1. Introduction
The Carnival of Cádiz has been gaining academic relevance for some years now. In 2018, the Chair of the Carnival was created at the University of Cadiz. With this work, we approach the carnival to continue showing a very wide world of creativity, expressiveness and representation. The Carnival of Cadiz is creativity, coplas, criticism and current affairs. It is always a representation of society and of any aspect of life and communication, communication in all its facets, including non-verbal communication, which is the subject of this article.
We approach the subject with the testimony of some of the protagonists and authors of this cultural phenomenon. In this way, we unite the knowledge of participation in the festival with theoretical development and the academic sphere. We try to balance theory and practice with a study as complete as possible that allows us to delve into the audiovisual, artistic and even anthropological fields.
Recent studies have highlighted the importance of the coplas and the compositions of the lyrics and music of this carnival, even stating that they form an independent literary genre (Páramo Fernández-Llamazares, 2017). Certainly, coplas are the basis of Cádiz carnival. Moreover, other publications (Fernández Jiménez, 2015) have highlighted that humour and what is socially understood as rude or scatological usually overshadow its main characteristic, which is creativity. For humour, surprise or the desired laughable effect to be produced, there must be creativity, and carnival groups use, in addition to the sung word, other audiovisual tools to carry out the performance, such as non-verbal communication.
The COAC [Concurso Oficial de Agrupaciones Carnavalescas] has become an audio- visual spectacle, which has often been a criticism of the more modern groups because it seems that here, wearing a black mask gives the benefit of quality, which is not necessarily the case. You simply have to adapt to the times. Before it was only heard on the radio and you saw a photo of it in the newspapers the next day, but nowadays it’s broadcast live on television and posted on the internet herefore […], it has become an audiovisual spectacle and what you see in the theatre are authentic works of art by the artisans who frame you in a framework that makes the spectator see the work you have prepared even more credibly. (Manuel Morera, 2018, statements in the radio program- me Mira que te diga)
The Cádiz Carnival increasingly enriches the performing arts and the cultural industry, which is nothing other than the consumption of culture (Sacaluga and Pérez, 2017). Carnival and its peculiar mode of communication are closely linked to humour, and humour is multifaceted and thought-provoking. A multitude of elements come into play to make people laugh: the content of what is being expressed is fundamental, but equally important is how it is being expressed. An enlightening example of the importance of the non-verbal in culture and humour is the case of the Malaga humorist “Chiquito de la Calzada”, whose way of expressing and representing the action of jokes made him an emblem of humour in Spain.
The phenomenon of glocalisation can be seen in the traditions of Andalusia. The fact that a fiesta with local roots, in which, for example, a lyric dedicated to a neighbourhood in Cádiz expands, can reach all parts of the world thanks to the communicative potential of the coplas and with the help of the media, is something that has been happening over the last three decades. In the same way that its lyrics are expanding, in a society in which images are everywhere thanks to the internet and smartphones, non-verbal communication is also expanding, and this deserves a separate study, thus the purpose of the present work.
The Carnaval de Cádiz groups are made to be heard and also to be seen. Using gestures to resolve a situation in the repertoire is not something new, nor is it entirely influenced by television, an idea held by many fans and authors – that at certain times the influence of television on interpretation is real – but as far back as 1884 in the group “Los Cocineros” there was a case of censorship of a copla in which they sang “El chocolate se hace así, así, así” (Ramos Santana, 2002). That is to say, the non-verbal has always been present in the groups, and a lyric can be censored only because of the gestures made and the grace lies in the non-verbal. Many followers of the Carnival of Cádiz, and I mean the Official Contest of Groupings, continue to defend the radio as the main means of communication, as they like to imagine the type and thus pay more attention to the content of the lyrics without “distractions”, an opinion shared by many, but the truth is that when “va telón/van cortinas ”, the grouping is seen and the “tipo” appears on stage, that is when the riddle-like name that the groupings have been using lately makes sense and, immediately afterwards, it is fixed with the content of the lyrics. “The copla is sung with the chirigota standing still, accompanying it with movements of the arms and gestures that are the salt and pepper with which the lyrics are seasoned. On many occasions, the gesture says more than the lyrics” (Solís, 1966, pp. 8–9). This “salt” and “pepper” is what we highlight in this study as the fundamental ingredients of these creations.
