What You Need to Know About Spanish Flamenco and Where to Find It

Belen Maya, one of Spain’s most famous flamenco dancers – copyright Gilles Larrain, Creative Commons License

 

One of the most fascinating things about Spain to many of its millions of annual visitors is Spanish flamenco dancing.  Common mainly in the Andalucia region, where it originated, Spanish flamenco is a genre of music, song and dance. It’s lively, romantic, emotional and exuberant and sounds like nothing else you’ve ever heard.

If you want to learn more about Spanish flamenco, there are some wonderful websites where you’ll find information, videos, music, profiles of famous flamenco dancers, musicians and lots more. These are some of the best.

Sol Channel – Sol Channel has some basic information about flamenco dancers and music, but it’s the six videos where they excel. All filmed around the Andalucia area, they profile musicians, and show some wonderful examples of modern-day flamenco dancing. For an example of their videos, watch the one below, and then head to their website to watch the rest.

Isabel Banyon – One of Spain’s most famous flamenco danceers, Isabel Banyon has an incredible website full of photographs, videos of her performing, information about her background, and some wonderful personal photographs of Isabel with her friends and family. It is all in Spanish, but if you’re interested Google Translation can give you a good idea of the content of each page in English.

Paco de Lucia – A Spanish musician, Paco de Lucia’s site is in English and Spanish, and includes his biography, information on where you can catch him playing next, photographs from his tours all over the world, a forum where you can talk with others (in Spanish) about Paco and flamenco music in general, and his complete discography.

Guitarist.com – For everything you ever wanted to know about flamenco dancing, check out the FAQ on Guitarist.com. It’s huge. It explains what flamenco guitar is, how you can become a flamenco guitarist, gives recommendations of some guitarists to listen to, and recommends some excellent flamenco guitar resources for beginners.