This work provides an in-depth ethnographic investigation of the greatly underestimated and under appreciated dynamic contributions of women singers, the cantaoras, to the creation, transmission and innovation of flamenco song. Situating the study of flamenco in the context of social and political currents that have shaped 20th-century Spain and drawing on interview material with the cantaoras themselves, the author shows how flamenco is a complex of cultural practices at once musical, physical, verbal and social, and that the performance of flamenco involves the expression and negotiation of...