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Listen while you read
Tre Martelli
Semper Viv
Felmay-Dunya FY 8048
Tendachent
Ori Pari
FolkClub EthnoSuoni ES 5305
Dňna Bčla
Canti Dal Piemonte Alla Provenza
FolkClub EthnoSuoni ES 5312
Quartetto Tamborini
Quartettino Giocoso
FolkClub EthnoSuoni ES 5307
Napoli Mandolin Orchestra
Serenata Luntana
Felmay-Dunya FY 8055
La Moresca
Senza Cchiů Terra
Felmay-Dunya FF 8039
A seminal band of the Italian roots revival is Tre Martelli, formed in 1976. They reinterpret the folk traditions of the southern Piemonte, played on a dazzling array of accordion, hurdy-gurdy, harmonium, musette, ocarina, recorder, clarinet, brass, guitar, mandolins, dulcimer, violin, cello, bass, piano, drums and percussion, all embellishing the region's evocative vocal harmonies. Marking their 25th anniversary, Semper Viv anthologizes the best of Tre Martelli's five out-of-print albums between 1977 and 2000, in a sprawling traditional repertoire including ballads, mazurkas, polkas, schottisches, waltzes, and drinking songs. This engagingly diverse collection is a rare testimonial to the wealth of Italian folk tradition.
Tendachënt is a newer Piedmontese band, formed in 1997, with roots in the folk-revival group La Ciapa Rusa (which enjoyed a 27-year run). Maurizio Martinotti (vocals, mandola, psaltery, hurdy gurdy), founder and leader of La Ciapa Rusa, recruited two other members of the original group, along with three younger and equally talented players. Tendachënt reinterprets several La Ciapa Rusa standards, along with new work. Their sound is traditionally inspired but not averse to contemporary colorings, comprising violin, viola, mandoloncello, harp, acoustic and electric guitars, flute, sax, ocarina, piano, keyboards, bass, drums and percussion. "Tasso Barbasso" is characteristic of their lilting sound, combining fiddle and miscellaneous percussion in what to some ears will sound decidedly Celtic (the catch-all category for unidentifiable acoustic music with a sprightly fiddle-whistle-and-bagpipe step). Another case in point: "Le Stesse Cose Ritornand." By contrast, "Galantone" and "Re Gilardin" front the sublime vocal harmonies so characteristic of Italian folk song. Ori Pari thus constitutes a diverse introduction to the evolving, contemporary north Italian sound.
Apart from Maurizio Martinotti's involvement in Tendachënt, he collaborates in the Dňna Bčla project with French singer Renat Sette. The album experiments with a meld of the traditional repertoires of Piemonte and Provençe, accompanied by hurdy gurdy, psaltery, guitar, violin, mandola, mandoloncello and percussion. Sette's Occitan-inflected vocal style and some of the modal settings are suggestively medieval (to my ear, the vocals sometimes have almost Basque-like colorings). There's a muted undertone running through this recording, an eerie presence difficult to place in time and space. Hear the stately, lament-like quality of "La Despartida" and "Re Gilardin," or the vaguely menacing insistence of "Diga Janeta/Janetair," one of the album's freshest tracks.
Quartetto Tamborini is closely focused on a particular set of northern Italian traditions, reviving the little-known works of popular nineteenth-century Piemonte composers. This chamber music was quite influential in its time, published and played in the major art-music venues of the north, and inspired artists and audiences well into the twentieth century. Quartetto Tamborini's repertoire includes ballads, contradanzas, polkas, waltzes, mazurkas, and monferrinas (the fashionable nineteenth-century regional dance style), together with more classically oriented works for string quartet and chamber ensemble. "Detective Rag," the closing track, a sprightly tune with some novelty percussion effects, is about as giocoso as things get, something one might associate with a silent film soundtrack. Augmenting the quartet core are a singer, a second viola, and contrabass, for some scholarly (notes in Italian and English) tux-and-cummerbund, sitting-room takes on an obscure genre.
U.S. popular culture's strip-mining of (especially southern) Italian folk music (most egregiously in the blowsy renditions of the Rat Pack) reduced its original lively expressiveness to inane caricature. Fortunately, a decade's musicological scholarship at the Accademia Mandolinistica Napoletana offers a more informed approach to traditional Neapolitan music's teaching and performance. Napoli Mandolin Orchestra's leader Antonello Paliotti has been a central figure in this process, a guitarist and evocative arranger of the folk repertoire. The orchestra comprises mandolin, mandole, mandoloncello, violoncello, guitar, bass guitar, contrabass, flute, clarinet, Italian percussion and castanets, with Paliotti himself on chitarra battente (a guitar native to central and southern Italy, played with a plectrum to accompany singing). Serenata Luntana offers a number of rare pieces, and fresh settings of several instantly recognizable tunes, including Rossini's "La Danza," "Funiculě Funiculŕ," "'O Sole Mio," "Torna a Surriento" (Return to Sorrento), "Marechiare" and "Tarantella." Acutely aware of the indignities visited upon Neapolitan song via international commercialization, Paliotti and his talented colleagues adroitly evoke the veiled beauty of an indigenous folk tradition whose lyricism is brightly manifest in their sensitive re-explorations of its cultural roots.
Twelve strong, La Moresca hail from Campania, in southern Italy, where poverty and the immigration question continue to loom large on the political horizon. The daunting instrumental line-up, typical of the region, includes flute, violin, guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, mandola, chromatic and diatonic accordions, and a battery of percussive sounds, including trans-regional additions of darbuka and djembe. (The ubiquitous Antonello Paliotti also makes a guest appearance on classical guitar and chitarra battente.) The group is fiercely regional in its loyalties, often singing in the Morrese dialect, as on "Pe Trenda Carlini," a pointed commentary on treacherous love. The title track cuts straight to the point with its dramatic denunciation of the atrocious working conditions that seasonal laborers endure in Italy, a message reinforced by a sweeping, soaring blend of violin, flute, percussion and voice. In an instrumental mode, "Colori di Primavera" (colors of spring) presents a spirited pan-Mediterranean weave of musical textures, an invocation to the four winds that have shaped the convergence of historical cultures in the region. "Nascette na' Sirena" resumes the album's political thread, an original ballad reflecting upon Neapolitan social history and the long-term consequences of the city's enduring neo-colonial condition. The sound is southern Italy throughout, as with the familiar "Santu Paulu Meu," a quick-stepping tarantella that imagines St. Paul to be seduced by the music's erotic spirit, or the evocative love lament "Mi Votu e Mi Rivotu" (which fans of Banda Ionica will recognize from the latter's recent and critically admired funeral-brass masterpiece, Matri Mia).
All of the CDs reviewed here are available at cdRoots
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