Junta Flamenca Anís and Yerbabuena  Fri, Mar 6, 5pm Teatro Santa Ana Biblioteca Pública Reloj 50A 200 pesos

Gypsies from India to the Alhambra
By Maridel García

Anís and Yerbabuena present Me embrujaste, flamenco dance and singing, in an art form that may have its origins a thousand years in the past. Two legendary Persian texts give evidence of the passage of tribes heading west from the Indus Valley. In one, Hamza of Ispahan spoke about the arrival of 12,000 zotts musicians to Persia in the mid-tenth century. A king of India with great power would have sent the musicians to charm his cousin, the Shah. They appear in the chronicle as a gift, as an exchange between monarchs who are cousins and share the same taste in music. The story makes no reference to the expulsion or impurity of zotts.

The other text is the Book of the Kings, the Shah Nameh of the poet Firdusi. With this extraordinary epic, the nationalist poet wanted to stem the poetic Persian night against the resounding Muslim noon. In one of its 60,000 verses, he mentions the luris, eternal voyagers averse to agriculture, but prone to nomadism, theft and music. 

English linguist John Sampson divided these Indo groups into two branches: those who followed the roads southeast and west, and those who went northwest to become the gypsies whose music forms the basis of flamenco.