The contest that put Córdoba on the flamenco map
Córdoba's national flamenco contest
The Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco: how the 1956 contest in Córdoba began, how it grew from cante jondo to a prize for the whole art, and why it matters.
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The Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco de Córdoba has run every three years since 1956. It began as a contest of cante jondo, was renamed in 1965, and, Spanish Wikipedia says, is the only contest of its category that can award the title Premio Nacional. For a visitor it explains why Córdoba takes flamenco seriously, and why a billing such as national flamenco winners carries weight.
A contest from 1956
The Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco de Córdoba is a three-yearly contest held in the city since 1956. According to Spanish Wikipedia, it was created to rescue the singing of the old cante jondo in its traditional purity, at a time when that tradition sat outside the circuits of commercial shows. It was also meant to carry on the memory of the 1922 Granada contest that Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca had championed.
How it began
The article credits the idea to the poet Ricardo Molina, a friend of the singer Antonio Mairena, who took it to the mayor, Antonio Cruz Conde. Cruz Conde expanded it to strengthen the Festival de los Patios Cordobeses. Molina had been impressed by Flamencología, the 1955 essay by the Argentine writer Anselmo González Climent. Wikipedia's article on flamenco adds that the contest followed that book and that Molina and Mairena published a landmark study of cante in 1963.
From cante jondo to the art of flamenco
The contest began as the Concurso Nacional de Cante Jondo. It took its present name, Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco, in its fourth edition, in 1965, widening from singing to the whole art. Spanish Wikipedia calls the result an exhaustive picture of cante, baile and toque across half a century, a laboratory of classic flamenco. The same text notes that it was long held in spring, in the festivities of the Cordoban May, alongside the patios.
Who runs it
The city council of Córdoba promoted the contest from the first edition. Since 1992, according to the same article, its organisation and management have been in the hands of the municipal body behind the Gran Teatro de Córdoba, now called the Instituto Municipal de las Artes Escénicas Gran Teatro de Córdoba. The contest is tied to the city, and its prizes are named national, which is the point of the whole exercise.
Names on the prize list
Spanish Wikipedia lists a long roll of prize-winning artists, among them Fosforito, Paco de Lucía, Vicente Amigo, Manolo Sanlúcar, José Menese, Matilde Coral and Mario Maya. The list gives a sense of the contest's weight: it has launched young artists, pushed along emerging ones and consecrated established masters, in the article's words. It does not say which individual winners appear at any tablao, and neither does this guide.
What it means for a night out
A billing of artists as national flamenco winners is a claim about the performers, and Tablao Cardenal's show makes it for three of its seven. The billing does not name the contest, and several national honours exist. What the Córdoba contest does tell you is that the city has a long habit of judging flamenco closely, and that a tablao in its Jewish Quarter plays to an audience used to hearing the art form taken seriously. The tickets guide covers the practical side.
Read next: Flamenco show in Córdoba: tickets
Frequently asked questions
How often is the contest held?
Every three years. Spanish Wikipedia describes it as a three-yearly contest that has run in Córdoba since 1956.
What was it first called?
The Concurso Nacional de Cante Jondo. It became the Concurso Nacional de Arte Flamenco in its fourth edition, in 1965.
Who runs it today?
The municipal body behind the Gran Teatro de Córdoba, which has managed it since 1992.
Do the artists at Tablao Cardenal come from the contest?
The show is billed as three national flamenco winners among seven artists, without naming a contest.
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