Flamenco was invented by Roma people in Andalusia (south Spain) who are discriminated against in other areas of Spain. Rosalia is from Catalan (northeast Spain) which is much whiter and more European. She uses a lot of flamenco influences in her music and defends it with “flamenco does not belong to the [racial slur for Roma people].” She uses a fake Andalusian accent (kind of like Iggy Azeala’s blaccent) and sprinkles bits of their language into her music. She basically took flamenco, made it more “pop”, and then got worldwide success while paying the actual originators of flamenco dust. Then the rest of the world assumes her music is ‘legit flamenco’ because she’s Spanish and they don’t know any better.

Whoaaa. I've definitely gotta look into this more.