It's with great pleasure that I have listened to the discographic work of the "Musicanti del Piccolo Borgo", a group to which I am bound by common aims.
On listening to these melodies we can't but understand all their research-work that intends to let us appreciate the poetic world of people we once knew and rescue from time what time itself swallows.
In their saltarelli, serenades and lullabies, all the themes of the popular world are present: sex, death and the woman, so far and unreachable…..the unreachable woman celebrated by the Musicanti and by all of us who love popular music, and also the great Mother Goddess, pursued through difficult ways, maybe utopia, that means hope in a return of a poetic and mythological thought over the present one so rational and ideologic.

"Te si fatta cchiù bella bellezza mia,
e quanno vole Dio sarai la mia…"

Corrado Sfogli
Nuova Compagnia Di Canto Popolare

Tracks contained in CD1:
"Canti e Ritmi dell'Appennino"

1. Figliola che stai n'coppa
2. Suonno suonno... che bieglio chiglio fiore
3. Saltarello
4. Che hai nennella mia
5. Ninna nanna
6. Fammi cantare a me de Capracotta
7. Pacienza nenna mia
8. Stornelli

Tracks contained in CD2:
"Pacienza nenna mia"

1. Jesce sole (Campania)
2. Pacienza nenna mia (Lazio)
3. Si te credisse (Campania)
4. Oi nenna nenna (Campania)
5. Danza in minore (Campania)
6. Tarantella alla montemaranese (Campania)
7. Sia maledetta l'acqua (Campania)
8. Tarantella del Gargano (Puglia)
9. Tarantelle (Campania)

With this collection of traditional pieces, recorded on the spot and re-elaborated, we wish to propose a way, through sonorous images, inside the country and pastoral culture belonging to an area in the Apennines which we have perceived as essentially unitary.
This area, whose ideal centre is Scapoli, the place of reed-pipes and pipers, includes Upper Molise as far as Capracotto (village where we feel at home) and extends over the Mainarde to the Liri Valley, reaching then the Ausoni and Aurunci Mountains.
Our proposal is not destined to museums, but to a live listening and to the crowds.
It is not, therefore, philological but it evidences the long consuetude of the group to the forms and instruments of the country music in central-southern Italy.
In this collection we present lullabies, rhymes, songs relative to work, feasts and banquets joined often by the typical rhythm of Saltarello.
The employment of traditional instruments is essential, so to preserve the typical timbres of the country tradition even if re-elaborating freely the pieces.
The echo of different musical experiences is not lacking and each component of the group carries it into the work; this echo never submerges, but on the contrary it exalts their musical choice, affectionate to the patrimony kept and revealed by the so many peasants and craftsmen met in the Apennines villages.

Musicanti del Piccolo Borgo

top