Musicantica

MUSICàNTICA MUSIC AND CULTURE FROM MEDITERRANEAN ITALY

MUSICàNTICA focuses mainly on the music from Southern Italy’s oral tradition at the same time outr eaching for a more contemporary musical idea that can be indicated as Mediterranean World-Music. By oral tradition it is intended music, poetry, and ritual passed on from generation to generation by untrained musicians belonging to generally less known segments of Italian society such as the peasant’s world, fishermen, or street vendors. MUSICàNTICA finds a remarkable freshness in traditional music and believes in its contemporary continuation despite various attempts by Italian artist’s to crystallize it or confine it in more or less faithful renditions or misuse it in popular music cultural operations. Continuity is possible 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. MUSICàNTICA’s repertoire includes, therefore, both traditional as well as original compositions. The connection between the southern Italian tradition, the individual experiences as immigrants in Southern California, and the symbolic remembrance of the sounds of their respective birthplaces is evident in the artists’ various improvisations and re-adaptations of older material.

Several of the instruments used by MUSICàNTICA are native Italian. These include the tamburieddhru, a frame drum used for the pizzica tarantata dance; the putipù, a friction drum; the chitarra battente, a 10 strings guitar from the Renaissance; percussion such as castanets, animal jingle collars, sheep copper bells; the benas, a single and double Sardinian reed clarinet or the marranzanu, or jaw’s harp. The rest of the instrumentation includes classical guitars, the mandolin, the mandola, the Greek bouzouki, the oud, the harmonica, the fina, a lamellaphone inspired by the African mbira exclusively created by Maestro Enzo Fina, and several other, mostly homemade, sound effects.

Home