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The Flamenco Sticks: “La Seguiriya”

The genres of flamenco are so varied and extensive that it is almost impossible to summarize everything that it encompasses, but if you are starting in the world of flamenco and want to expand your basic knowledge, it is best to know the most outstanding styles.

Bailaores de flamenco bailando la Seguiriya

Flamenco dancers dancing Seguiriya at Teatre Poliorama in Barcelona

Among the most important sticks we have the Seguiya, whose name seems to derive from the term “seguidilla”, and which, due to phonological deformation, generated not only this word, but also some variants of it such as seguirilla, seguiririya or siguerilla and both in records and books We can find any of these references to style. All valid, since the term is agitated or Andalusian giving happened to other spellings that each one writes in its own way.

Bailaoras de flamenco bailando la Seguiriya

Flamenco female dancers dancing Seguiriya at Teatre Poliorama in Barcelona

It seems that the origin of the Seguiya is somewhat uncertain. According to some testimonies this dates from the end of the s. XVIII of places like between Cádiz and Seville, the Ports, Jerez and the Triana neighborhood as main focuses and derive from the primitive tonás.

Bailaora de flamenco bailando la Seguiriya

Flamenco female dancer dancing Seguiriya at Teatre Poliorama in Barcelona

As we told you before, the seguiriya is one of the most complex flamenco sticks and from this there are other styles such as the mountains and the light ones, which share the own compass of the seguiriya; as well as the seguiriyas variants are the verbal ones, seguiriyas in a greater tone.

Despite not having a true origin, the emergence of this genus is attributed to the plañidera, women who made their wake songs hired for such a need; and therefore its initial name was “t-shirts”, in the first half of the nineteenth century, which was later made known by the name of Roma gypsy.

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