Caña

The caña is a flamenco stick, which has historically been considered the most important of them all.

Estébanez Calderón, in his Andalusian Scenes called the caña "primitive trunk of Andalusian songs", and Professor García Matos claimed that it came from an ancient Andalusian song. However, other authors dispute this musical etymology, at least partially, relating it to the soleá;​ or to the toná, a proposal that is difficult to demonstrate.

Different interpretations of the origin of Caña

• A group of authors, including Richard Ford, say that its origin comes from the Arabic name of “gaunnia” which means song. Serafín Estébanez Calderón positions himself in this same frame of mind, who considers it a cante of Arabic origin, from which the oles, the tiranas, the polos, the serranas, and the tonadas would in turn come. In the work of Estébanez Calderón, the cantaor “El Fillo” appears as a cantaor de cañas, and he is considered the oldest stylist of this cante. It seems that it was customary at this time to join the cane with the pole.
• The musicologist Manuel García Matos attributes this name to an Andalusian song in which sugar cane is alluded to, according to a couplet collected by Isidoro Hernández in his work «Popular Traditions and Flowers of Spain».
• Julián Zugasti, in his work on Andalusian banditry, shows an ancient Andalusian custom, which dates back to medieval times and consisted of “singing to the canes”, that is, to the glasses of wine placed on the counter.
• Angel Álvarez Caballero: «The first direct citation of the cane is that of Richard Ford in 1830, and after it silence falls again until 1847, when Estébanez Calderón refers to it».

Music

On the harmonic plane, caña and polo are two differentiated styles, so it is characteristic of caña that it performs all the cante on the flamenco mode, supporting the first four degrees in their respective dominants. This fact gives rise to the belief that the copla de la caña is intoned over a minor key and it is certainly one of the genres, with modal ostinato, in which the fourth degree of the Andalusian scale (A minor) is more clear it could be confirmed as a tonic of a minor key; notwithstanding the cadential function of rest of the first degree (chord of E major), we find it both in the caña, or in the soleá, as well as in all the styles of flamenco that are performed on the flamenco mode. In La Caña, we can find certain similarities with the Soleá in terms of beat, verse and tonality.

The melancholic cante of la Caña begins with a long and courageous quejío, “ay!” followed by a first paseíllo de ayes.

The paseíllos de ayes are repeated six times, and are performed in perfect accordance with the corresponding guitar chords. In the current form, cante por cañas begins with an eight-syllable copla of four lines, followed by a quejío, which is expressed simply with the “a” or the “y” of the “ay”, which is repeated several times, ending with a macho. Molina and Mairena, believe that the cane presents analogies, with other songs such as: alboreá, serrana, soleares, polo, etc… there are great similarities with polo, in fact there was a time, in which the cante of the cane then the polo was sung, resulting in the link of both songs, heavy and monotonous for those who listened to them. That is why the caña has been a cante that has been transformed over time, tending to become a more direct and light cante.

Dance

According to Manuel de Vargas, it was the dancer Antonio de Juana Porrote who danced the Caña, in the first third of the 20th century. However, it was the guitarist Perico el del Lunar who spread this palo adapting it to dance and offering it in 1935 to the great bailaora Carmen Amaya so that she would premiere it at her debut in Madrid.

Normally, the cane dance is performed with a Manila shawl, a Bata de Cola, and Castanets, thus adding greater complexity to this dance with such melancholic features, which already requires a great “weight” to interpret it.