes flamenco can give them an alternative to the streets.
Singing
Bobote: To become a flamenco singer you need discipline. They are like diamonds, and you just have to polish them bit by bit.
Singing
Bobote: Listen to me! There is a lot of noise!
Ramon: There’s a lot of noise. Listen to me, please! The piano is very loud, and the voice very low.
Williams: Ramon is their other main tutor, and while the kids are enthusiastic they must be taught to feel the flamenco.
Ramon: This is noise… and this is music and it’s the same with singing. Understand? Don’t shout. It should be creamy. Don’t go fast. Go slowly. Let’s do it again. Okay Antonio.
Williams: With the lesson learnt, promising 18 year old Emil Jimenez belts out a song popular with the girls.
Singing
Williams: For her, flamenco is not just a singing style -- it’s an identity.
Emil: For me flamenco is a wonderful culture born in our hearts.
We were born flamenco, we’ll continue to be flamenco, and we’ll die being flamenco. Williams: Twenty-five year Isabel Jimenez sees flamenco as a way to change her world.
Isabel: I think it’s going to help us a lot because of the teachers who show us how to dance and sing. We’re starting to leave the neighbourhood to see another world -- other things and other cultures.
That helps us a lot. We’re a troupe now – the singers have learnt they didn’t know how to sing and the dancers have learnt they didn’t know how to dance.
Williams: With the money they made from one of their first commercial gigs, the kids buy a decent lunch.
It’s a glimpse of what music might be for them – most live in poverty, few have finished enough school to get a well-paid job, and some have even lost their parents to drugs.
Isabel’s motivation to succeed is not just for her – she has a three-year-old daughter.
Isabel: I would like to earn a lot of money to give my daughter a good education and overcome our community’s barriers because it’s always said that gypsies don’t study and that they don’t do anything which is not related to flamenco.
Williams: Success is far from certain – but the class is not just about music.
Ramon: I want them to have something in the future, so apart from flamenco we give them formal education, and we give them extra classes preparing them to sign a contract when they get a job.
Music
Williams: For the gypsies of the Tres Mils achieving any goal is not easy -- poverty, crime and unemployment will hold many back.
Singing
Williams: For all the hardships there is an exuberant pride among these gypsies which is simply infectious
Singing
Williams: The music is their voice, and for the class of 2004, a song they wrote captures something of their hopeful spirit
Singing
Reporter: Evan Williams
Camera: Mark Slade
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Research: Mavourneen Dineen and Alberto Letona