Dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the multi-cultural art form of flamenco, Chicago Flamenco Festival returns to the Instituto Cervantes Chicago on February 24, 2023, celebrating its XXI anniversary. Since 2002, the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago has organized and hosted the Chicago Flamenco Festival, bringing together the world’s finest flamenco artists to the city via live performances, workshops, lectures, and films.
The festival honors the roots and traditions of flamenco while also embracing the new, modern interpretations of this rich art form that arose from the mixing of many cultures. Hailing from southern Spain's outcast populations, flamenco dance and music drew early influences from the Greeks and Romans, and later from the folk traditions of Sephardic Jews, Arabs, and gypsies from northern India. While nobody really knows where the term “flamenco” originated, all agree that the art form began in Spain's Andalusia and Murcia but was also shaped and influenced by musicians and performers in the Caribbean, Latin America, India ¡, North Africa and Europe.
In 2010, UNESCO inscribed flamenco on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.