Rhythm and Heritage in Modern Flamenco Guitar

This Element explores the rethinking of rhythmic skill in the contemporary world, focusing on modern flamenco guitar. It uses examples from local guitar traditions and an online guitar contest during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how rhythm can shape new ways of understanding and performing heritage in the global and digital age.

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Discourses about rhythmic skill and feel have often been associated with forms of non-Western, and especially African and Afro-diasporic identity and heritage. How can we rethink rhythmic skill for the contemporary world where concepts of heritage and belonging are attaining new meanings across cultural and geographical borders? This Element addresses this question through the case study of modern flamenco guitar, an instrumental practice that has achieved daunting levels of rhythmic sophistication and has been flourishing across the globe for decades, even before flamenco was inscribed into UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010. Drawing on examples from local guitar traditions in Jerez de la Frontera and Morón de la Frontera and from an online guitar contest launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, this Element explores how rhythm can shape new ways of understanding and performing heritage in the global and digital age.