Flamenco singer Israel Fernandez at the “Les Suds à Arles” festival

At the world music festival “Les Suds à Arles”, flamenco singer Israel Fernández will perform on Saturday. A special feature of this festival is that there are documentary screenings and conferences to deepen your knowledge of all genres, including flamenco.

Flamenco singer Israel Fernhasndez is expected on Saturday, July 13 at 9:30 p.m. at the Les Suds festival in Arles. A gypsy and Andalusian culture of oral tradition, flamenco transmits texts with simple poetry, by authors who are most often unknown. But sometimes, this poetry becomes political. In the 1960s, in the midst of the Franco dictatorship, José Menese rose to fame and sang texts by the poet Francisco Moreno Galván. Through metaphor, the two accomplices circumvent censorship; flamenco would be more than a cry without rebellion, as a specialist wrote in the 1930s.

“To say a cry is already rebellious in itself, it is to give something that is unfiltered. We cannot give it a political meaning, but in any case, it participates in politics”

Corinne Savy

to franceinfo

“In this Spanish society of the time, suddenly, there is a youth of which José Menese is a part and who will invest these texts. Something will overcome the political yoke of the dictatorial power of the time, which in fact transgresses without a desire for transgression“, according to ethnomusicologist Corinne Savy who gave a lecture on the subject this week.

Jose Menese in concert at the Olympia in 1974, in front of Spanish Republican exiles, sings the price of freedom. Nowadays, in a peaceful political context, but where racism against Gypsies persists, Israel Fernhasndez, who will perform in Arles on Saturday, writes his texts, anchored in reality, the present, he also uses poetry to evoke forced marriages in his community or homosexuality.

“Israel Fernhasndez comes out of these Epinal images. He talks about values: family, the neighborhood, the sense of community. He returns to certain things that, perhaps, need to be reconsidered. The fact of marriages between young people who are sometimes very adolescent, homosexuality, today’s themes. Because I think we don’t like to divide. We like to say and we say in freedom“, analyzes Corinne Savy.