Los change cycles as modern sociology studies, are getting shorter . So quickly have some disruptions passed in front of us that we have witnessed the impossibility of adapting to everything; asking, for example, someone who initially shunned the mobile phone to open a TikTok account seems like a black joke. That one stays out.
In this way, in art, great quotes that were born in a very different context from today, that of the 50s, 60s or 70s, They constantly try to reinvent themselves. . But sometimes, the alterations are so far-reaching that the solutions have to do with turns on the edge of the precipice, radical changes whose possible execution shakes the foundations.
The typewriter, with its irruption in the market, was going to send pencils to the garage, but those who still sold them in the 1980s suddenly saw their horizon exhausted while pens and pencils continue to languish in stationery stores today, without ever dying of all. The last European typewriter was built by Brother in 2012. This case teaches us that the best preparation for the future is your flexibility to reinvent yourself. What happened to the contests? With those of music, flamenco or poetry, it doesn’t matter, because most have a common denominator that punishes them.
mining lamp
In flamenco, to center the prism, the most prestigious competitions are those of La Unión, with the Mining Lamp, which has an economic endowment of 15.000 euros ; the Cordoba National Contest , which this fall will distribute €40,000 in prizes for the disciplines of singing, playing and dancing in its XXIII edition; and the Jondo Antonio Mairena Singing Contest , among others. I know that this year Extremaduran cantaora Esther Merino won the Lamp. And I also know that they will increase her hiring for the next season. I know that the young Álvaro Mora won the Bordón Minero; Ángel Bocanegra, on violin, el Filón; David Romero, bailaor, the so-called Desplante masculine and Irene Lozano the feminine one. If I try to remember the names of the latest editions, however, my forgetfulness grows. Most are not in the main cartels .
When Miguel Poveda, Mayte Martín or Rocío Márquez triumphed in this framework, they projected their careers. Today this does not happen. But what has run out of steam is not the Festival de Cante de las Minas, but the competition format. For this reason, all these appointments are already part of programs that go beyond the event itself, receiving artists from outside who do not compete for weeks in order to be more attractive to the public. Seville’s Bienal de Flamenco, the most extreme case, started as a competition in the 1980s and in 2022 the Giraldillos have been abolished for a single honorary award. Why have they lost that ability to cause notoriety and incorporate figures to the circuits?
Esther Merino, Mining Lamp 2022
The answer, in my opinion, lies in the digital universe . Conservatories and, above all, music schools continue to prepare their students, whether classical, flamenco or other genres, to compete in specific competitions. «I prepare the repertoire of Levante cantes well and take it with me», that idea is still valid, but perhaps subjects on how to set up a tripod and edit a video should be included . Management of social networks, music industry, digital platforms, monetization… It is not about placing the image above the substance itself in content programs, but about training students for the world they face. Networks launch artists. The contests, no. And the objectives, therefore, should be progressively readjusted to the new board in which we move.
This painful reality ends with the maximum of the demands for the artist: talent and work are not enough, but we have to add their adequate communication. A strategy. And if we attend to new values of jondo art, those for which big events are beginning to bet, we see that they are not related to competitions : Ismael de la Rosa El Bola, El Purili, Ángeles Toledano, Yerai Cortés, David de Arahal… Rafael de Utrera says that the prizes “They are used to organize the dust in your showcase” . They are exciting, of course. But his accolades are now pats on the back. What about poetry? What about the Adonais, Hyperion and Loewe? What will become of this kind of competition in the coming times and how could they find their space in this universe of fuzzy rules?
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