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la Moresca antica
Li Turchi alla Marina
antiche musiche italiane della tradizione marinara 2 (Folk Club Ethnosuoni)
$17.99

The second collection of songs from the shores of Italy by this noted ancient music ensemble.

Listen:
Sanda Nicole
Cum quidam fluctuancia
Riturnella

La Moresca Antica bring impeccable musicianship and a contagious energy to this ancient Italian folk music The instrumentation is varied, incorporating period instruments such as vielles, recorders, violas da gamba, harps, guitars, cornamuses and percussion. But what shines throughout this recording are the poignant vocals, expertly delivered by the ensemble, often with rich harmonies. The vocal pieces are complemented by a variety of Renaissance instrumental dance tunes that weave an ever-changing tapestry of moods and colors. At times, this disc reminds me of another gem on the same label, La Notte di Natale by Ensemble del Doppio Bordone. The extensive liner notes provide additional engaging historical context to these captivating songs. They invoke ancient yet timeless images from a culture that has always been inextricably linked to the sea, with all its wonder, danger, and longing. - Barry Hall, RootsWorld

Artist's notes from the CD (track notes follow):
The shore and the horizon: the sea as viewed from the land, by those who may never cross the horizon; they fear (or perhaps long for) what the sea might bring .

We walked along the shore collecting stones and cuttle-fish bones, words and sounds brought by the surf. We tried to give a new shape and a new life to the small worn-out fragments we found in the sand. We assembled them, convinced as we were that they all came from a single great shell.

Here come the Turks, really from Algeria or Tunisia perhaps but always thought of as 'the Turks'. They represent danger arriving from the unknown, sometimes tragically for real, bringing plunder and slavery. The memory lingers, like a dark threatening stain, an attack from strange and distant lands, without warning, like a sudden storm.. What can you do when a storm bursts into your life? When your boat fills with water, when you lose control and the waves rise ever higher?

In the distant sky the stars are obscured by the gathering darkness and the sinister lightning flashes cast a devilish spell, draining all strength and courage to struggle against the wind and the waves. Now it is time to invoke Nicola, the patron saint of children, virgins and sailors, and of all who are unprotected, at the mercy of overwhelming forces.

The sea. For sailors the sea has a size, measurable by voyages between harbours (some known and some only heard of in tales), but for those rooted to the land the sea is endless, the gateway to another world. And so our dreams are haunted by this watery dimension, infinite and unfathomable. It is the heart-aching distance between separated lovers: the swallow crosses the vastness and we ask it to seal their bond with its song; it is the tempest shattering luckless loves and bringing them, shipwrecked but free, to another shore.

The sea also hides a myriad mysterious worlds beneath its surface. What wonderful creatures inhabit its depths ? A fish who has fallen in love and desires to marry, with friends and relatives of every kind: scorpion-fish, mullet and sword-fish. A wedding-party, a ball and then (gossip and old grudges come to light when the fish have had a drop too much...) a memorable fight follows. And finally, even at the bottom of the sea, everything turns out well in the end.. - Elena Novello, la Moresca antiqua Track notes:

• 1. A traditional song from Bari, sung during the feast of San Nicola di Bari, when the statue of the patron saint of sailors, is taken to the old wharf in the harbour for the blessing of boats. The lyrics gently hint of the saint's well-known tendency to perform miracles in favour of young and beautiful girls whose virtue was threatened … The song was recorded by G. Nataletti in 1948.
• 2. A late-medieval hymn, narrating the miracles performed by San Nicola in order to save a ship that was in danger of sinking in a storm. The lyrics are kept in the Mazarine library in Paris under the press-mark 464 (261). San Nicola was born in Patara, in Asia Minor around 270 A.D. and he became bishop of Mira. He is said to have performed a number of miracles, becoming famous as a saint during his lifetime. Among these, there was the gift of three bags of gold to the three daughters of a poor man, in order to save them from having to sell their bodies. The episode is quoted by Dante Alighieri in the Purgatory (… della larghezza/ che fece Nicolao alle pulcelle, / per condurre ad onor lor giovinezza" canto xx, 31-33). Among his other miracles there was the release of three army-officers who had been unjustly condemned by the emperor, the preservation of his town from an imminent famine, and many more. He died on December 6th sometime between 345 and 352 A.D. and was buried in Mira, where an audacious legion of sixty-two Barese sailors guided by two priests, Lupo and Grimoaldo, disinterred his mortal remains in the year 1087. These were brought to Bari and put in a granite tomb, around which was subsequently built the cathedral of Bari. Even today his bones exude a clear liquid, called "manna di S. Nicola", whose thaumaturgical properties are prodigious. From then on the cult of the saint spreads all over Europe: he is the patron saint of sailors, craftsmen, travellers, prisoners, perfumers, he is the saint who brings gifts... In Northern Europe, his image was superimposed on the celtic figure of Wotan, who travelled in winter-time dressed as a wayfarer and followed by a black dog, leaving gifts for people who welcomed him in their houses. Contracted in Santa Klaus (from Saint Nikolaus), the cult was later taken to the United States by Scandinavian immigrants, where it became very popular in the first years of the century due to a Coca Cola advertising campaign, portraying him in the red and white of the beverage: so he took on his definitive image and became known in Europe under the name of Father Christmas. The myth of Father Christmas, so dear to present-day new celts, was originated by a Barese, born in Turkey and dressed in red and white by Coca Cola….
• 3. A wonderful song from Calabrese tradition, recorded by Antonello Ricci in Cirò: its lyrics are extremely romantic and we like its music so much.
• 4. Two Renaissance songs on a seafaring theme. The first one is taken from the Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli da sonare…, a collection of music for keyboard published in 1551 in Venice by Antonio Gardane. The second one is a villanella, a cultured composition in a "popular" style by Gio. Leonardo de l'Arpa, a Neapolitan harpist of the XVI century, published in the famous collection of Gio. Domenico da Nola Il primo libro delle villanelle alla napolitana… (Venice, 1570) and it is one of the very few surviving Renaissance songs whose subject is the sea. It tells the story of a sentimental shipwreck; the seafaring metaphor gives the unlucky lover the opportunity to narrate his sad story of unrequited love without revealing any names...
• 5. Two work songs from the Venetian lagoon, recorded by D. Carpitella and A. Lomax in 1954. The first one, still characterized by the use of the name San Nicola (here called "Barba"), was sung by the fishermen to mark the time while hauling their fishing-nets ashore, the second one was sung at the capstan.
• 6. A XV century elaboration of a sea chant appearing in the famous manuscript no. 871, kept in the monastery of Montecassino. Its style is very similar to the style of the contemporary carnival songs, but its predominantly isorhythmic structure and the strong rhythmical push of the leading tenor voice suggest a possible use as a work song. Our performance tries to reflect this "working" aspect.
• 7. One of the most famous urban tarantellas, known in Naples from as long ago as the XVIII century. From the numerous existing versions, we chose the one proposed by Concetta Barra (an extraordinary interpreter of the Procida tradition who passed away just a few years ago) for its elegance and nobility of expression. The song was published, with minimum textual variants, by Roberto De Simone in his book "La tarantella napoletana, o le due anime del guarracino" ("Neapolitan Tarantella, Or the Two Souls of the Guarracino", Naples, 1992). The story narrates the marriage of the guarracino, the legendary fish of the Neapolitan gulf, its troubled wedding to the sardine and the huge fight that took place among the guest-fishes, all of whom are minutely listed in the song. Since at a certain point the text speaks of a tarantella played with the colascione, we couldn't help writing a song that is to be played, appropriately, with a colascione….
• 8. A famous Roman prison song, referring to the raids by Saracen pirates and to the custom of ringing the tocsin in the central and southern coastal towns of Italy when pirate ships were in view, so that the inhabitants of the coastal villages (called "marine") could escape to the hills and take shelter in the fortified towns further inland. This version was recorded by G. Nataletti in 1968. We integrated the text with other two strambotti on a similar subject, reported by G. Gianazzo in its Canti popolari romani (Turin, 1910).
• 9. Two songs from the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Tuscany. The first one is made up of a series of typical stornelli of the maremma tradition, whose lyrics were gathered by N. Tommaseo in his book Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici e greci, published in Venice in 1841. They contain various references to the raids of the Saracen pirates as well as to the Napoleonic domination, with a diacronic free-and-easy style often to be found in Italian popular song. The second one is a maremma quadrille recorded by Giuseppe M. Gala in Grosseto in 1990 during a performance of the accordion-player Eugenio Bargagli.
• 10. The xebec was for centuries the favourite ship used by pirates in their raids along the Italian coasts, preferred for both its speed and its handiness: the sight of it from the coast was almost always the signal of an imminent pirate attack. Lo sciabecco algerino ("The Algerian Xebec") is a fragment recorded in Capoliveri (Isola d'Elba) by Nataletti and De Cristofaro, integrated by us with a second stanza drawn again from Tommaseo (see 9) and with a new tune, Aria dello sciabecco ("Xebec Air"), which we composed in order to give a proper setting for Maurizio Martinotti's hurdy-gurdy.
• 11. Recorded by Giuseppe M. Gala in Porrona di Cinigiano (Maremma) in 1982 during the performance of harmonica-player Pellegrino Giannetti. "It is a zoomorphic dance of pastoral and sylvan origin, which was also known in other areas of Italy. Today it survives only in Maremma and it is performed by a group of men: they sit on the ground holding their feet in their hands, they curl up and they start to roll, clashing against one another, sometimes even going over one another. It was a typical sailor dance in the Isola d'Elba: the sailors performed it on the deck as a game". (G. Gala, from Trescone a veglia. Balli tradizionali della Toscana, CD Ethnica 13, 2001). As far as we know, it is the only dance whose use on board in Italy is proved by documents, although there are several popular dances whose titles refer to sea life. In the mountains of Tuscany, where it is still in use, it is known as Ballo dell'orso ("The Bear Dance").
• 12. A cultured Renaissance amusement from Canzonette a tre voci. Libro primo by Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi, published in Venice in 1602. Graceful fishermen abandon their nets, oars and hooks and follow beautiful naked nymphs roaming about in the waters... which happens every day to lucky fishermen, as everybody knows... A gentle double meaning here and there (fishermen, of course, are only interested in two things: the second one is food...). We play it alongside a stylish court-dance by Maurizio Cazzati, chapel-master in the church of San Petronio in Bologna from 1657 to 1671.
• 13. A curious work song collected in Mazara del Vallo (TP) by the renowned Sicilian folklorist Alberto Favara and published in his monumental collection Canti della terra e del mare di Sicilia (Ricordi, 1907-1923), following the typical structure of the English shanty (" Unu fa da capu, etta 'na vuci e tutti l'avutri arrispunninu, pi mittiri 'a forza tutta para"). Favara tells it this way: "When, at the turn of the XVIII century, the whole of Europe was shaken by the consequences of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars, and the Bourbon court of Naples was twice compelled to seek shelter in Sicily, the English fleet sailed in the seas around the island, where it was forced to spend several years years. Far from its graving-docks, the fleet was obliged to enrol Sicilian sailors; in this way, a curious anglo-sicilian popular language form emerged, used especially in the work songs, that today is far from comprehensible. The following song certainly belongs to this tradition ; I laboured upon it for a long time, until a cultured navy officer gave me the explanation I have presently exposed".
• 14. A nursery rhyme from the Tyrrhenian coast, previously recorded for our first album (Marinaresca. Antiche musiche italiane della tradizione marinara, Ar.Co, 2000), and also quoted by Fabrizio De Andrè in its song Sinan Capudan Pascià. We used the text to create a song for la Moresca futura, a band composed by our sons and grandsons. Morgan (aged 1), Carolina (aged 5), Carlotta (aged 9), Margherita and Dimitrij (aged 10) represent our dreams, our faith and our hopes for the future (non only in musical terms...). Their musical talents flourish and will soon put into shade the abilities of their parents and grandparents, who can hardly wait to sit on a bench and be their fans...
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