Debla: un arcano del cante flamenco (del vocativo romaní al sustantivo caló)

Abstract

Since Antonio Machado Sen. published his important collection of Cantes Flamencos (1881), the world debla has been the object of much questioning. It provides the name for the oldest and most pathetic of tonás, which is also the most typically gypsy kind of copla. Its origins are lost in the deep night of the cante jondo. The chorus (macho) in caló dialect which rounds it off -debla barea or deblica barea has elicited many and zany interpretations among flamencologists, who were hardly preoccupied with the gitano dialect and its influence over the copla flamenca, and went to the point of suggesting the existence of a «mystery» of the debla. The present study attempts to unravel this problem, which has its source, at least from a linguistic point of view, in a simple gypsy form of exclamation.