Italian Treasury: The Trallaleri of Genoa
$16.98
The longshoremen of Genoa perform in the exciting, full-throated, improvised style known as trallalero, a five-voiced male polyphony found only along the coast of Liguria. The parts (from high to low) being: falsetto, tenor, chitarra ("guitar"), baritone, and bass. Alan Lomax considered the trallalero singers ". . . the most perfect choristers in western Europe."
Listen: "Il cacciatore" (excerpt)
Italian Treasury: Emilia-Romagna
$16.98
Alan Lomax's historic 1954 recordings from the mountains of Emilia-Romagna. Songs of farming, ballads of partisan struggle in World War II, songs of the women rice workers, dance music, age-old new year's songs, and excerpts from unique May rituals redolent of the poetry of the Italian Renaissance, recorded just as industrialization was forever changing the fabric of Northern Italian rural life.
Italian Treasury: Sicily
$16.98
The voices and instruments of peasants, fishermen, shepherds, salt and sulfur miners, cart drivers, storytellers, and strolling players bring us murder ballads, dance music, lullabies, and a tale of battling knights: songs of love, work, and devotion connected to the yearly round. Recorded in the field in the 1950s, this historic document restores to us the colorful and dramatic universe of sound of the Sicilian past.
Listen!
Italian Treasury: Calabria
$16.98
The work chants of tuna fishermen of Vibo Valentia, the cries of the swordfishermen of Scilla; women, men, and children singing songs of work and celebration, of love and scorn; tarantellas; and lullabies; music for bagpipe, tambourine, and drums. This album returns us to a fascinating and unimaginable universe of sounds, noises, atmosphere, and feeling, tied to work and daily and ceremonial activity, recorded in Calabria in 1954 by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella.
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Italian Treasury: Abruzzo
$16.98
"Love begins with fine singing," says a line from a song from Abruzzo, a mountainous region of independent people in south-central Italy. Choral songs, a shepherd's leave-taking, holiday and alms-seeking rites, songs for work and courtship, lullabies, a nonsense incantation, funeral laments, narrative ballads, and dance music vividly evoke a vanishing rural life when everyday activity was accompanied by song.
