La Musica Del Mondo - Music Of The World

Ciao a tutti,

Every time I hear Musicantica perform I always learn something. More than that, I feel something, I experience something, I enjoy them. It is not just about the music they do, it is how they do it, why the do it, the way they do it.

I have known them and of them for many years and have been a fan since day one. I have performed with them and seen them perform just the two of them or with a full dance and musical troop on stage. From small coffee houses to large stages, they are always good and always real.

I am talking primarily of Roberto Catalano and Enzo Fina who are the creators of the group Musicantica which performs folk music of Southern Italy: songs and fables from the oral tradition passed on from generation to generation by the fishermen, peasants, and street vendors of their homeland.

This is music that existed before music was written. As a matter of fact, much of this never got written, and still is not written.

I titled this post "Music of the World," because this is music that has had influences from all over the world. Since Italy, and Southern Italy specifically, was conquered by so many different tribes over the centuries, each had left their musical mark, among other things.

What world influence the music didn't already have when Enzo and Roberto came to learn it, they have since added to it, combining many rhythms, beats, and melodic lines of the musical world they know, love and continue to study.

Make no mistake, the music is still Southern Italian, and the two of them are unmistakably the same. I remember when I started telling stories on stage, after I had only sung for years without speaking, people used to come up to me and say, "I don't know what I like better, when you sing or when you speak."

I thought to myself the same thing this last time around that I went to see them knowing I would be interviewing them for our Filippo and the Chef radio show and probably be telling them just that. When they speak they are very funny. Not only what they say, but the fact that they are in their own world, and it is a beautiful thing because they invite you in it, which is what this music does too.

But they themselves have these private jokes that we are not really in on, and it doesn't matter because it adds to the fun. Even if you were in on it, you would have to understand their dialect so it doesn't really matter. They are two friends making music on stage who love what they are doing, believe in its power and yet in its simplicity, and you feel it.

So simple in fact that they invite the audience to participate. One song in particular was a song about a man standing outside in the rain serenading his lover telling her that not even the rain will make him leave until he gets a glimpse of her at the window, or something like that.

Enzo and Roberto had someone pass around plastic bags, like the ones you put your vegetables in and had us all move them in between our fingers. I tell you what, if you closed your eyes, it sounded like rain. The room just transformed and we all felt like we too were standing in the rain with the hopeless romantic.

On another song, they passed out straws, yes straws like you would have with your soda, that had been cut on the tip and when you blew through them they actually made a sound. That had the opposite effect of the rain, that made everyone in the room break out into a roar of laughter. It was pretty funny, so funny I don't even remember what the song was supposed to be about.

That is just it, they are pure and real and they just do what they do and you just feel free and open. Part of it is the music, part of it is them, after all, they are sitting up there drinking wine throughout the whole show. Part of it is the instruments, and part of it is just magic that is centuries old.

The type of instruments they use are centuries old too. Some of the instruments they have made themselves fashioned after the originals, and some they invented themselves, fashioned after whatever sound they wanted to make at that time.

But it all works and between the two of them, in any one given song, they can pick up and play a number of these instruments to give the flavor they want at the moment, as they feel it.

And what did I learn this time? Well, lots, but one of the things I was surprised I didn't already know was that the mandolin is not an instrument without a family. Rather I thought that the guitar was part of the mandolin family. Well, actually, the mandolin has a more immediate family. In Italian the mandolin is called a "mandolino."

Roberto taught me during the intermission that the mandolino is the smallest instrument of the mandolin family. As we get larger we have the mandola, then the mandocello, and finally a mandolin that actually stands on the floor and is called a mandobasso. Seems to me that the violin family is closer to the mandolin than the guitar.

Grazie Roberto for the music lesson. Surprised that I didn't know this Roberto added the lesson to the second part of the show. See what I mean? This is how this music was meant to be performed, in the moment and even played with make shift instruments. When someone felt like joining in, they just picked up a sound maker, even if it was a gardening tool or something and they joined in.

In the top picture, on my left is Enzo and on my right is Roberto. Then the other pictures are of course of the two of them on stage as well as Roberto explaining to me the origins and demonstrating the various instruments they had on stage.

If you tune into the radio show you will see what I mean about the way they talk and how sincere and pure their intention is for keeping this music alive as well as the instruments. You will also hear a song from their CD. For more information about them, do click on their website at www.Musicantica.org.

Oh, I almost forgot, for a small fee they will not only come to your house and perform, but they will create a cooking experience with food from the regions of Italy from which they came and get everyone in on the action. Then they will perform a live show with as much audience participation as you want.

Now that's Italian.

Viva la musica!

Filippo

P.S. This video I found on Youtube.com is not exactly like the music that Musicantica performs per se, but I thought it to be a great example of combining traditional southern Italian instruments and rhythms with a more pop feel and sound and to me it works. You can hear the middle eastern influences as well. I enjoyed it, hope you do too. (In Southern Italian Dialect)