All the Names of the Cante: The Beginning of Singing Seville’s Axis

Where did flamenco singing stop being a private family rite and become a profession?

Those who, with their labour and their poverty, sustained the feats of an empire in decline (the Spanish Empire) carried in their throats the testimony of their existence.

The cante is a mystery of salt, earth and fire: the story of so many, told from the depths of the earth.

At first their songs were sung behind the closed doors of the home, but little by little they opened up to the outside world.

With the cafés cantantes, the cante passed from the sacred space of the home, the rite and the family, to the profane world of the café and the tavern, until it became a profession. It was a phenomenon without equal. It happened on the Alameda, on calle Feria and the streets around it.

Over the years its transmission would reach the whole world: today it does.

This is my humble tribute to all the names of the cante who founded schools. It begins here, on the Alameda de Hércules, and comes in three parts: the founders, those who carried it on, and those who took it into the 20th century.

Today we open the first part of chapter IX: fifteen names, from El Planeta to Antonio Chacón.