We all know what flamenco is, don't we? A female dancer, all swirling skirt and coy glances. A male dancer, all clicking heels and Mr Darcy trousers. A guitar, as furious and insistent as a drum. A bit of finger-snapping or rhythmic hand-clapping. Maybe a singer. It is, as much as a bullfight, a Holy Week procession or a Lorca play, a quintessential image of Spanish culture.
Listen to one of Juan Martin's CDs, however, and your ears will encounter something rather more complicated. For a start, the singer plays a central role; a raw, unmanicured, startlingly primitive sound. And then, on certain tracks, you will hear a slow, quiet, hypnotically abstract series of musical patterns which will remind you - with a jolt of recognition - that for almost 800 years Spanish culture was the culture of Islam. Martin has always declined to be pigeonholed. He has played jazz with Herbie Hancock and produced a solo recording, The Andalucian Suites, of which any classical guitarist, not to mention contemporary composer, would be proud. His stunning virtuosity has seen him dubbed "the Eric Clapton of flamenco"; his spectacular live shows are greeted with delight by audiences and critics alike.
His is not the anodyne art form of the tourist posters, but nor does it belong in a museum. Flamenco, says Martin, began as a cry for help, a singer giving vent to extreme emotions, largely provoked by extreme poverty. But why - and how? - did it begin in Andalucia? Tradition claims it arrived with the gypsies who migrated from northern India to Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries, but Martin disagrees. "The gypsies came from the north of India and migrated to different parts of Europe - to Hungary as well as to Spain," he says. "If they had brought flamenco with them, then you would have flamenco in Hungary. This is an absolute proof, in my opinion. What you have in Hungary is a great tradition of violin music - and in Romania and Czechoslovakia, totally different music again.
"The gypsies are a very talented people who adapt whatever musical conditions they find, and their natural rhythmic expression will fit in with the tradition of that country. Flamenco isn't just a gypsy music, it's a music of Spain itself and of Andalucia in particular - and then certain epicentres, Sevilla, Malaga, Cadiz and so on, where there has been a great tradition of guitar playing and dance for a long time." Andalucia was, he says, a crucible where a mix of oriental influences - not just from the gypsies, but also from Arab and Sephardic Jewish immigrants - were overlaid on indigenous Castilian folk music to produce what we now call flamenco.
"The Moors left a very strong impression in the music; just like the Alhambra palace in Granada. In flamenco music there is a very definite oriental sound, a certain colour which is nothing to do with India, yet is definitely not western." These exotic and complex origins make it legitimate for today's flamenco practitioners to stretch the boundaries of the music, he says - though he doesn't always approve of the direction in which the stretching is done. "It has always been a fusion music, if you think about it. For myself, I go back in history in order to go forward. There are people who syncopate flamenco with jazz and things like that - which is very interesting. It's like saying, `well, because Irish people went to America, Irish music has something in common with jazz'.
"But in the case of flamenco, especially on the CD Musica Alhambra, I'm going back to the Moorish roots because I feel it's more honest to flamenco than playing an American music which has no direct geographical relation to flamenco music."
Martin's determined exploration of flamenco's Moorish roots was initially greeted with a certain amount of caution, perhaps even hostility, in his native country. "Because Spain became totally Catholic with Ferdinand and Isabella in the 15th century, there was a certain amount of covering up of what came before. There are people in Spain who have one name of Jewish origin and another of Arabic origin - and they don't even know this. And yet it has been a thoroughly Catholic country now for a long time."
But Catholicism, too, played a somewhat surprising role in the development of flamenco. "The moral regime under Franco was so much tighter than it is today," explains Martin. "People think of flamenco dancers as quite erotic, but under Franco the eroticism - although it was there - was never, ever shown. Which in a way made it more exciting. Today, OK, a girl twirls around, her skirt lifts and you see her bottom or something - and people think nothing of it. But under Franco you would not see any kind of nudity, so the moral climate has affected flamenco; before, it was very uptight, but in a way more hysterical and exciting for that." Inevitably, economic prosperity has also contributed to a change in the way the music is perceived; but, maintains Martin, something of the elemental nature of Andalucia is still present. "Today, flamenco has become a style that you learn to play rather than a way of life. The extreme poverty that was in Spain, that brought about the screaming singer - it's really a cry to humanity for help, and it could really make you shiver.
"Today a young singer learns that style, but he doesn't live like that. I suppose it's like the blues, which grew out of deprivation and desperation, yet today you have very, very sophisticated jazz players who study the blues like a science.
"Flamenco doesn't come out of the conservatoire, it comes out of the pueblo - and I think, Andalusia being a Mediterranean culture, there is a sensibility due to the light and the beauty of the landscape. Somehow, people instinctively know about art - take, say, Lorca's poetry. You'll hear a truck driver reciting it. It's exciting to be part of a democracy like that, where there's no snobbery - everyone participates in the flamenco tradition, not just an elite who have been to the best schools and so on.["]
When it comes to music and musical values, though, Martin happily describes himself as "a bit of a snob". "My snobbery is that I don't compromise. I don't think I should. My albums are put in the world music area, but they don't sell the way popular music sells - and that's fine, because if you make the musical parameters too wide, it becomes just an exercise - how can we sell here? I think you need to be educated to receive good music. I don't mean educated in the sense of reading and writing, but your sensibility must be developed if you're going to appreciate the very highest in folk music, world music, jazz, whatever. And I would have a lot to learn in other areas as well, areas that are not my own. "For me to appreciate chamber music, for instance . . . I have friends who say the ultimate in classical music is chamber music - yet I will put on a quartet and I can't really hear it, although I'm trying, you know. A lot of people probably feel like this about flamenco."
Not if they go to a show, they don't. In live performance, with top-class performers, the momentum of flamenco can be unstoppable, and Martin travels with some of the best in the business, including dancers Raquel de Luna and El Tigre - and the extraordinary gypsy singer Antonio Aparecida.
"Antonio, you see, is . . . he's a force of nature," says Martin. "I took him to Radio Three in London for their drive-time radio show, I think it's called In Tune. They had been playing some flute music, and then Antonio arrived and a very polite producer tried to do a sound check. She said, 'just sing a little bit' - and it was so loud the limiters hit the sides of the machine, you know. Finally, the announcer said: `We have someone in the studio tonight who makes Pavarotti sound like a sigh'."
Juan Martin and his group, Arte Flamenco Puro, begin their Music Network/ESB tour of Ireland at Mullingar Arts Centre at 8.30 p.m. on Monday October 16th. The tour continues to New Ross (Oct 17th, St Michael's Theatre, 8 p.m.), Carlow (Oct 18th, Dolmen Hotel, 8 p.m.), Listowel (Oct 19th, St John's Arts Centre, 8 p.m.), Clifden (Oct 21st, Alcock & Brown Hotel, 8.30 p.m.), Ballinamore (Oct 22nd, Community Centre, 8 p.m.), Castlebar (Oct 23rd, Linenhall Arts Centre, 8.30 p.m.), Ballybofey (Oct 24th, Balor Theatre, 8.30 p.m.), Newtownabbey (Oct 25th, Courtyard Theatre, 8 p.m.), Derry (Oct 26th, Great Hall, University of Ulster, 8 p.m.), Coleraine (Oct 27th, Coleraine Town Hall, 8 p.m.) and Dublin (Oct 29th, St Margaret's Golf and Country Club, Finglas, 8 p.m.).
