Introduction
The flow of music and musicians across the Strait of Gibraltar reflects the story of cross-cultural relations between Spain and Morocco, where just nine miles of sea separate Europe and Africa. The legacy of medieval Muslim Iberia (usually referred to as al-Andalus, 711–1492) has become a basis for the promotion of a shared cultural memory, positioning Spain as a cultural crossroads between Europe and the Arab world. Music is often promoted by performers and institutions as a tool for intercultural dialogue, built on an idealised notion of convivencia: the alleged peaceful coexistence and exchange between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in al-Andalus. The musical legacy of convivencia has gained particular traction in Spain and above all in Andalucía, the ‘ancestral’ home of al-Andalus, a region that frequently extols its alleged interfaith past as a golden age of regional history. A number of fusion projects have emerged that combine Spanish flamenco music and dance with Arab-Andalusian music, traditions believed to have originated in al-Andalus that now exist across the Maghreb. Often referred to as flamenco-andalusí, these fusions are usually viewed as a musical metaphor for a utopian reading of al-Andalus, as well as a model for the social integration of Moroccan immigrants in Spain.Footnote 1
Since the 1980s, Andalucía has become the first entry point into Europe for many North African, and particularly Moroccan, migrants. Large Moroccan communities have emerged, especially in cities such as Granada, and immigrants often find themselves part of a reconstruction of al-Andalus that serves the interests of regional identity politics and tourism. Moreover, musical exchange based on historical narratives is often employed as a vehicle for the integration of Moroccans, as well as a mode of cultural diplomacy between Spain and Morocco. However, a somewhat utopian image of the past may in fact obscure the negative realities of immigration: growing racism towards Moroccan immigrants, human trafficking across the Strait of Gibraltar, and, at times, strained diplomatic relations between Spain and Morocco, particularly in relation to territorial disputes over the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa. Furthermore, the notion of convivencia itself is born of unequal power relations between Moroccans and Spaniards, as well as constituting a predominantly Spanish reading of medieval history.
A handful of scholars have started to explore how the legacy of a shared cultural memory between Spain and Morocco is articulated through musical exchange.Footnote 2 But there is limited work on the relationship between intercultural music making and wider debates regarding North African (and specifically Moroccan) immigration in Spain. In this article, I examine how the narrative of a shared cultural memory, as articulated in musical performance, reflects shifting Spanish responses to immigration and the country's cultural and diplomatic relations with its neighbour across the Mediterranean. In particular, I focus on two critical moments in Spain's recent political history: the post-Franco era (early 1980s) and the early 2000s, when migration from North Africa to Spain had peaked. Drawing on two case studies, I examine how the idea of a shared cultural memory has been invoked and negotiated according to different cultural and political agendas. Rather than just focusing on idealized readings of so-called convivencia, however, I consider music's role in the articulation of both positive and negative interpretations of an alleged shared cultural history.
In the first case study, José Heredia Maya's live stage production Macama jonda (premiered in Granada in 1983), the combination of flamenco with Arab-Andalusian music promoted cultural dialogue by playing on idealistic narratives of a shared Andalusian-Moroccan history. I argue that Macama jonda provides a window onto Spain's postcolonial relationship with Morocco and the Arab world following the Franco dictatorship. Yet, mixed reviews of the show illustrate the tension that existed between the reclamation of Spain's Muslim past and the country's aspirations for European integration. In the second example, Ángeles Gabaldón's innovative flamenco-theatre production Inmigración (premiered in Seville in 2003), intercultural music making was used to raise awareness of the realities of immigration, at a time when xenophobia was on the rise and clandestine migration had resulted in the deaths of many people in the waters between Africa and Spain. Packaged as a Spanish-Moroccan response to the universal phenomenon of immigration, Inmigración moved beyond romanticized narratives of convivencia that characterized productions such as Macama jonda. Spanning a twenty-year period, I argue that these two examples illustrate shifting responses to Moroccan immigration and the legacy of a shared cultural memory.Footnote 3 The contradictions present in these two performances illustrate how the andalus í legacy can be instrumentalized in various ways for different political and social agendas.
Convivencia and its musical discontents
The term convivencia is most commonly associated with the historian Américo Castro (1885–1972) who, while in exile during the Franco regime, wrote his well-known work España en su historia (1948).Footnote 4 In this book, Castro promoted the idea that Spain's Islamic and Jewish heritage, inherited from al-Andalus, was pivotal in the formation of Spanish national identity. Moreover, he was the first to propose the notion of convivencia in the context of interreligious exchange and the supposedly peaceful coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims during this period.Footnote 5 Yet such a positivist reading of Spain's Muslim past and its influence on national identity is highly contentious. Castro's contemporary, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz (1893–1984), viewed al-Andalus as a rupture in Spanish history, arguing instead that the beginnings of Spanish culture and identity were located in Spain's pre-Islamic, Christian history.Footnote 6 Such a view is still commonplace, highlighting the somewhat schizophrenic relationship Spain has with its Muslim past.
From a historiographical perspective, there has been something of a renaissance in the study of al-Andalus in which convivencia as an analytical concept has been critically deconstructed. In a recent article entitled ‘Convivencia and its Discontents: Interfaith Life in al-Andalus’,Footnote 7 Anna Akasoy critiques populist interpretations of al-Andalus and the narrative of convivencia as one dimensional, and which seldom take into account the nuances of interreligious coexistence in medieval Spain. She begins with a critique of perhaps the most well-known populist account of al-Andalus: María Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World.Footnote 8 Here, al-Andalus is constructed as a ‘model of tolerance and coexistence’:Footnote 9 a glorious, lost paradise that gave way to cultural, philosophical, and scientific advancements that in turn kick started the Renaissance in Europe. This was only made possible by the alleged peaceful convivencia of Christians, Jews, and Muslims: a utopia of interfaith cooperation, translation, and cultural exchange. Yet scholars have sought to unveil the realities of the popular ‘myth’ of convivencia, exploring the complex dynamics of sociocultural exchange in medieval Spain. Rather than painting an idyllic ‘museum’ of peaceful coexistence, historians have instead illustrated the tensions that existed between tolerance and intolerance, cultural exchange and violence.Footnote 10 Most notable here is the work of Brian Catlos who rejects the term convivencia and instead proposes that interethnic relations in medieval Spain (both in Muslim and Christian territories) were characterized by a process of conveniencia (convenience).Footnote 11 In other words, minority relations with the majority population were predicated on the shifting utility of the former to the latter, Catlos highlighting inherent structural inequalities between the different groups.Footnote 12
Setting aside historiographical debate regarding the efficacy of convivencia as a descriptor for interreligious relations in al-Andalus, however, I am more interested in the social, cultural, and political work that the ideology of convivencia achieves, above all in a musical setting. A number of scholars have started to explore how convivencia and a shared cultural memory between Spain and Morocco have been employed for different cultural and geopolitical strategies.Footnote 13 Prior to Castro's coining of the term convivencia itself, the cultural and political currency of a Spanish-Moroccan hermandad (brotherhood) had already emerged as a tool to justify Spain's colonial incursions in Morocco (beginning in the late nineteenth century and culminating with the formation of the Spanish Protectorate, 1912–56). In opposition to their French counterparts (France controlled the lion's share of Morocco), the Spanish portrayed their colonial project as more benevolent, more harmonious – a natural consequence of an alleged shared history rooted in al-Andalus. Surprisingly, it was during the height of the Franco regime (from the 1940s to Moroccan independence in 1956) that the Spanish-Moroccan hermandad reached its zenith, a time when Spanish institutions placed greater emphasis on the preservation of andalusí cultural forms (including music).Footnote 14 This was a far departure from Franco's ideology of National Catholicism that underpinned the nation-building project in Spain itself. However, in what Calderwood calls one of the ‘eloquent ironies of colonial history’, the rhetoric of al-Andalus as some sort of ‘golden age’ sowed the seeds of Moroccan nationalism, which eventually ended the European colonial project. Put simply, ‘a Spanish way of talking about Morocco became a Moroccan way of talking about Morocco’.Footnote 15
What we must take from this story, then, is that convivencia is, by and large, a relic of Spanish colonialism; a relic that has deeply influenced readings of Spanish medieval history, as well as leaving a mark on Moroccan nationalism itself. The alleged ‘exceptionalism’ of Spanish colonialism,Footnote 16 by dint of the andalusí past, continues to influence present-day relations between Spain and Morocco. Therefore, while convivencia may ascribe to the ideals of intercultural relations (especially in the context of Moroccan immigration in Spain), at its root the term cannot be divorced from colonial history and Spanish imaginaries of the Moroccan ‘Other’. With the arrival of Moroccan immigrants from the 1980s, increasing anxieties surrounding Islamist terrorism, and right-wing populism, the ideology of convivencia today has become even more contentious. On the one hand, the term is employed (particularly by Spanish cultural institutions) as a way of promoting intercultural relations between Spaniards and Moroccans, above all in the region of Andalucía. However, such utopian, contemporary readings of al-Andalus are also appropriated in more negative ways. As Hisham Aidi notes: ‘In response to the myth of Andalusia as [an] “interfaith utopia” put forth by European leftists, Arab nationalists, and Islamists, a cohort of Spanish, European, and American historians are promoting through publications and web sites a counter myth of al-Andalus as an intolerant “apartheid society”.’Footnote 17 Mapping onto wider debates regarding the efficacy of multiculturalism,Footnote 18 al-Andalus becomes a basis for intercultural exchange and for social anxieties regarding global terrorism and the pressures of immigration.
Eric Calderwood argues that the idealization of convivencia may in fact obscure the social realities of immigration and the inequalities that Moroccans sometimes face in Spain. He highlights the ‘stark contrast between the country's claims to exceptional tolerance and its current sociopolitical realities’.Footnote 19 The Moroccan ‘Other’ has become a human battleground for conflicting interpretations of Spain's past. Arguably, convivencia remains locked in the past: institutions promote the legacy of al-Andalus, yet often have little or no involvement with the Moroccan communities that are conflated with this past. At another level, public articulations of historical coexistence arguably obscure racial tensions between Spaniards and Moroccan immigrants. Daniela Flesler notes the rise in Spanish anxieties regarding Moroccan immigration that are mapped onto fears of terrorism and a perceived cultural incompatibility between European secularism and Islam.Footnote 20 Moreover, she notes the conceptual ‘slippage’ between historical accounts of the invading ‘moor’ of 711ad and the arrival of present-day Moroccans. The image of al-Andalus, far from promoting tolerance, is employed here as a form of cultural division.
What then of convivencia’s ‘musical’ discontents? Music is implicated in the tension between historical idealism and the social realities of immigration in Spain. In the Spanish context, the study of music and migration is relatively underdeveloped, and what research there is tends to focus on Barcelona as a cosmopolitan and multicultural centre home to a diversity of immigrant communities.Footnote 21 Much of this work explores the relationship between music and the construction of transnational identities across the diaspora, particularly among Moroccan communities. Sánchez Fuarros argues that musical diversity in Barcelona has been appropriated by institutions to promote the city as a multicultural and cosmopolitan utopia, but that an analysis of grassroots music-making between immigrant and host communities may challenge these institutional constructions.Footnote 22 Intercultural music festivals, he contends, have been criticized as presenting Barcelona as a ‘globalised cultural showroom’ that masks the unequal material, socioeconomic conditions of some immigrant communities.Footnote 23 Parvati Nair's work focuses on Moroccan communities in Barcelona and the role raï plays in articulating the social realities of migration, including the dangerous journey across the Strait of Gibraltar and problems surrounding social integration.Footnote 24 A theme that comes through in Nair's work is the ways in which Moroccan musicians negotiate the ‘packaged kitsch, ethnicity’ of Barcelona's world music scene and their desire to represent the realities of risk and marginality.
Seldom does this research make reference to the historical narrative of convivencia (or at least a shared cultural heritage) as a rhetorical device upon which to base musical exchange. Some scholars, however, have explored the relationship between music and the ideology of convivencia, especially in the Andalusian context. Some publications have emerged that examine how idealized interpretations of al-Andalus as a model for cultural and musical exchange have informed both the development of Arab-Andalusian music in SpainFootnote 25 and the emergence of flamenco-andalusí fusions.Footnote 26 Increased European interest in Arab-Andalusian music was, in part, a result of French and Spanish colonial intervention in North Africa, most notably in the Moroccan protectorates. The Spanish, in particular, sought to institutionalize and preserve Arab-Andalusian music, both as a way of promoting the notion of a Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood (as discussed above), thereby consolidating colonial power, and as a means of claiming the cultural history of al-Andalus. Shannon argues that the very label ‘Andalusian music’ in fact ‘arose in the shadow of colonialism’,Footnote 27 due to the work of Western musicologists who made claims to the medieval European musical past in the colonies of North Africa.
In the post-colonial era, Arab-Andalusian music has gained some traction among specialist audiences in Europe, especially as a result of the European Early Music movement.Footnote 28 In Spain, there has been growing, albeit limited, interest in the musical traditions of North Africa that invoke al-Andalus and convivencia.Footnote 29 Brian Karl contends that Moroccan immigrants have taken advantage of the rhetorical power of Arab-Andalusian music in Spain,Footnote 30 particularly given institutional attention towards the tradition and its perceived potential for intercultural dialogue.Footnote 31 This has enabled Moroccan musicians (often in collaboration with European musicians) to continue their musical practices in the diaspora, while at the same time accumulating cultural and economic capital from the andalusí legacy.Footnote 32 Yet, both Karl and Shannon argue that Moroccan musicians engage in a certain degree of ‘flexible musical specialization’;Footnote 33 that is, they adapt their musical style to suit the prevailing tastes of Spanish audiences and the historical narratives of ‘medieval multiculturalism’ often espoused by institutions. In the context of Arab-Andalusian music, this often results in the blurring of genre boundaries where musical ‘authenticity’ in Arab-Andalusian styles is often subsumed under the generic label of ‘Arab’ music.Footnote 34 This musical flexibility is sometimes undergirded by a certain degree of self-exoticization, whereby Moroccans play up to images of the orientalized ‘Other’, and thus can be interpreted as a cultural corollary to unequal power relations between Spaniards and Moroccans.
Arguably, flamenco has enabled Moroccan musicians to gain a foothold in the Spanish music industry, especially in Andalucía. Like Arab-Andalusian music, flamenco is often regarded as a product of al-Andalus and the cultural intermingling of different groups, both before and after the reconquest of Granada in 1492. As the proclaimed music of Andalucía,Footnote 35 flamenco dovetails nicely with regionalist discourse that positions al-Andalus as the golden age of Andalusian history. Flamenco is also a way of incorporating Arab sounds into Spanish culture, in part due to its historical associations, but also due to certain surface-level similarities in musical style.Footnote 36 As Shannon argues, flamenco has become ‘the primary medium for translating Arab and [Arab-]Andalusian musics into the Spanish and European consciousness, a sort of musical solvent that allows the fusion and mixing of various styles through its complex associations with internal Others’.Footnote 37 The ‘malleability’ of flamenco has led musicians to experiment with fusion projects, most notably between flamenco and Arab-Andalusian music. These fusions started to emerge in the late 1970s and coalesced on the back of the world music industry into a sub-‘genre’ sometimes referred to as flamenco-andalusí.Footnote 38 The label of flamenco-andalusí is somewhat misleading, giving the allusion of authenticity based on the traditions of Arab-Andalusian music inherited from al-Andalus. In reality, these collaborations are often an amalgamation of flamenco with a ‘pan-Arab’ style. Groups that do claim ties to the traditions of al-Andalus, usually draw on chaabi, a more popular derivative genre of Arab-Andalusian music. Nonetheless, I still find the label flamenco-andalusí useful because it references a certain discursive framework that underpins these collaborations: the cultural legacy of al-Andalus and the notion of convivencia.
Despite a handful of exceptions, there is limited research on flamenco-andalusí collaborations.Footnote 39 Paetzold discusses flamenco-andalusí’s historical development, its contemporary relevance, and its institutional dimensions. He examines how the genre constructs a romanticized vision of al-Andalus, especially as a regionalist strategy that mines andalusí history for the promotion of regional distinctiveness within Spain. He contends: ‘Andalusí [Arab-Andalusian] and North African music and sounds are not selected from the supermarket of “world music” but consciously (re)found and (re)encountered among the relics of Andalusian/al-Andalus history (if they had ever been lost at all), and address and touch upon themes and issues found within the layers of Andalusian culture.’Footnote 40 To a limited extent, Paetzold does broach the topic of Moroccan immigration, discussing one musical example (Chambao's ‘Papeles mojados’) that combines flamenco-pop and North African soundbites to denounce the human tragedies of migration. Brian Karl, however, offers a more pointed critique of flamenco hybridity, focusing exclusively on the perspective of Moroccan musicians in Spain. In contrast to Paetzold's approach that is grounded in cultural studies, Karl's ethnographic data reveals the unequal power relations that underpin Spanish-Moroccan musical collaborations. According to Karl, Moroccan migrants need to tap into the cosmopolitan tastes of Spaniards and of the ‘baseline Spanish genre of flamenco’ in order to get work.Footnote 41 Somewhat reminiscent of Catlos's notion of conveniencia described above, one of Karl's informants highlighted this argument: ‘Moroccan musicians need flamenco, not the other way round.’Footnote 42
I seek to contribute to this analysis of flamenco-andalusí, but my approach is framed in a slightly different way. I focus mostly on Spanish responses to Moroccan immigration and specifically the ways in which a shared cultural heritage (as articulated through music) has been employed during different historical and political moments in Spain's relationship with Morocco.Footnote 43 Moreover, while I appreciate Karl's critical approach to flamenco-andalusí as a product of the world music industry and a process of self-exoticization on the part of Moroccan musicians, I believe that such a critique only tells half the story. Yes, such fusion projects are, in essence, a reflection of broader structural inequalities between Spaniards and Moroccans – a way of conciliating Moroccan ‘otherness’ according to the prevailing tastes of Spanish society. But such a critique should not preclude the potential for intercultural dialogue that such projects can afford musicians. Although this particular article is mostly based on a textual analysis of the two productions, my ethnographic research with both Spanish and Moroccan musicians has revealed that such music-making can provide a discursive framework for cultural encounter, one that may be missing in day-to-day social interactions. For musicians, the concept of convivencia can constitute a ‘mode of listening’ through which shared meanings can be constructed.Footnote 44 The idea of a musical convivencia might be viewed, therefore, as what Bhabha calls a ‘supplementary discourse’, which emerges in the ‘third space’ of cultural exchange between two unequal groups.Footnote 45 John Morgan O'Connell explains that the third space ‘involves the production of “supplementary discourses” that provide unifying terms of reference for all the groups concerned, thereby subverting the hegemonic aspirations of any particular faction’.Footnote 46 Finally, I argue that the ideology of convivencia is malleable, adapting to the social and political circumstances of any given historical moment. I base my analysis of Macama jonda and Inmigración on this malleable understanding of convivencia, framed by two defining historical moments (post-Franco and post-9/11) that both reflect the shifting nature of relations between Spain and Morocco.
Macama jonda
Premiered at the Municipal Auditorium ‘Manuel de Falla’ in Granada in 1983, Macama jonda is the first major production to combine flamenco and Arab-Andalusian music.Footnote 47 The show was directed by the flamenco playwright, poet, scholar, and advocate for Gitano [Gypsy] rights, José Heredia Maya (1947–2010), who had already gained artistic recognition for the production Camelamos naquerar (1976),Footnote 48 which sought to raise awareness of discrimination towards Gitanos. Departing from the social critique of Camelamos naquerar, however, Heredia Maya presented Macama jonda as a more celebratory and festive production. To attract flamenco audiences at the time, it brought together a stellar cast of flamenco artists from Granada including the singer Enrique Morente (1942–2010) and dancer Manuel Santiago Maya ‘Manolete’ (b. 1945), along with the Andalusian Orchestra of Tétouan led by the renowned singer and violinist Abdessadaq Chekara (1931–98). For many years, Heredia Maya had desired to bring together flamenco and the music of Morocco.Footnote 49 In the late 1960s, he made connections with the Arab-Andalusian orchestra based at the music conservatoire in Tétouan, at that time directed by Mohamed Temsamani (1909–88) with Chekara acting as the main violinist. Heredia Maya organized a number of concerts for the orchestra in Spain, which eventually paved the way for a collaborative project in Almería in 1980 and then Macama jonda in 1983.
The supposed meaning of the title reveals much about the narrative structure of the show and its attempts to invoke a shared cultural memory. In an interview for the newspaper ABC,Footnote 50 Heredia Maya claims that Macama in Arabic refers to an encounter and jonda is an Andalusian derivation of hondo (deep),Footnote 51 which in the flamenco context refers to both an affective category and a repertoire (i.e., the deep song or cante jondo). This ‘deep encounter’ is articulated in the show's narrative of a wedding between an Andalusian Gitano and a young Moroccan woman, playing on the popular idea that flamenco emerged from cultural interactions between Moriscos and Gitanos following the reconquest of Granada.Footnote 52 On the video recording of a performance in Seville, the narrator states: ‘The people of two continents are united by love.’Footnote 53 Musically, the show incorporates a number of flamenco pieces, particularly more festive styles (palos) such as bulerías and tangos. Interspersed with these flamenco performances are short interludes of Arab-Andalusian music (muwashshah) performed by the Andalusian Orchestra of Tétouan. The show is most remembered, however, for its ‘fusion’ pieces (‘La Novia’ and ‘Encuentro final’) where flamenco is combined with Arab-Andalusian instrumentation (vocals, oud, and violin), chaabi rhythms, and melodic material. The final composition (‘Encuentro final’) brings together the piece ‘Bent biladi’ popularized by Chekara and the Spanish folk song ‘La Tarara’ (with lyrics by Federico García Lorca) in what has become the most well-known example of flamenco-andalusí fusion from across the Strait of Gibraltar. In reality, the collaborations that characterize Macama jonda are not particularly successful in their ability to fuse the two genres; indeed, Macama jonda has been labelled by some artists and aficionados as a somewhat artificial fusion project. In this article, however, I am concerned less with the aesthetic credibility of Macama jonda’s creative endeavours, but instead wish to focus on the sociopolitical context in which the show emerged.
Cultural freedom and Andalusian regionalism in the post-Franco era
Before addressing the show's significance for cultural and political relations across the Strait of Gibraltar, it is important to contextualize Macama jonda within the political climate of Spain during the early 1980s. Following the Franco regime, Spain entered a transitional period as political, social, and cultural freedoms were clawed back from the dictates of Francoist ideology. In 1982, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party won a landslide victory, marking a clean break with Francoist institutions. It was also in this decade that Spain was decentralized into seventeen autonomous communities, departing from the hyper-nationalism of the regime and moving towards a plural vision of Spanish identity where regional identities were foregrounded. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the proliferation of popular musics as part of a prominent countercultural movement (La movida), which carved out a new modern Spanish sound and rejected national musical stereotypes that were prominent during the Franco years.Footnote 54 Although Macama jonda was, at times, criticized for the perpetuation of national stereotypes (see below), it is still the product of a historical moment that was imbued with a sense of cultural and political freedom. While Heredia Maya may have stated that Macama jonda was apolitical in nature,Footnote 55 it appeared in an era when musicians could foreground their identity without fears of cultural censorship. In my own conversations with artists from the show and those who saw its premiere in Granada, people spoke of an electrifying atmosphere and enthusiastic audience response, which they attributed to the optimistic social and political climate at the time.
There are a number of ways that Macama jonda either explicitly or implicitly subverted Francoist ideology. As Pérez-Villalba argues,Footnote 56 many popular music artists during the Spanish transition to democracy sought to rewrite social norms regarding the institutions of marriage, love, and sexuality under Franco. Similarly, Macama jonda depicts the marital union of two ‘Others’ (Gitanos and Moroccans), both minority groups that had faced significant discrimination during the regime. Yet, as Pérez-Villalba argues, ‘artists may have felt confident that the process of democratization that had already started in Spain was going in the right direction. Thus, they could “relax” and give more prominence to apparently less political issues.’Footnote 57 The Gitano-Morisca wedding in Macama jonda can be read as politically significant precisely by dint of its apolitical basis: it ‘othered’ the stringent social norms regulating marriage and sexuality during the Franco regime, and normalized the relations of two ethnic minorities.
The matter of ethnicity goes further in Macama jonda. The foregrounding of Gitano identity in the show builds on Heredia Maya's previous production Camelamos naquerar, which did much to denounce racism and prejudice towards Gitanos. Yet, as Heredia Maya himself stated: ‘Macama jonda tries to communicate a sensation of joy. Throughout the entire show one can breathe an atmosphere of happiness. In this respect, it can be considered the opposite of Camelamos naquerar.’Footnote 58 Nonetheless, the show can be read as a vindication of Gitano identity in the post-Franco era, even if its thematic material is apolitical.Footnote 59 Most striking, though, is Macama jonda’s claims to Andalusian cultural identity. While the show itself may have leant more towards the foregrounding of ‘Gypsy-ness’, numerous reviews and articles in the press point towards the show's relevance for an Andalusian reading of flamenco and the narrative of a shared cultural heritage. This is not surprising given that Andalucía had gained its regional autonomy in 1981; Macama jonda emerged at a time when the foregrounding of regional identity was encouraged, as a clean break from Francoist nationalism.Footnote 60 I argue that Macama jonda was sometimes positioned as a utopian reading of the andalusí past, a past that was being paraded as representative of the ‘pluralistic political system that [Spain's new leaders] were now building.’Footnote 61
Macama jonda and cultural diplomacy
Macama jonda can also be read as reflective of Spanish postcolonial relations with Morocco and the wider Arab world. Following independence in 1956, diplomatic relations between Spain and Morocco were somewhat limited due to the continuing presence of Spanish troops and nationalist endeavours to expunge Morocco of its colonial past. However, this diplomatic ‘ice age’ began to thaw in 1979 when, as Stenner argues, ‘the two countries embarked upon an ambitious programme of scientific and cultural cooperation that included regular exchanges between academic institutions on both sides of the Mediterranean’.Footnote 62 In part, improved diplomatic relations with Morocco were a requirement for Spain's integration into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986, given concerns regarding security at the border of Europe.Footnote 63 Furthermore, Spain sought to attract Arab investment especially due to the wealth circulating the Arab states of the Persian Gulf from petrodollars. The notion of a collective cultural memory between Spain, Morocco, and the wider Arab world embodied by the ‘glorious’ past of al-Andalus was a convenient basis for diplomatic, and by extension economic, relations. Indeed, the political scientist Aaron Segal argues: ‘some of this money [petrodollars] [was] being used to support cultural and intellectual activities for the study of Hispano-Moorish culture and society.’Footnote 64
Macama jonda can be read as a by-product of the relationship between cultural memory, diplomacy, and economic investment. The very genesis of the show appears to be linked to the circulation of wealth and power from the Middle East. In an interview with Jalal Chekara, the nephew of Abdessadaq, he told me that Macama jonda was financed by the Saudi Arabian monarchy at the time.Footnote 65 Although the town and provincial councils of Granada provided some financial assistance, this would not have been sufficient to cover the high costs of setting up the production, which featured a large cast and months of rehearsals. When I asked Jalal why the monarchy would finance such a show, he replied because they ‘knew the history of the Arabs here in Spain. When they saw this show, they realized that for the Arab world and its “brothers” [Spaniards] it would be a great work.’Footnote 66 As Shannon has argued,Footnote 67 the narrative of al-Andalus and a Spanish-Arab memory carries particular cultural and political capital especially in diplomatic relations with Europe. Macama jonda, therefore, brought to life this narrative in music, dance, and theatre: a performative act that appeared to attract the attention of the most powerful figures in the Arab world. While I have been unable to verify Jalal's claim, there is other evidence to suggest a close connection between Macama jonda and Arab political and economic interests in Spain. I would contend that the production was in fact a form of cultural diplomacy, a term broadly defined as the ‘use [of] cultural ventures and investments as a means or instrument to attain goals in other areas’.Footnote 68 Macama jonda was tied up with broader political relations with the Arab world, but also facilitated Arab economic investment in Spain itself. Here, an example will illustrate my point.
In the summer of 1983, Macama jonda was performed at the luxurious Puento Romano hotel complex in Marbella, a city described by one journalist as ‘the colony of the petrodollars’ referring to the high level of Arab investment in the area.Footnote 69 Macama jonda was the opening act of a festival to celebrate the end of Ramadan and to present the Imperial Falcon Club in Spain: an exclusive membership circle that offered advice to Arab tycoons on foreign investment and travel arrangements in Europe. According to an article in the newspaper ABC,Footnote 70 the Falcon Club consisted of the richest Arab tycoons, political figures from the Middle East, and Arab proprietors in Spain who had bought up sections of the Costa del Sol. I argue that the performance of Macama jonda in this context was, in some small way, a form of cultural diplomacy: a geopolitical strategy where the idea of a shared cultural heritage between Spain and the Arab world helped to facilitate the flow of economic capital and to strengthen relations with Arab states. At the time, Spain was seeking to strengthen diplomacy with the Arab world and culture was an important part of this process. Macama jonda and its reclamation of a shared heritage helped to foster a convivial atmosphere that promoted cultural relations and attracted wealthy Arabs to invest in Spain, given the country's economic boom and its imminent inclusion in the EEC. The performance of Spanish-Moroccan cultural exchange in Macama jonda can be read as a metaphor for Spain's desire to maintain positive political and trading relations with Morocco, as a gateway to the Arab world. As Segal has argued,Footnote 71 Spanish relations with the wider Arab world were (and still are) to a certain extent predicated on Spain's relations with Morocco.
Moroccan immigration in the 1980s
Macama jonda also needs to be framed by an increase in Moroccan immigration in Spain during the 1980s. While the Moroccan artists involved in Macama jonda were not themselves immigrants, their frequent visits to Spain for rehearsals and concerts came on the back of an increase in migration, as mostly young, working-class, male Moroccans sought to take advantage of the booming construction and agricultural industries in Spain as the country progressed towards European integration.Footnote 72 Moreover, university cities such as Granada attracted a number of Moroccan students especially those from the more affluent sectors of society. At this time, Spain's immigration policies were limited, meaning it was easier for migrants to enter into the country.Footnote 73 In the post-transition era, Spain had begun its relatively rapid shift from a country of emigration (thousands of Spaniards had left the country during the Franco regime) to a country of immigration, at the frontier of Europe.Footnote 74
In the context of Moroccan immigration, Granada is a special case. The city has perhaps one of the largest Moroccan communities in Spain.Footnote 75 Jiménez Bautista argues that the city has been lauded for its multicultural diversity, resulting in its declaration in 1995 by the European Commission as a ‘social laboratory’ to test levels of racism and integration in European cites.Footnote 76 Granada's multicultural present is often conflated with its multicultural past: the city was the last bastion of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula and an alleged haven of interreligious exchange until the reconquest of 1492. This history is evidenced by the ubiquitous presence of Islamic architecture, the tourism industry, and cultural institutions that play on narratives of a medieval multicultural utopia in what Calderwood has described as the ‘invention of al-Andalus’.Footnote 77
This combination of high levels of Moroccan immigration and the historical significance of Granada led to the development of localized music scenes in the 1980s, which put into contact different genres such as Arab-Andalusian music, flamenco, and raï. As Karl argues,Footnote 78 the increase in Moroccan migration to Spain coincided with the rise of the world music industry, as fusions began to emerge that packaged cultural difference for consumption. Granada was, and still is, a central hub for the development of musical fusions that draw on the city's cultural diversity and historical narratives of cultural exchange and tolerance. The emergence of this social and cultural environment led to Macama jonda, arguably the first production to capitalize on the overlapping of migration and history in musical performance by fusing flamenco and Arab-Andalusian music. Macama jonda also fits into a localized reading of convivencia that has come to characterize some of the fusion projects emerging in the city. In particular, its narrative structure invokes the alleged close relations between the Gitanos of Sacromonte and Moriscos following the reconquest, a social encounter supposedly replicated in other parts of Andalucía that some claim had its genesis in Granada. Similarly, Moroccan musicians many of whom come from or were trained in Tétouan have often made references to the historical and musical connections between the two cities.
In the context of Moroccan immigration, to what extent did Macama jonda facilitate intercultural dialogue and the overcoming of cultural and racial stereotypes that lie at the heart of Spanish-Moroccan relations? It is difficult to determine social responses to early Moroccan immigration at this time, as numbers were still relatively low and studies into the social perceptions of Moroccans in Spain only started to emerge in the 1990s.Footnote 79 However, through an analysis of press sources and interviews with performers and audience members of Macama jonda, I am able to consider how musical exchange at this time might have been tied up with broader social perceptions of Spanish-Moroccan relations.
For the Moroccan musicians involved in Macama jonda, the show presented a unique opportunity to acquire cultural and social capital within a European music industry, albeit through a rhetorical language (i.e., a Spanish-Moroccan cultural memory) that was built on colonial history and unequal power relations. As Shannon has argued, the legacy of a shared musical heritage as embodied in Arab-Andalusian music and its fusions ‘sonically connects Moroccans to medieval Iberia, echoing shared histories and genealogies that tie them directly to Europe and European culture’.Footnote 80 Thus, in Morocco, Arab-Andalusian music is more north-to-south focused than east-to-west: it functions as a bridge that links the cultural histories of Europe and North Africa.Footnote 81 This narrative continues to carry weight as Moroccan musicians navigate European music scenes and industries, a narrative of Arab-European cultural encounters that suits the discursive and aesthetic trends of both the Early Music MovementFootnote 82 and the proliferation of fusion projects. From a critical perspective, the somewhat artificial fusion of flamenco and Arab-Andalusian styles might be viewed as a form of strategic essentialism on the part of Moroccan performers. They positioned themselves according to a typically orientalized representation of the ‘Moorish Other’, packaged as a glorified reading of Spanish-Arab relations. From a pragmatic perspective, however, Macama jonda enabled the performers to enter into a European cultural sphere by riding the wave of the post-Franco cultural boom and tapping into a broader regionalist narrative that coopted convivencia as an historical emblem of Andalusian identity. Abdessadaq Chekara particularly benefited from the Macama jonda production, it leading to a number of other collaborations both within Spain and beyond.
On the Spanish side, responses to Macama jonda were, on the whole, positive, pointing towards a certain optimism surrounding Spanish-Moroccan relations. At an artistic level, the work was praised for its innovations, especially when it came to the combination of music, dance, and theatre: a relatively new step forward in flamenco, in part pioneered by Heredia Maya and one that would have captivated Spanish audiences and especially flamenco aficionados at the time. Interestingly, however, many reviews lavished praise on the Moroccan musicians and the ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ of their performance, at the expense of the flamenco portion of the show, which received mixed reviews. One reviewer stated: ‘The Andalusian Orchestra is clearly superior to the flamenco part, when considering both together.’Footnote 83 Beyond the artistic merits of the show, many reviewers also lauded its attempts to invoke the notion of a shared cultural memory and to put into dialogue the cultures that straddle the Strait of Gibraltar. Making explicit reference to Spain's geographical, political, and cultural position as a gateway between Africa and Europe, one reviewer hinted at the buoyancy of Spanish-Moroccan relations at the time: ‘If many years ago a French King could say that the Pyrenees no longer exist, then performances such as Macama jonda lead us to say: the Strait of Gibraltar no longer exists.’Footnote 84 In my own conversations with audience members and performers of the show, they too echoed positive responses to the cultural relations between Spain and Morocco invoked by Macama jonda. Arguably, in the musical domain at least, Macama jonda was the catalyst for a number of projects that translated the convivencia legend into present-day intercultural dialogue, at a time when Moroccans were beginning to migrate to Spain in large numbers.
Yet for some, this rose-tinted view of Spanish-Moroccan relations and how they were represented in the show was not always shared. A handful of reviews and responses from my interviewees highlighted certain anxieties regarding Spain's place in Europe and its relationship with the legacy of al-Andalus, a tension that was brought into sharp relief by Macama jonda. One of the key criticisms is that Macama jonda perpetuated orientalist stereotypes about Moroccan and Spanish culture, with particular attention directed towards the plot and props. A flamenco producer who attended the rehearsals and premiere in Granada told me: ‘For me the narrative was naïve: a wedding between a Gitano and a Mora. And the stage setting was also naïve: two small towers, each with an architectural sign. On one, the Mora, a minaret; and the other, the Christian, a roof with tiles. [It was] very stereotypical and cliché.’Footnote 85 Such stereotypes were also perpetuated in the narrative structure. The narrator on the video version stated: ‘the “Moors” try to sing flamenco while the Gitanos learn the songs of the desert’. Quite when urban Arab-Andalusian music became the music of ‘the desert’ is a mystery. Such exotic (bordering on orientalist) tropes are part and parcel of a fascination with the Moroccan ‘Other’ that has characterized Spanish culture for decades, especially as a result of colonial enterprises in Morocco.
The issue here, however, is to what extent such an orientalist narrative overlaps with representations of Spanish-ness itself, where there is a conflation of Arab cultural stereotypes with Gitano, Andalusian, and, by extension, Spanish identity categories. Macama jonda emerged at a time when some artists were seeking to break with many of the stereotypical tropes and exaggerations of national identity that emerged in the nineteenth century and continued throughout the Franco regime, particularly flamenco and ‘Andalusianized’ representations of Spanish identity. Macama jonda may have been read, therefore, as a continuation of Francoist tropes, rather than a break with them as I have described above. The show invoked uneasy and unresolved tensions between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in Spanish national discourse. And in the early 1980s, it raised questions about Spain's place in Europe. Of the show, one reviewer stated:
If centuries ago there was an Andalusian [andalusí] community in certain musical forms, this has become archaeology. Both Morocco and Andalucía have, inevitably, evolved in the centuries since 1492. The Strait, like it or not, is there. On the one side there are Muslim cultural forms and on the other side European. The link is history and folklore. Macama jonda, without suggesting this, confirms it.Footnote 86
I argue that this quotation is best understood when framed by Spain's imminent accession to the EEC. Suárez Navaz argues that around this time Spaniards more generally, and Andalusians specifically, were redefining their citizenship in European terms,Footnote 87 which in turn instigated a more prominent ‘us-and-them’ divide. For some critics, Macama jonda played on orientalized clichés that emphasized a perceived cultural incompatibility between Spaniards and Moroccans, rather than bringing together the two cultures. For these critical voices, therefore, the show may have reinvoked the age-old dialectic (reminiscent of the Castro-Sánchez debate) of Spain as south facing (i.e., towards Africa) or north facing (i.e., towards Europe). Rather than reconciling this divide, I suggest that for some people Macama jonda may have reinforced allegedly orientalist or ‘backward’ representations of Spanish-Andalusian cultural identity at a time when European integration and citizenship were on the horizon.
Inmigración
In 1986, Spain finally joined the EEC after previously failed attempts. Coupled with a period of significant economic growth during the 1990s, Spain's new European status attracted high levels of migration, especially from North Africa as people came to fill much-needed gaps in the labour market. Joaquín Arango states that between 2000 and 2009 the number of immigrants in Spain quadrupled from 1.5 million to over 6 million.Footnote 88 Despite a significant increase in numbers, Arango claims that there has been little public backlash against immigration and almost no political momentum towards an anti-immigration agenda. Arango argues that the political culture in post-Franco Spain has prevented a rise in nationalist, right-wing political intervention given the history of the Franco regime.Footnote 89 Moreover, he contends that Spaniards, by and large, have been positive about the rise in immigration as they view it through the lens of the labour market; that is, immigration is needed to grow the economy, and that the mostly young, male workers arriving in Spain are less of a strain on public services.
Aranjo's report presents a somewhat rose-tinted view of immigration in Spain. As a requirement of Spain's entry into the EEC, in 1985 the government implemented the country's first immigration law [Ley de Extranjería], which coincided with Europe's Schengen agreement. New policies were aimed at regulating immigrants already in the country, but stringent laws meant that many immigrants from outside of the EEC became ‘illegal’ residents as a result. Suárez Navaz argues that Spain's European status brought with it a rebordering of the Mediterranean:Footnote 90 the strengthening of Europe's southern border facilitated negative representations of immigrants along the lines of citizenship and legal status. Therefore, ‘the need to protect the new imagined community – a European ethos based on a common citizenship – promot[ed] racist and xenophobic discourse[s] about African workers’.Footnote 91 These new laws, however, did little to deter the flow of migration, and the 1990s and early 2000s saw a spike in numbers, especially from Morocco. Illegal migration also increased in this period with many people utilizing human trafficking channels, which has resulted in thousands of deaths in the Strait of Gibraltar, despite tougher border controls and surveillance in the early 2000s under the centre-right Popular Party.Footnote 92 The combination of European status, tougher immigration policies, and increasing migration (both legal and illegal) has led to a rise in racial tensions most infamously manifested in the El Ejido attacks of 2000.Footnote 93 In the post-9/11 climate, there has been increased public anxiety surrounding terrorism leading towards rising levels of Islamophobia, usually directed towards Moroccan immigrants.Footnote 94
‘Moors on the Coast’
It is against this backdrop that the show Inmigración emerged. As already mentioned, the number of fusion projects that draw on convivencia as a creative and discursive trope has increased since Macama jonda. Yet, many of these projects continue a somewhat idealized reading of convivencia that obscures the social realities of immigration and does little to address the unequal relations from which such fusions arguably emerge. Instead, I wish to focus now on a very different production that sought to bring to light the often tragic and sinister circumstances surrounding immigration, as well as rising levels of racism at the turn of the twenty-first century.
On 19 November 2003, the dancer Ángeles Gabaldón and her company premiered the show Inmigración to a packed audience in Seville, which was also broadcast live on the internet to over 50,000 viewers. Inmigración was regarded as an unprecedented success, partly because of its musical and artistic innovation, with a new generation of flamenco performers pushing at the boundaries of flamenco artistry and appealing to a largely middle-class Andalusian public increasingly interested in the region's premiere cultural product. However, the show's success was also attributed in the press to its social message. The production was designed to confront the theme of immigration and to raise awareness of related issues such as racism, xenophobia, human trafficking, and migrant deaths in the Strait of Gibraltar. It tackled a European and ultimately global challenge: immigration and integration in increasingly multicultural societies. Flamenco and its fusion with Arab-Andalusian styles was used as a form of social commentary, which moved beyond orientalist tropes and towards a more realistic depiction of the social issues surrounding immigration in Spain. By reaching into the Andalusian past and reimagining convivencia in the present, the production gave a powerful message of tolerance while providing a backdrop for the denunciation of human trafficking and racism. A global message framed by local circumstances sought to break down barriers of difference and to present the messy reality of immigration. The multiracial cast also made more explicit the production's message: ‘We are all immigrants.’ The cast and crew comprised artists from Brazil, France, Morocco, and Spain. As the show's playwright and director, Fernando González Caballos, told me, ‘you can't protest about immigration and denounce its problems just with Spanish artists’.Footnote 95
Inmigración was based on a book written by the journalist Juan José Téllez entitled Moros en la costa (Moors on the Coast),Footnote 96 which presents a scathing critique of Spanish public and institutional responses to immigration, particularly from North Africa. The book gives a stark overview of the humanitarian issues stemming from migration patterns into Spain, including human trafficking, socioeconomic marginalization, sex work, ineffectual immigration policies, public and institutional racism, and migrant deaths. In a manner reminiscent of Gilroy's ‘postcolonial melancholia’,Footnote 97 José Téllez critiques the deep-seated ironies that characterize Spanish responses to immigration. He draws attention to Spain's own extensive history of emigration throughout the twentieth century, a history that is at odds with the intolerant attitudes and policies directed at immigrants in Spain. Significantly, he also critiques mythic constructions of al-Andalus that seek to glorify notions of a convivial past. Moros en la costa is a derogatory phrase used to refer to the arrival of immigrants in pateras (small boats) on the coast of Andalucía. However, the word Moro (Moor) is actually a historical and somewhat negative term to refer to Arabs and Berbers who ‘invaded’ the Iberian Peninsula in 711ad. The modern-day usage of the word thus conflates contemporary Moroccan immigrants with the image of a savage, invading Moor that has been constructed in some historical accounts of al-Andalus.Footnote 98
Moros en la costa formed the backbone for Inmigración in terms of narrative material. Drawing on the book as a source of inspiration, Fernando González Caballos viewed Inmigración as a form of protest that denounced racism and raised awareness of the humanitarian crisis surrounding immigration in Spain, and the socioeconomic marginalization of many immigrants. Fernando told me that the central premise of the show was
to break with the discourse that existed, to draw attention to what wasn't being fixed. Every day people died in the Strait, and people saw this on television and ate their dinner at home watching the news. Therefore, the show tried to protest against this. We ourselves, we were a country of emigrants; it is etched into our memory, into our history. Therefore, it doesn't make sense what is happening to immigrants now. For me it's an embarrassment.Footnote 99
Fernando said that flamenco was a natural choice for articulating this message given its historical development as the alleged product of cultural confluence in Andalucía. But flamenco today also seems to align with the theme of immigration. Ángeles Gabaldón, the main dancer and choreographer, told me that ‘flamenco is very, very reflective of [immigration] because people come to study it from all over the world. Immigration in the world of flamenco keeps happening across Spain, in Andalucía .’Footnote 100 As such, the show comprised a multicultural cast of flamenco artists who had trained and lived in Andalucía for many years, breaking with the usual monopoly that Andalusian artists have over flamenco. In fact, Inmigración was one of the first major productions to feature such a large cast of foreign-born artists.
Of most importance to this article, however, is the fusion between flamenco and andalusí-inspired styles that was central to the show's political message. Inmigración featured the nephew of Abdessadaq Chekara, Jalal Chekara, who in recent years has become one of the most prominent flamenco-andalusí artists. As in Macama jonda, the fusion was not grounded in any musical ‘authenticity’ (i.e., the classical repertoire of Arab-Andalusian music), but rather drew upon the narrative of a shared musical heritage. Alongside a chaabi-style composition that Jalal composed specifically for the show, the fusion numbers were effectively Jalal singing in Arabic, in an andalusí style over established flamenco forms. What is of importance here, however, is how this soundscape contributed to the show's message of protest. For Jalal, this very fusion is a result of immigration and the movement of people, culture and music, and so was fundamental to the show's raison d’être.Footnote 101 When I asked Fernando why this fusion was used, he referred to the typical narrative of convivencia. However, his reading was tinged with a certain sense of melancholy due to present-day circumstances:
The reason is because for centuries there was this convivencia. The most important thing that happened in Andalucía was the coexistence of Arabs, Christians, and Jews for eight centuries, and what this contributed socially and culturally. Andalusians are a very tolerant people, or they were. I speak in the past, because in Andalucía now with the social and political practices that have been carried out in the last 20–40 years, Andalucía is becoming a very snobbish and racist place. When it never was. The peoples of the south have always been welcoming. Therefore, it seems necessary to draw attention to the past, to history.Footnote 102
The fusion of flamenco and the andalusí-inspired music of Jalal, therefore, is a sonic marker of an Andalusian sensibility for tolerance, which Fernando believes is under threat due to rising racism. The somewhat utopian narrative of convivencia is articulated in this context as a critical, rather than simply a celebratory, device. However, there was more to Inmigración’s powerful message than music and dance. The show also featured film footage that underscored its denunciation of the social realities of immigration. Real archival footage of immigrants arriving in Ceuta and Melilla was used, as well as footage shot specifically for the show such as a shirt floating in the water to depict the loss of life across the Strait. Moreover, some of the artists went to great lengths to increase the reality of certain scenes. For example, Ángeles Gabaldón explained to me how she sneaked into a prostitution club in Seville to witness the working environment of female immigrants from Africa, so that she might better represent this environment in one of the scenes.Footnote 103
The structure of the show roughly mapped onto José Téllez's book,Footnote 104 each scene embodying a particular theme or issue related to immigration from a Spanish or a Moroccan perspective. History is cleverly folded into the production's narrative, tracing Spain's shift from a country of emigration to one of the main entry points of European immigration. The show begins with a depiction of Spanish immigrants in Germany during the 1950s/1960s, before moving to a powerful scene illustrating racial tensions between Spanish hosts and North African immigrants articulated in dance and flamenco-andalusí music. The third scene illustrates the social marginalization of immigrants in Spain and the demeaning jobs that some have to carry out, such as sex work. The final solo dance by Ángeles Gabaldón depicts the dangerous journey across the Strait of Gibraltar. A shipwrecked boat on the shore emphasizes the stark message. Throughout the dance, Ángeles performs blindfolded, which she said could be interpreted as society turning its back on reality.Footnote 105 In order to pick apart the prevalent themes of the show, I will now turn to a more detailed analysis of two scenes.Footnote 106
Shared experiences of migration
The production opens with a depiction of a New Year's Eve party. As the lights go up on the stage, a table is laid out ready with glasses and alcohol, and a Christmas tree stands in the corner. Ángeles Gabaldón enters the stage readying the table, before moving centre stage to develop her routine with elegant footwork and graceful turns. There is then a knock at the door and people gradually begin to arrive until there are eight people on the stage, dancing in duos, small groups, and together as one group. The scene is incredibly fluid and moves between neatly choreographed dance sections and acting, punctuated by flamenco singing that creates an atmosphere of festivity and communality. The performers then stop and switch on an old radio to listen to the New Year's countdown: in German. It is at this point that the audience is made aware of the setting: we are watching Spanish immigrants in Germany, perhaps at any time during the 1950s or 1960s when Spanish emigration was at its height. The radio presenter counts down before a clock strikes the last ten seconds into the New Year. When the New Year arrives, the performers hug each other as the singer changes the radio channel to a Spanish station playing the song ‘El Emigrante’ (‘The Emigrant’) by the flamenco-copla singer Juanito Valderrama (1916–2004). The singer on stage drunkenly joins in with the song. The festive mood amongst the group dramatically changes as the chorus enters: ‘Goodbye my dear Spain; I carry you deep within my soul; and although I am an emigrant, I will never be able to forget you.’ The raised glasses of the performers are gradually lowered, and the mood then shifts to a palpable sense of nostalgia, prompting Gabaldón to turn off the radio.
In an online interview, Fernando González Caballos is quoted as saying: ‘The Andalusian coasts are the port of arrival for people wanting to seek a new life for themselves, a better life, a job. We sought to compare that reality with when the Andalusians were an emigrant people out of need who during the sixties and seventies led a considerable exile both within Spain and abroad.’Footnote 107 This is an integral theme in the whole production, which is explicitly foregrounded in this opening scene. In his report, Kreienbrink gives an overview of Spanish emigration from the early twentieth century.Footnote 108 Initially, migration patterns took Spaniards to the vestiges of the old colonial empire in Latin America. However, during the 1950s and 1960s regime migratory patterns started to shift towards Europe. At this time, millions of Spaniards (the majority of whom were Andalusians) left the country due to socioeconomic marginalization, better work prospects in post-war Northern Europe, and political reasons. This has led some commentators to view Spanish emigration during the Franco regime as a process of exile rather than voluntary migration. As already discussed, it was not until the 1980s that Spain reversed its position and became a country of immigration, following its inclusion in the EEC.
The Spanish historical experience of emigration is emphasized in the opening scene with the inclusion of Juanito Valderrama's song ‘El Emigrante’. Written in 1949, this song reflected the reality of many Spanish emigrants at the time and reinforced a sense of nostalgia for the Spanish homeland in unfamiliar contexts. Valderrama was originally a flamenco singer but began to specialize in copla, a form of Spanish popular song that is thoroughly ‘Andalusianized’ and thus often has close connections with flamenco.Footnote 109 Given Valderrama's popularity and Franco's fondness for his songs, he was often criticized as being a ‘creature’ of the dictatorship despite maintaining that he was a Republican at heart.Footnote 110 ‘El Emigrante’ is perhaps Valderrama's most famous song and represents the social reality facing many Spanish emigrants at this time. Valderrama is reported as having said: ‘I wrote it when I saw Spaniards weeping as they fled abroad. I could have called it “The Exile”, but I'd have been shot.’Footnote 111 The song was extremely popular, especially among emigrant communities throughout Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. The use of this song in Inmigración is a powerful ‘position statement’, articulating the significance of historical memory in current Spanish responses to immigration. The scene seeks to represent the emotional realities of immigration and how it affected the lives of many Spaniards during the Franco regime. Placed within the context of contemporary immigration in Spain, the scene seeks to carve out a common ground: a shared experience of migration and nostalgia for both Spaniards and African immigrants.
‘Fuera de compás’
The audience is then shifted into the present with a depiction of the crisis of African immigration in Spain. Video footage shows immigrants arriving in Spain, shifting the chronological focus from Spanish emigration to Moroccan immigration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Over the top of this footage is a recording of a milonga by Pepe Marchena (1903–76) sung in a highly ornamented style by the Indian singer Sheila Chandra (b. 1965), alluding to alleged connections between flamenco and the music of North India. This archival footage is then followed by, arguably, the most powerful scene in the show: ‘Rechazo’ (‘Rejection’). This scene centres on the interactions of three dancers: two are Spanish and one is of North African descent (Francois Soumah), who is meant to represent an immigrant in Andalucía. This evocative scene is intended to depict racial discrimination, especially towards Moroccans. The dance choreography is an artistic embodiment of the day-to-day xenophobic attitudes and behaviours that are directed towards Moroccan immigrants. Throughout the routine, Soumah tries to bridge a cultural divide with the two Spanish dancers, only to be physically pushed away. At times he is brought back into the circle to dance with the Spanish only to be cast out again, the disappointment clearly visible in his facial expressions and body movements. When I watched this scene back with Ángeles Gabaldón, she noted how the Spanish dancers encouraged Soumah to dance, but then clapped fuera de compás (not in time) in order to destabilize his dance. The scene ends with the dancers forcefully pushing Soumah to the floor, leaving him to weep on the ground as he taps out a flamenco rhythm with his shoes in his hands.
This vivid dance routine is set to a flamenco form called soleá, which itself is meant to project a sense of loss, sadness, and nostalgia. This soleá is set to the lyrics: ‘You aren't like us, they told me at the bar. I replied: thank God no two people are ever the same.’ Jalal Chekara then takes up these lyrics in Arabic in an Arab-Andalusian style, referencing the notion of a shared cultural heritage. This scene presents a compelling social critique of the racial tensions surrounding immigration, especially in Andalucía. The scene explicitly references the rising levels of racism that occurred in Andalucía at the dawn of the twenty-first century, as laid out in José Téllez's Moros en la costa.Footnote 112 By framing these racial tensions in the context of Andalucía's multicultural past and present, the choreography and musical fusion aimed to promote dialogue and tolerance at a time when identity tensions and critiques towards multiculturalism and immigration were becoming more prevalent in many parts of Europe.
Inmigración received excellent reviews in the press, both for its innovative amalgamation of music, dance, film and theatre, and for its social message. Many reviews lauded how the show brought back the critical and political force of flamenco: ‘Following a lull of several decades in which flamenco seemed to have forgotten its natural cry of protest, denunciation returns.’Footnote 113 Another reviewer stated: ‘If we judge [the performers] according to their intentions, there is no doubt that this attempt to use flamenco as a means of social protest is a praiseworthy one indeed. It's about time someone did. We're all of us immigrants.’Footnote 114 References were also made to the multicultural cast of the show as being an important anchor for Inmigración’s message and as a refreshing change to the commonplace artistic make up of flamenco troupes. Interestingly, none of the reviews or online articles makes direct reference to the notion of convivencia. While some acknowledge that the presence of Jalal Chekara references the alleged origins of flamenco, there is no direct mention of the notion of cultural exchange and a shared memory across the Strait of Gibraltar.
Perhaps the sombre, political nature of the show elides the somewhat utopian foundations of the convivencia myth. Or perhaps the omission of the usual celebratory narrative (as articulated in Macama jonda) was an attempt to move away from orientalist musical depictions of the andalusí past and its North African ‘Other’. However, the show did seek to portray a message of tolerance and intercultural dialogue, and my informants framed the musical collaborations according to the ideology of an Andalusian historical sensibility towards tolerance, even if it was felt such a sensibility was under threat. More significantly, Inmigración sought to depict the messy, darker reality of immigration and multiculturalism in Andalucía. The production speaks of intolerance. It speaks of racism. It speaks of human trafficking. It speaks of migrant deaths in the Strait of Gibraltar. Indeed, what makes Inmigración so unique is that it is the first time, I am aware of, where flamenco and its fusion with Arab-Andalusian styles is used to raise awareness of the everyday realities of immigration in Spain.
Conclusion
In this article, I have traced musical responses to Moroccan immigration in Spain and the notion of a shared cultural memory, focusing on two case studies over a twenty-year period. Macama jonda and Inmigración draw on the narrative of a shared cultural memory (and the related concept of convivencia) in contrasting ways: the first packages the idea of a shared musical heritage as the basis for the uniting of cultures, and the second reframes musical convivencia as a form of social commentary. In order to unpack these alternative readings, I have analysed the shows within the context of Spain's postcolonial relations with Morocco and the wider Arab world since the 1980s, focusing predominantly on Spanish responses while alluding to the situation of Moroccan musicians in Spain. Macama jonda was the product of a buoyant political environment following the Franco regime, at a time when there was increased emphasis on the strengthening of economic and diplomatic links with Morocco and the Arab world through the reclamation of a utopian reading of the andalusí past. Inmigración, on the other hand, emerged at a time when Moroccan migration had peaked, and the public were frequently confronted with images of boats crossing the Mediterranean with migrants; victims of a system of human trafficking that has claimed the lives of many thousands of people. Both shows are products of shifting political and cultural relations between Spain and North Africa, and Spain's negotiation of its Muslim past. These shows illustrate the malleable ideology of convivencia and how it can be employed for different, positive or negative, cultural and political ends.
Since 2003, the sociopolitical climate in Spain and Europe has altered and, if anything, negative attitudes towards immigration have worsened. The Madrid bombings in 2004 and increasing terrorism across Europe, Islamophobia, rising right-wing populism, and the tightening of immigration policies have contributed to growing xenophobia and racism in Spain. Moreover, the refugee crisis in Europe has exposed the fault lines in European politics and, in some cases, has led to the hardening of the Union's external borders. In this tense climate, the legacy of convivencia carries more significance than ever before. From a more critical perspective, convivencia (and its musical corollary) is, predominantly, a Spanish reading of Spanish-Moroccan relations – an ideological interpretation of the andalusí past that can trace its roots to Spanish colonialism and arguably does little to mask over structural inequalities for Moroccan communities. Yet, the very idea of convivencia can offer a basis for cultural exchange and dialogue especially in the musical context – it is, as Shannon has noted, ‘good to think’.Footnote 115 While institutions may draw on such a legacy for the project of Andalusian identity building and for the promotion of a sort of facile multiculturalism, the very act of intercultural music making hinges on human interaction, where the notion of a utopian past becomes a conduit for cultural exchange at the frontier of Europe. Fusion projects such as Macama jonda and Inmigración offer unique insights on Spanish cultural responses to Moroccan immigration and the ways in which the andalusí past is negotiated through music according to shifting political and cultural relations across the Strait of Gibraltar.
