Perhaps due to an early inclination toward drawing and painting, I have always tended to perceive flamenco rhythms and chords as shapes and colors. This painterly perspective has allowed me to enjoy this music from both an acoustic and a visual angle at the same time. However, this double approach could also be seen as a crutch, especially in a practice where listening is what truly matters above all else. This is how the Sevillian dancer and palmero El Torombo—equally skilled with words as he is with his hands—puts it:

"In today’s learning style, things are approached more intellectually than organically […]. If someone’s been trained to do palmas by strictly following numerical counts, they’re treading on thin ice. Helping people break free from these constraints, to unlearn it... That’s the transition the newer generations are navigating. Our learning was more auditory than visual. These days, learning leans towards visual understanding, favoring conscious comprehension over sensory or organic intake" (El Torombo, December 1, 2018; in Flamenco Palmas 2025: 194).

That said, and without wishing to “tread on thin ice,” let this lecture be an exception that aims to make visible the science—with no quotation marks or italics—that underlies flamenco hand clapping, an art traditionally relegated to a secondary role within flamenco music. More specifically, we hope to share in a more accessible way the outcomes of the PhD dissertation on flamenco palmas defended in 2019—an exercise, by the way, that any academic research should undertake as a kind of epilogue.

Two key moments inspired the inception of the lecture. First, the concert by singer and musician La Tremendita with guitarist Joselito Acedo (held earlier that same year at the Barcelona Flamenco Society El Dorado). Willing to “play with music,” they sat facing each other across a small table, as if in their living room, and drew us into their game for an hour and a half. That sense of playful engagement was precisely what I wanted to convey: palmas are not only “played” but are, in essence, a game. The second inspiration was the lecture given by singer Cristina López on electronic music in flamenco, a hybrid world brilliantly illustrated by combining her musical background and training in flamenco with her degree in Telecommunications Engineering. In a similar vein, the visual and aural exploration of flamenco palmas featured in this lecture seeks to link my music training with my higher education in Fine Arts—two worlds that have been closely connected ever since I first became passionate about flamenco.

I would like to express my warmest thanks to Aina Núñez and Raúl Verdejo for their collaboration in the live performing of some clapping patterns and choirs (multi-pattern combinations) during the lecture, as well as to flamenco guitarist and producer Paco Heredia for providing the images of several raspas (screenshots) from the recording session of the album Fruto y flores by flamenco singer La Fabi.

00:00 Presentation

00:50 Is flamenco hand clapping a puzzle?

02:50 Example featuring Carmen Amaya and her troupe

11:09 What flamenco palmas really are

16:34 The pulse (beat and offbeat)

25:10 The traditional bases de palmas

36:20 The traditional bases in the early phonography

41:25 Live performance of the traditional bases

49:30 The contra (technique and properties)

56:15 Live performance of the contra

1:03:36 The modern palmas

1:09:45 Live performance of modern palmas

1:11:57 Conclusions on modern palmas

1:15:44 Question Time