Tales from the Front

OK

OK. Now that I am back from vacation, a tough journey through Italy and Sicily looking for ghosts, for glimpses of my wife's past relations, for indecipherable clues; birth certificates in Italian, headstones, gravesites, abandoned residences, buried cemeteries, conversations with the past in foreign languages with people who knew someone who knew someone else of the same name back in the day, broken French as my common language of choice as Lynn attempts broken Italian, I can now report on some of the music I encountered there. Music is like life: It describes the human condition, makes a statement, tells a story, and lifts the veil on the past, if only temporarily.

I'm not talking about Blues, that most American of musics, but I am talking about the music I encountered in Italy, both live and on the radio. First, the live music, so let's start with the ancient music of the zampogna, the bagpipe made in the town of Lynn's grandfather, Scapoli, Molise, a medieval mountain town high in the Apennines, a music whose ultimate roots may be unknown. The zampogna, a reed instrument like an oboe, but with holes like a flute and a sheep's bladder to hold the air,( http://www.comunescapoli.is.it , for the museum; the following for a musical sample http://web.tiscali.it/zampogneinsardegna/img/Audioz+L.wma), was an instrument played for centuries by sheep herders and vagabonds, but is now the focus of a yearly festival in the mountain town, and a museum is there to preserve the music and its instruments. It is lonely, haunting music, music with almost no chord changes or discernable rhythm parts, but with a drone and a melody, usually a simple melody with a singing, vocal style. These melodies carry the spirit of the past, and according to a local I talked to, a man who spoke both English and Italian, the instrument was sometimes played by beggars for spare change. Italians who emigrated abandoned the zambogna when they came to America, ashamed, maybe, of the poverty associated with the music. Now, there is a yearly festival, and zampogna players can be found all over the world. We visited the museum, Lynn having corresponded with its director but were late for the festival by a couple of months.

Next, the most amazing encounter happened in Sorrento. Looking for dinner before 8pm when most locals eat their evening meal, we decided to try L'Osteria del Buonconvento, a place where live Canzone Napoletan musicians/singers work during the evening hours. While we were eating there, the song, Con te partiro, (The Time to Say Goodbye) came on the music system. Lynn started to cry, that song was played at her mother's funeral; how would I know since I was in surgery that day? The song is a long goodbye, a slow celebration of love and final parting. I found out who sang it: The singer was Pietro Rainone, a musician approaching middle age who lives near Naples. The following night, we came back to the restaurant but were told the restaurant was full. Lynn said she wanted to buy a CD from Pietro, who was playing live that night. Pietro turned around and looked at us, finished the song he was doing, and signed a CD for us during a break. Lynn explained her search for her past. Then, the owner announced to us that, in fact, they were not full, and he then arraigned for us to sit with one of his regular customers, Peppe Gioia and his wife, as guests. This was amazing to me; we were treated like family; later that night Pietro played Con te partiro knowing about the funeral while facing Lynn, who burst into tears, Peppe then wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Pietro, who speaks a little English, told me that he has played all types of music, but is now doing what he loves best, the music of his home town, Naples, music that fills his heart, music that is old, with influences from the Arabs and Moors, as well as the harmonies of the west. He is a fine singer, and fine guitarist who plays a Spanish guitar with a single cutaway; he even did Gershwin's "Summertime" for me in his own style, and in his best English; he also told me he played all the instruments on his CD. His orange wristband said it all; it means, according to him, "Live with passion." Fabulous.

Next, in Trapani, Sicily during the America's Cup trials, and in dedication to them, the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana, based in Palermo, played a free concert at the Chiesa dei Gesuiti (The Church of the Jesuit's). I love free classical concerts, and this one was a stunner. But instead of playing national Sicilian music, the orchestra played Greig's Piano Concerto in A minor with Enrica Ciccarelli on piano, followed by Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique; both 19th century pieces from Norway and France, respectively. The conductor, Jacek Kaspszyk, lead a fiercely passionate performance of both works; the audience was noisy, talking, inappropriately applauding after every movement, as babies cried, doors opened and closed, and one lady pushed others aside in the pew in front of us creating room for herself so she could sit down. In my opinion, acoustically, the old places are still the best. I could hear everything, and at triple forte, the orchestra was too loud for conversation, overwhelming everything but thought. The orchestra even performed an encore to the shouts of Bravi from the audience! Sicily wants to be more than an Italian province and it shows in its music.

Finally, what's up with Italian radio and TV? Is this where American performers go to die? On a TV show I watched in a hotel room one night, I saw KC and the Sunshine band do "Shake Your Booty," live. Why? I heard Neil Young twice, once in a bookstore in Palermo doing his classic "Helpless, Helpless, Helpless" and another time, while driving, doing something off his new album, something I didn't recognize as even being by him. I know he has had some tough health problems of late, but is this like the French and their love of Jerry Lewis? One radio station was called the "Juke Box" and its call letters were its phone number. That interested me, but is the voting for real, or is it like MTV's All Request Live, a suspected pay to play venue for the new and naïve? The radio music is pretty much all vocals, a mix of Italian (I guess its Italian) and old American classics from the 70's. I didn't hear any blues or jazz even when I set the car radio on "scan," just this endless, weird mix of stuff, old and new. I can say I honestly just don't get it.

Well, that's the current installment. We were robbed on the highway at a toll booth at the start of our car journey, but that is a story for another day.

posted by Unknown @ 12:17 PM