The Fiesta de la Bulería of Jerez de la Frontera

Abstract

The construction of cultural heritage, together with its maintenance, sustainability, and adaptation, is an area of perennial interest to social scientists. This chapter documents and describes the Fiesta de la Bulería, an annual event celebrated in the city of Jerez de La Frontera, Spain. The fiesta, an invented tradition that commenced in 1967, is dedicated to the bulería, a highly-cherished song-form in the flamenco repertoire. Drawing on perspectives from semiotics, the chapter addresses the question of how musical sounds signify, essential to an understanding of the construction of meaning, and thus to a deeper comprehension of music and identity. In the course of the discussion, this chapter employs the fiesta as a framework to illustrate how the environment, expressive culture, identity, and economics felicitously come together through adaptive management, thereby fostering the sustainability of an eco-system of culture.