Alabanzas
Flamenco góspel gitano · Música espiritual gitana
Spain · Portugal · France
A Calé sacred genre. Gitano families entered Pentecostal churches from the late 1950s. Members call the songs alabanzas. The songs belong to church rooms, beside flamenco and apart from Vlax family song.
A Calé sacred genre that grew when Gitano families in Spain and Portugal entered Pentecostal churches from the late 1950s–1960s. The Iglesia Evangélica de Filadelfia (Spain; Igreja Evangélica Filadélfia in Portugal) is the main room. Members call the songs alabanzas.
Early praise used flamenco guitar, palmas, a solo voice. The church also marked flamenco as “the world,” so the music had to become something else — Gitano, but no longer the palos of the tablao. Ruy Llera Blanes: family networks transmit both the faith and the songs; church coros are often teenagers related by kin.
Telethusa / flamenco research (2018): cantautores themselves name the genre alabanza; scholars have called the sound flamenco góspel gitano. In France the Mission Évangélique Tsigane, Clément Le Cossec, from the 1950s, is the related room. See also flamenco. No family page yet. Musicians who want one can write to the archive.
Hungarian parallel, different church: Barbara Rose Lange, Holy Brotherhood (2002) — Romani religious song in a Pentecostal church in Pécs, sharing a room with Hungarian worshippers. Related sacred practice, not Spanish alabanza.
History
A Calé sacred genre that grew when Gitano families in Spain and Portugal entered Pentecostal churches from the late 1950s–1960s.
Filadelfia
The Iglesia Evangélica de Filadelfia (Spain; Igreja Evangélica Filadélfia in Portugal) is the main room. Members call the songs alabanzas. Early praise used flamenco guitar, palmas, a solo voice. The church also marked flamenco as “the world,” so the music had to become something else — Gitano, but no longer the palos of the tablao.
Family networks
Ruy Llera Blanes: family networks transmit both the faith and the songs; church coros are often teenagers related by kin. Telethusa / flamenco research (2018): cantautores themselves name the genre alabanza; scholars have called the sound flamenco góspel gitano. No family page yet. Musicians who want one can write to the archive.
A Hungarian parallel, a different church
Barbara Rose Lange, Holy Brotherhood (2002) — Romani religious song in a Pentecostal church in Pécs, sharing a room with Hungarian worshippers. Related sacred practice, not Spanish alabanza.