Moorish styles reminded fashionable in Christian Spain. So much so that if you were a craftsman, you were given special treatment. But life for other Moors was getting a lot harder. Most fled to the extreme south of Spain, where the last bastion of Moorish might clung on to power. Those who remained were forced to convert or go underground, where they mixed with other outcast cultures, like the Jews and the Gypsies.
These different groups of outsiders-Moors, Jews, Gypsies-came together in down-at-heel parts of town, like Triana in Seville. Here, their different musical traditions fused together to create a style that would eventually resurface, so it's said, as flamenco.
Nobody knows for sure which parts of flamenco come from the Moors, though there are many theories. They brought the guitar to Spain, destined to become the nation's favorite musical instrument. And the distinctive dance style of flamenco, in which dramatic arm and hand movements are favoured over the legs, is similar to Moorish dancing, which forbade women from drawing attention to their legs. The singing style is similar to the wailing Arabic style. Even the word flamenco itself comes from an Arab word - felagmengu, meaning fugitive peasant. And flamenco is, above all, the music of the dispossessed.
The spirit of flamenco is purity.