auccalamma (themouthofthesoul)
When Enzo, myself
and another friend founded the quartet Musicāntica late in 1994 we
were amused by the idea of performing traditional music from southern Italy
in a strange and controversial place like Los Angeles. Besides the pure fun
of making music, we wanted to present the songs of the oral tradition of our
southern land as we concurred that no one really knew about them. No more
songs like, “O Sole Mio” or “Funiculė Funiculā,”
but just the power of the pizzica, the poetry and the love drama of the Neapolitan
villanelle, the intriguing sound of the cane clarinets from Sardinia, the
passion of Sicilian cart driver songs and a heavy dose of sound experimentation
with the sounds of our native Mediterranean area. In short, we sought to promote
the music of the unsung people of Italy to be played for the unsung people
of every day America. Musicāntica’s activity does not place itself
that far off from the current ideas known as contaminazione and riproposta,
that is, music which is created and proposed by incorporating cultural elements
alien to the original tradition, so increasingly common all over Italy since
the late 1980s. We strive, however, to maintain the musical idea learned from
the tradition as much as possible intact while experimenting by combining
sounds from the Mediterranean that the mood and the character of the piece
itself may suggest to us. Often times the song remains as is, and rightfully
so.
Almost eight years later from our beginnings, as we switched from a quartet
down to a duo, we still find a remarkable freshness in traditional music and
more than ever we believe in its contemporary continuation. In reality, our
ensemble does not break a mold. For instance, other Italian bands during the
1970s did create great music based in the tradition and also by keeping an
eye toward other music coming from the Mediterranean area, largely anticipating
the World Music trend of the following decade. Musicāntica does not
seek to represent the music of its own culture merely as a more or less faithful
rendition of the past because such activity usually implies that the music
is no-longer a living entity. Rather, we believe that the music continues
to live in the life experiences of the musicians who perform it with the due
changes and circumstances given by the historical times in which they live.
This is because each musical process in time is historical, part of a relentless
process of development, productive confrontation with every day life and a
continuous discourse between current innovation and past sedimentation. It
is because of this discourse between the actual and the past that the repertoire
in this CD has switched a bit from the strictly traditional of our beginnings
to a more personal rendition of the traditional as well as original compositions.
By “more personal rendition of the traditional,” we mean that we
have maintained our resources and we have not resorted to easy compromises
in the choices we have made in the manipulation of the musical element. Rather,
we have made a conscious effort to reject such compromises and the “effect
hit” by refusing to engage in any cut-and-paste type of arrangement by
attaching contemporary, popular styles such as rock and roll, rap, R&B,
or even jazz to our songs. Of course, this does not mean that we do not love
or recognize the great power and magnificence of the above musical styles.
In fact, as you can listen in this CD, when performing our original songs
such as COZZE CUZZEDDHRE, we have employed the powerful socio-political means
represented by hip-hop in order to create new meanings for our audiences.
But you will find the music still belonging to our southern roots, the suggestion
is made from the inside out rather than the outside in. Therefore, we do not
fuse, attach, coat, or to use a term dear to post-modernists, we do no pastiche
of any kind, just a conscious effort and commitment to continuous experimentation.
Moreover, each one of us reminisces, mostly symbolically, the sounds experienced
in a lifetime from each of our respective birthplaces: the Salento for Enzo
and eastern Sicily for myself.
The connection between the southern Italian tradition and the individual experiences
as immigrants in Los Angeles is evident in our improvisations and re-adaptations
of older material. Even our respective dialects have been modified rather
spontaneously at times during the process of music making. For me, it was
not a difficult task to sing in Enzo’s Salentine dialect, but I inevitably
ended up pronouncing or inflecting some of the words in my own Sicilian idiom.
Enzo, on his part, begins the slow part of the song titled LU RUSCIU with
a word that is not proper in his dialect while it is in mine. All this came
naturally to both of us so we decided to keep these and other small “errors”
as to underline our openness and stress the natural musical process that characterizes
this recording.
AUCCALAMMA means ‘the mouth of the soul’ in my own dialect. We contracted
the words into one for the purpose of the title and this is the way it is
pronounced in current speech anyway. We also love its slightly Near Eastern
sounds. Its meaning, however, is its most important aspect as far as we are
concerned. In a broken society such as our Western one it is of utmost importance
to underline and keep the basics aspects of human decency alive and well in
sight through art despite all the downfalls around us. AUCCALAMMA literally
refers to the upper entrance of the stomach. Sometimes we ‘feel’
with that part of our body, or as we say in English, we feel something in
our guts, such as premonitions, longing, or anxieties. We can say that ‘feeling’
things in and with our stomach can be considered an aspect of communication
perhaps less and less experienced at a natural level. This is true especially
today as we let unnecessary technological devices or gutless men do the talking
on our behalf often causing aches and pains. Through musical conversation
and understanding, somehow we can reject these poisons of life, much like
the tarantate would vomit the spider’s poison at the end of their dance
ordeal. Well, the continuous development of sentiment and spirit lived viscerally
between two friends is mostly what this recording is all about. We have chosen
simply to let l’amma, our soul, do the talking.
Roberto Catalano
auccalamma is available at: www.songsearch.com and at The Getty Villa Malibu's Bookstore.
Musicāntica | The Musicians | Workshops | Upcoming Events | History | CD | Links | Contact Us