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This article presents the digital results of a project conducted at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2017. The aim of this project was to analyse the collection of folk music compiled by Alan Lomax (1915-2002) in Spain between June 1952 and January 1953, and the hundreds of documents deriving from his journey. All the data provided by the Lomax collection was incorporated into the Fondo de Música Tradicional IMF-CSIC (http://musicatradicional.eu/lomax), and the application «Alan Lomax's journey across Spain (1952-53)» (http://arcg.is/2x1K6u0), which display Lomax's itinerary on an open-access interactive map, was also created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuel de Falla was a Spanish musician of the XIXth and XXth centuries who had international recognition likely due to his musical fusion talent. His knowledge about Spanish musical traditions gave to his early compositions a new and fresh intellectual interpretation for the typical Spanish folk music. However, in the middle of his musical career, he suffered a strange disease of his eyes named recurrent acute iridocyclitis. This eye flushing is caused by an inflammation of 2 structures of the anterior pole of the ocular globe, the iris, and the ciliary body. It is usually a symptom of another disease and it causes many psychological impairments and disabilities (severe eye pain in bright light, blurry vision, headache, stress for organization (orderliness), and depression in some cases). This soreness of his eyes had an effect over Falla's compositions and marked an inflection point in his line of musical creations. Eyes in music have been so relevant in another composers and musicians throughout history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Donald Robb (1892-1989) was a composer, music professor, and University of New Mexico administrator who for decades enthusiastically collected Southwestern folk music—in particular Spanish-language nuevo mexicano music. His correspondence as well as other archived documents provide fascinating glimpses into his methods of collecting music and establishing an archive. These glimpses, in turn, help us understand not only Robb and his overall oeuvre better but also, specifically, the way his music collection was assembled—a key endeavor since, as various scholars have argued, an archival collection's degree of usefulness increases as users understand the way the archive was put together. This article is an exercise in "archival ethnography": my aim is to explore and contextualize Robb as one individual involved in a wider academic culture of musical and cultural preservation through archival collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students on the undergraduate degree in Primary Education in Spain took part in this inter-university experience within the subject of Didactics of Musical Expression. Eleven teachers and 307 students from four Spanish universities were involved in the experience, which took place in the academic year 2012-2013. The four universities were the University of the Basque Country, the University of Cantabria, University Jaume I of Castellon and the University of the Balearic Islands. The aim of the experience was to discover the traditional culture in various Spanish regions through an interdisciplinary and creative project. Based on cooperative methodology, each class in the four universities was divided into work groups of five to seven students. Technologies played an essential role in developing and coordinating the experience, as the students were able to interact and learn about the work being carried out in the other universities through virtual platforms and networks. The results of the evaluation process undertaken with the students and teachers showed that the experience had helped them to acquire basic competencies and knowledge about intangible cultural heritage and that it was a source of exchange and enrichment for both students and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a conservative, Catholic regime with fascist influences, Francisco Franco's dictatorship confined Spanish women primarily to the domestic sphere and subordination to men. However, folk music activities organized by the Sección Femenina were indeed a national conscience-building programme which gave women a political role in the construction of the nation. Through the examination of speeches and publications of the Sección Femenina and musical criticism in the period 1939-1953, this article explores how the involvement of women in traditional music was used to overcome two of the main fears of the regime: separatism and modernity. The article will also show how the discourse changed to accommodate new political and diplomatic circumstances in the late 1940s, when female folk music performers were used as cultural ambassadors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the works by Alan Lomax during his trip to Spain in 1952-53. It discusses traditional music from different regions including Andalusia, Aragon and Asturias. His introductory essay to his Spanish recordings included field notes and photographs and copies of many letters he wrote. The article also offers information on two of the three volumes of "The Spanish Recordings" series of "The Alan Lomax Collection" entitled, "Galicia" and Extremadura."

The article offers a multidimensional analysis of flamenco music. The Andalusian argument goes on to say that in the nineteenth century, Andalusian song style was popularized in the taverns and the cafés cantantes of Andalusia. Through this popularization, flamenco emerged as a crystalline human expression, which, though distinctively Andalusian, had the power to speak to all humans. The last half of the nineteenth century, with its flourishing cafés cantantes, is sometimes said to be the golden age of flamenco. Those who advance the Andalusian argument contend that this golden age was a period during which artists refined Andalusian song, strengthening its already strong metaphysics. Artists from the different provinces of Andalusia contributed to this enhancement process by elaborating their distinctive substyles. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Europeans turned their admiring attentions to Andalusia, and tourists began flocking to flamenco performances. According to the Andalusian argument, the tourist fanfare weakened the pure stock of flamenco. Then in the early twentieth century, garish flamenco spectacles orchestrated under the high-flown label of Opera Flamenca, attracted even larger audiences. The rock-solid Andalusian core of the music was gradually obscured by the baroque flourishes of flamenco spectacles. Such spectacles, when coupled with the Gitano style of flamenco, soon earned this music an ugly reputation in the popular press. By 1950, the true Andalusian character of flamenco is said to have been thoroughly obscured in the crush of journalistic assaults on popular spectacles. Among the Andalusian, the flamenco and the Gitano, the Andalusian is categorical, flamenco and Gitano effects came afterwards.