The endecha (often used in the plural endechas[1]) is a subgenre of lament, planto, found in early Iberian music.
[2] It usually indicates a metrical composition of 4 lines with 6 or 7 syllables.
[3] The endecha is essentially a musical form; a hexasyllable.
The verb endechar - to lament, to sing endechas, is rarely encountered,[4] though found in testimonies by Alfonso de Palencia.
It comes from the time before the Expulsion of 1492, and was used within the Jewish community,[5] though popular poems in Galicia already used this type of versification.