{ "id": "epq2hnjx46", "slug": "fandango", "title": "Fandango", "updated": "2026-10-25", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.daily", "label": "Food, customs, and everyday culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.daily" }, { "id": "culture.daily.social-folk-dance", "label": "Social and folk dance", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.daily.social-folk-dance" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.culture.daily", "label": "Western Europe · 1000 to 1799: Food, customs, and everyday culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.culture.daily", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000", "label": "Western Europe · 1000 to 1799", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.culture" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.culture.daily", "label": "Food, customs, and everyday culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.culture.daily" } ] }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800.culture.daily", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1800 to 1945: Food, customs, and everyday culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800.culture.daily", "path": [ { "id": "geo.latam", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 1800 to 1945", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800.culture" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t1800.culture.daily", "label": "Food, customs, and everyday culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t1800.culture.daily" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Fandango: a Spanish triple-time couple dance and song genre from Andalusia, documented from 1705; in flamenco a family of song forms (tarantas, mineras), and in Mexico and Brazil a community festival around music and dance.", "snippet": "Fandango: a Spanish triple-time couple dance and song genre from Andalusia, documented from 1705; in flamenco a family of song forms (tarantas, mineras), and in Mexico and Brazil a community festival around music and dance.", "node": "culture.daily.social-folk-dance", "markdown": "# Fandango\n\n**Fandango** is a Spanish music and dance genre, in triple time for couples and typically accompanied by guitar with castanets or handclapping, that spread from Iberia to Latin America, where the name also came to designate a community festival built around music, dancing, and improvised verse. An 1879 American encyclopedia called it the oldest national dance of Spain, especially of [Andalusia](https://www.edgepedia.org/andalusia).[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_American_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_%281879%29/Fandango) Over three centuries the word has named a couple dance, a family of flamenco song forms, a social party in Mexico and Brazil, and stylized concert pieces by European composers.\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Earliest melody source | A manuscript of the Biblioteca Nacional de España dated 1705, the *Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra*, contains the earliest known record of the fandango melody[2](https://www.spanish-art.org/spanish-dance-fandango.html) • [3](https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/5380) |\n| Earliest dance testimony | A 1712 letter by Manuel Martí, dean of Alicante, describing a dance he saw in Cádiz, is regarded as the earliest testimony on the fandango dance, though Martí does not name it[4](https://anuariomusical.revistas.csic.es/index.php/anuariomusical/article/view/181/0) |\n| Basic form | Danced in three-four time by one couple, with guitar and sometimes tambourine, dancers using castanets and spectators clapping[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_American_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_%281879%29/Fandango) |\n| Meter debate | Sevillana and Fandango de Huelva are commonly called triple-time (3/4) genres, but scholarship identifies an overlapping of duple and triple elements in them, a cross-meter structure also noted in the jota[5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352782034_It_Is_not_that_Easy_The_Cross-Meter_Genres_in_Flamenco_Post-ip_Revista_do_Forum_Internacional_de_Estudos_em_Musica_e_Danca_vol_3) |\n| Classical reception | Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Soler, and Luigi Boccherini wrote stylized fandangos, and Mozart included a fandango in *The Marriage of Figaro*[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/eighteenth-century-music/article/abs/from-lavapies-to-stockholm-eighteenthcentury-violin-fandangos-and-the-shaping-of-musical-spanishness/A43221FB32DE693BB9E70662F82B5CE5) • [7](https://news.unm.edu/news/robb-trust-to-present-baroque-new-mexico-fandangos) |\n| Flamenco family | In flamenco, the fandango's musical structure is described as bimodal, a structure shared with the cantes de Levante such as tarantas, mineras, and cartageneras[8](https://revistas.um.es/flamenco/article/view/142651) • [9](https://www.flamencologia.org/jota-antecedente-flamenco-alegrias/) |\n| Legal protection | On 30 June 2020 Andalusia inscribed the fandango of Huelva province in the Catálogo General del Patrimonio Histórico de Andalucía as an Actividad de Interés Etnológico[10](https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/aaiicc/flamenco/content/el-fandango) |\n| Brazil safeguarding | \"Fandango's Living Museum\", a community initiative in coastal southern and southeastern Brazil, was selected in 2011 for UNESCO's Register of Good Safeguarding Practices[11](https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/fandango-s-living-museum-00502) |\n\n## Origins and early documentation\n\nThe earliest documentary traces are musical rather than choreographic. A Spanish manuscript dated 1705, the *Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra*, preserves the earliest known record of the fandango melody, and the dance itself was first documented by a Spanish priest in 1712.[2](https://www.spanish-art.org/spanish-dance-fandango.html) Musicological work has identified that first dance description with a letter written in 1712 by Manuel Martí, dean of Alicante, who described in Latin a dance he had seen performed in Cádiz without naming it; later readers recognized the fandango in his account.[4](https://anuariomusical.revistas.csic.es/index.php/anuariomusical/article/view/181/0) Research on the genre's spread in [New Spain](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-spain) likewise places the first reference to the dance genre in the 1705 Biblioteca Nacional manuscript.[3](https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/5380)\n\n**Contested origins.** Theories about where the fandango came from disagree. Some scholars derive it from Andalusian dances such as the malagueña or murciana; others propose a Moorish background; a third view traces it to dances of Latin America and the [West Indies](https://www.edgepedia.org/west-indies).[2](https://www.spanish-art.org/spanish-dance-fandango.html) The Mexican ethnomusicologist Jessica Gottfried has argued that the fandango as a festive gathering arose in the Caribbean from the mixing of African influences and Caribbean popular culture, and that in Spain the word became fashionable in the eighteenth century to name a wide range of practices associated with enslaved Africans and with sailors crossing the Atlantic.[12](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX) A separate etymological proposal, from the musician Gilberto Gutiérrez of the group Mono Blanco, derives the word from Bantu, meaning a ritual breaking of order.[12](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX)\n\n## Spread through Spanish society and Europe\n\nBy the eighteenth century the fandango had reached every layer of Spanish society, and observers described it as a spontaneous, barely structured couple dance; [Giacomo Casanova](https://www.edgepedia.org/giacomo-casanova), visiting Madrid in 1768, left one of the most vivid accounts of its lascivious gestures.[13](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S0185-39292020000300138&script=sci_arttext_plus&tlng=es) The dance then underwent formal changes: Alan Jones, an independent scholar of the dance, documents how it was subjected to rules, adorned with steps from courtly dance, and reshaped along the lines of the English country dance or French contredance, producing hybrids such as the short-lived *minué afandangado*, while the seguidilla with its copla/estribillo structure decisively influenced the regional fandangos of Spanish villages.[14](https://www.centrodedocumentacionmusicaldeandalucia.es/ojs/index.php/mos/article/view/220)\n\n**The fandango as Spanish sound abroad.** From the mid-eighteenth century onward the fandango was regarded abroad as the epitome of Spanish cultural identity. It entered instrumental chamber music in stylized versions by [Domenico Scarlatti](https://www.edgepedia.org/domenico-scarlatti), Antonio Soler, and Luigi Boccherini, and eight rediscovered pieces dated 1730–1775 show that solo violin music also carried the genre, hybridized with the Italian violin sonata and French courtly dances.[6](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/eighteenth-century-music/article/abs/from-lavapies-to-stockholm-eighteenthcentury-violin-fandangos-and-the-shaping-of-musical-spanishness/A43221FB32DE693BB9E70662F82B5CE5) Foreign travelers' descriptions spread the dance through Europe, and the \"fandangos de autor\" written by [Christoph Willibald Gluck](https://www.edgepedia.org/christoph-willibald-gluck) and [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart](https://www.edgepedia.org/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart) restylized popular material for the concert stage; Mozart's fandango appears in *The Marriage of Figaro*, where its scandalous reception led to its being banned from some productions.[15](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7645962) • [12](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX)\n\n## The fandango in flamenco\n\nWithin flamenco, the fandango is a structurally important family. The musicologist Lola Fernández Marín, of the Conservatorio Adolfo Salazar in Madrid, analyzes the fandango's musical structure as bimodal, a term for the alternation of modal areas that the fandango shares with the cantes de Levante such as tarantas, mineras, and cartageneras, tracing the continuity from pre-flamenco fandangos to the mining songs.[8](https://revistas.um.es/flamenco/article/view/142651) Flamencological scholarship warns against flattening the terminology: jota and fandango remained distinct historical genres even where they borrowed from each other, and in some territories a jota could be called fandango or a \"jota\" structure could absorb seguidillas and fandangos.[9](https://www.flamencologia.org/jota-antecedente-flamenco-alegrias/)\n\nRegional fandango traditions persist outside flamenco's theatrical setting. The fandangos of Huelva province, with styles documented in towns such as Almonaster la Real, Alosno, and El Cerro de Andévalo, function as the coordinating axis of festive and ritual contexts and have spread to localities across Andalusia including Lucena in Córdoba, Peza and Güéjar Sierra in Granada, and Cómpeta in Málaga.[10](https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/aaiicc/flamenco/content/el-fandango) In Málaga, the verdiales belong to the broad field of Málaga fandangos and retain a strongly collective, danced, and instrumental character, with violin, guitar, tambourines, and cymbals in ternary meter.[9](https://www.flamencologia.org/jota-antecedente-flamenco-alegrias/) A study of Andalusian non-flamenco dance places the fandango, together with the jota and seguidilla, in a common conceptual and historical framework of popular dance that long predates flamenco's differentiation at the end of the nineteenth century.[16](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408085429_Jota_Fandango_y_Seguidillas_en_Andalucia_Una_aproximacion_al_folklore_danzado_no_flamenco)\n\n## The fandango in the Americas\n\nThe fandango crossed to the Americas early. It had spread along the whole Pacific slope of New Spain and into interior territories, documented in Sayula in 1728 and in [Valladolid](https://www.edgepedia.org/valladolid), today Morelia, in 1746; in 1775 a fandango was held by Sonora-Sinaloa settlers in the middle of their overland journey to [Alta California](https://www.edgepedia.org/alta-california).[3](https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/5380) In California's Rancho Period, roughly 1825 to 1860, the fandango was the major social event of the Californios, held for every possible occasion from saints' days to the arrival of a visiting ship.[17](https://sfdh.us/encyclopedia/early_california_fandango_duree.html) In New Mexico around 1840, the trader Josiah Gregg recorded that the word was never applied to any particular dance but was the usual name for ordinary assemblies where dancing and frolicking went on, while *baile* was reserved for gatherings of a higher grade.[18](https://cdss.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/online-library/country-dance-and-song/v.9.pdf)\n\nIn Mexico the fandango survives most prominently in the son jarocho (folk music tradition of Veracruz, Mexico) tradition of Veracruz. There the fandango is a community celebration held around a wooden platform, the tarima, which acts as an idiophone: the sound of the dancer's heel striking the wood is part of the music itself.[12](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX) Mexican fandango traditions include the fandango veracruzano, the istmeño, the fandango de artesa of the Costa Chica, whose instrumental ensemble has been linked by researchers to Senegambian models, the fandango of Tixtla, the huapango huasteco, and the p'urhépecha phandánguita.[12](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX) • [19](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S0185-16592011000200004&script=sci_arttext) The fandango jarocho declined during the first half of the twentieth century, and from the 1980s the Movimiento Jaranero promoted its research, dissemination, and revitalization; today the fandango and son jarocho appear in new styles and fusions on a range of cultural stages.[20](https://balaju.uv.mx/index.php/balaju/en/article/view/2566) In Brazil, the fandango is a popular music and dance expression of the coastal communities of the country's south and southeast, with songs called modas played on viola, fiddle, and frame drum, traditionally offered as payment for collective work such as planting, harvesting, and fishing.[11](https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/fandango-s-living-museum-00502)\n\n**Safeguarding.** Declining collective labor eroded the Brazilian fandango's prestige and identity, prompting the Caburé Cultural Association and roughly 300 local practitioners, the fandangueiros, to create an open-air community museum and a circuit of visits among fandangueiro houses, instrument makers, cultural centers, and craft sellers; UNESCO selected the project in 2011 for its Register of Good Safeguarding Practices.[11](https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/fandango-s-living-museum-00502) The format is designed to be adaptable to other cultural expressions in similar regional contexts.[11](https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/fandango-s-living-museum-00502)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Fandango, The American Cyclopædia (1879), Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_American_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_%281879%29/Fandango)\n2. [Fandango, Spanish Dance and Music, spanish-art.org](https://www.spanish-art.org/spanish-dance-fandango.html)\n3. [Jesús Jáuregui (2014). Un fandango en medio de la travesía hacia la Alta California: los colonos sonorenses-sinaloenses en 1775. Antropología. Revista Interdisciplinaria del INAH, 97.](https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/5380)\n4. [José Francisco Ortega Castejón (2015). Manuel Martí, deán de Alicante, ¿un testimonio sobre el fandango de comienzos del siglo XVIII? Anuario Musical, 70, 81–100.](https://anuariomusical.revistas.csic.es/index.php/anuariomusical/article/view/181/0)\n5. [It Is not that Easy. The Cross-Meter Genres in Flamenco, Post-ip vol. 3, ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352782034_It_Is_not_that_Easy_The_Cross-Meter_Genres_in_Flamenco_Post-ip_Revista_do_Forum_Internacional_de_Estudos_em_Musica_e_Danca_vol_3)\n6. [Ana Lombardía (2020). From Lavapiés to Stockholm: Eighteenth-Century Violin Fandangos and the Shaping of Musical 'Spanishness'. Eighteenth-Century Music, Cambridge Core](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/eighteenth-century-music/article/abs/from-lavapies-to-stockholm-eighteenthcentury-violin-fandangos-and-the-shaping-of-musical-spanishness/A43221FB32DE693BB9E70662F82B5CE5)\n7. [Robb Trust to present Baroque, New Mexico fandangos, UNM UCAM Newsroom](https://news.unm.edu/news/robb-trust-to-present-baroque-new-mexico-fandangos)\n8. [Lola Fernández Marín (2012). La bimodalidad en las formas del fandango y en los cantes de Levante: origen y evolución. Revista de Investigación sobre Flamenco \"La madrugá\", 5.](https://revistas.um.es/flamenco/article/view/142651)\n9. [Jesús D. López (2026). La jota como antecedente del Flamenco: pruebas, influencias y límites, Flamencología.org](https://www.flamencologia.org/jota-antecedente-flamenco-alegrias/)\n10. [El Fandango, Instituto Andaluz del Flamenco, Junta de Andalucía](https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/aaiicc/flamenco/content/el-fandango)\n11. [Fandango's Living Museum, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, No. 00502](https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/fandango-s-living-museum-00502)\n12. [El fandango nació en el Caribe, a raíz del mestizaje, Secretaría de Cultura, Gobierno de México (2017)](https://www.gob.mx/cultura/prensa/el-fandango-nacio-en-el-caribe-a-raiz-del-mestizaje?idiom=es-MX)\n13. [El fandango como performance de Antiguo Régimen (Jujuy, siglos XVIII–XIX), Anales de Antropología / SciELO México](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S0185-39292020000300138&script=sci_arttext_plus&tlng=es)\n14. [Alan Jones (2015). Surgimiento y Transformaciones del Fandango. Música Oral del Sur, 12, 562–585.](https://www.centrodedocumentacionmusicaldeandalucia.es/ojs/index.php/mos/article/view/220)\n15. [Rocío García Sánchez (2017). El fandango en el siglo XVIII: Música popular española en la corte vienesa. AV Notas, 2, 92–101, Dialnet](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7645962)\n16. [José Manuel García Delgado (2026). Jota, Fandango y Seguidillas en Andalucía: Una aproximación al folklore danzado no flamenco. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 532, 60–67.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408085429_Jota_Fandango_y_Seguidillas_en_Andalucia_Una_aproximacion_al_folklore_danzado_no_flamenco)\n17. [Richard Duree (2009). Early California Fandango, Society of Folk Dance Historians](https://sfdh.us/encyclopedia/early_california_fandango_duree.html)\n18. [William M. Litchman. Spanish Social Dancing in New Mexico, ca. 1840, Country Dance and Song, 9, CDSS](https://cdss.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/online-library/country-dance-and-song/v.9.pdf)\n19. [En pos de África: el ensamble instrumental del fandango de artesa de la Costa Chica, SciELO México](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S0185-16592011000200004&script=sci_arttext)\n20. [Melba Ali Velazquez Mabarak Sonderegger (2019). The Fandango Jarocho and the Jaranero Movement: a Historical Review. Balajú, Universidad Veracruzana.](https://balaju.uv.mx/index.php/balaju/en/article/view/2566)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Food, customs, and everyday culture › Social and folk dance*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Fandango\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Fandango](https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango](https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Fandango\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/fandango. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Fandango: a Spanish triple-time couple dance and song genre from Andalusia, documented from 1705; in flamenco a family of song forms, and in Mexico and Brazil a community festival around music and dance." }