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50 free Flamenco trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Flamenco grew up among the gitano communities of Andalusia and became one of the world's great performing arts, and this quiz covers the whole of it: the song (cante), the guitar (toque), the dance (baile), the rhythms and the people who made them famous. Easy questions ask which region flamenco comes from, what the box drum is called and which UNESCO list it joined in 2010; harder ones dig into the 12-beat compás of the bulerías, the 1922 Granada contest organised by Lorca and Falla, why Camarón de la Isla was nicknamed after a shrimp, and how a Peruvian instrument ended up in every flamenco band. It works for anyone who has watched a tablao show on holiday in Seville or Madrid, for guitar players and dancers, and for music quiz nights that want a round beyond rock and pop. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on flamenco, its palos, its instruments and its leading artists, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Flamenco developed within the gitano subculture of which Spanish region?
Andalusia
It also has a historical presence in Extremadura and Murcia, but its style is uniquely Andalusian.
Q 02In 2010, UNESCO added flamenco to which list?
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage
The declaration came on 16 November 2010, more than two centuries after the first written record of flamenco music in 1774.
Q 03What is the oldest written record of flamenco music?
José Cadalso's Las Cartas Marruecas (1774)
The Moroccan Letters were published decades before the word flamenco was applied to the music genre in an 1847 newspaper article.
Q 04Historically, the Spanish word "flamenco" was used to identify which group of people?
The Romani (gitanos) of Spain
The English traveller George Borrow reported in the 1830s that gitanos were also called Flemish, apparently because German and Flemish were confused.
Q 05What are the individual styles or forms of flamenco called?
Palos
There are more than 50 of them, classified by rhythm, mode, chord progression, stanza form and where they came from.
Q 06What is the most serious, deepest class of flamenco song called?
Cante jondo
The name means "deep song", spelled with a J to reflect the aspirated H of Andalusian pronunciation.
Q 07What is the Spanish word for the rhythmic cycle or metre that is fundamental to flamenco?
Compás
If no guitarist is available it is kept by hand-clapping or by rapping knuckles on a table.
Q 08How many beats make up the flamenco cycle shared by soleá, seguiriya and bulería?
12
The 12-beat cycle is usually rendered as 6/8 plus 3/4, and its accents fall differently in each palo.
Q 09Which fast palo, born among the Calé Romani of Jerez, typically ends a flamenco gathering?
Bulerías
It began as a quick, upbeat finish to soleares or alegrías and is often accompanied by vigorous dancing and tapping.
Q 10The alegrías are thought to derive from the jota of which Spanish region?
Aragon
The jota took root in Cádiz during the Peninsular War, which is why classic alegrías lyrics mention the Virgen del Pilar and the Ebro river.
Q 11The guajira palo grew out of cultural exchange between Spain and which country?
Cuba
It is a cheerful, elegant style, and its danced version uses a fan as a stage prop.
Q 12Which palo is sometimes called the "mother of palos"?
Soleares
The title is honorary rather than historical: siguiriyas are actually older, and the fandango family has a different origin.
Q 13Which chord sequence, in E played as Am–G–F–E, is known as the Andalusian cadence?
Am–G–F–E
Guitarist Manolo Sanlúcar treats E as the tonic and F as the dominant in this modified Phrygian progression.
Q 21An eight-year-old winner of the 1922 Granada contest grew up to be which flamenco great?
Manolo Caracol
The jury was chaired by Antonio Chacón, then the leading figure in cante, and the whole contest was later judged a failure.
Q 22Between 1920 and 1955, why were flamenco shows in theatres and bullrings billed as "flamenco opera"?
It was taxed at a lower rate than variety
Opera was taxed at 3% while variety shows paid 10%, so promoters simply relabelled the shows.
Q 23Where was the first academic chair of flamencology founded in 1958?
Jerez de la Frontera
Q 14Which musical mode underlies most flamenco harmony?
Phrygian
The so-called flamenco mode is the Phrygian, or a version of it with a major third, heard in soleá, siguiriyas, tangos and tientos.
Q 15What are the guitar interludes between sung verses called?
Falsetas
The guitarist also opens each piece with a short introduction that sets the tonality, compás and tempo for the singer.
Q 16What is a flamenco singer called?
Cantaor
The word drops the intervocalic D of cantador, a feature of the Andalusian dialect; the dancer is a bailaor and the guitarist a tocaor.
Q 17What is the name of the venue where flamenco shows are performed, from the word for floorboard?
Tablao
Tablaos spread across Spain in the 1960s, replacing the cafés cantantes, and the word also means the wooden platform the dancer performs on.
Q 18Who opened the first flamenco singer café in Seville in 1881?
Silverio Franconetti
The competitive atmosphere of his café produced the professional cantaor and helped shape the genre's technique.
Q 19What is the mysterious, ineffable charm or spirit that great flamenco performances are said to have?
Duende
Lorca defined it in a famous lecture with Goethe's words: a mysterious power that everyone feels and no philosopher explains.
Q 20Which poet and which composer organised the 1922 deep-song contest in Granada?
Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla
Only amateurs could enter; the winners were a retired singer called El Tenazas and an eight-year-old who became Manolo Caracol.
It followed the 1955 essay Flamencología by the Argentine Anselmo González Climent, which coined the term.
Q 24What are the three traditional colours associated with flamenco?
Red, white and gold
The frilly spotted dresses that tourists associate with flamenco actually come from the outfits worn for sevillanas at Seville's annual Feria.
Q 25Which guitarist, born Francisco Sánchez Gómez in Algeciras, became flamenco's most celebrated player?
Paco de Lucía
He took his stage name from his Portuguese mother, Lúcia, because there were too many Pacos in the streets of Algeciras.
Q 26"Entre dos aguas", Paco de Lucía's best-known piece, refers to what?
Algeciras, where two seas meet
The rumba, with bongos and electric bass, appeared on the album Fuente y caudal.
Q 27Which two guitarists joined Paco de Lucía on the 1981 live album Friday Night in San Francisco?
John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola
Larry Coryell had been the third member of the original Guitar Trio in 1979 before Di Meola replaced him.
Q 28Paco de Lucía could not read music until he was asked to record which classical work in 1991?
Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez
He said he had never studied harmony and lacked the discipline; playing with McLaughlin and Di Meola was how he learned.
Q 29The cajón, now standard in flamenco, was originally an instrument from which country?
Peru
It was developed by enslaved Africans in coastal Peru, and Paco de Lucía's sextet brought it into flamenco with percussionist Rubem Dantas.
Q 30Which percussionist in Paco de Lucía's sextet devised the flamenco way of playing the cajón?
Rubem Dantas
The box drum then crossed over into tango and rumba, largely thanks to the album Sólo quiero caminar.