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63 f
PIETRARSA
gone; buy a decent vintage, it’s worth it. tions; the tune melody comes in and goes out
While you’re doing that you can also enjoy again, split between Jason Sparkes’ accordeon
Napoli World Style Alfa Music AFMCD137
the well chosen 25-track CD that accompa- and Jane Harbour’s violin, with the driving
nies the book and may be found in a guitar of Jon Hunt holding down the rhythm
The cover of this
superbly crafted four-fold holder inside the and providing the thrust of the swells of
PietrArsa album
back cover. You’ll hear Rev J M Gates, Dock
shows a can of toma-
sound that characterise the group. In Shaft,
Walsh, Moses Mason, the Carter Family,
toes with the label
based on Bobby Shaftoe in Peacock’s Tunes,
Mainer’s Mountaineers, Rev E D Campbell
Napoli World Style
the feel of the Northumbrian pipes is never
and more, all recorded between 1925 and
and to quote the famous advertising slogan, it
far away from the accordeon and fiddle,
1940 and stunningly remastered from clean
does exactly what it says on the tin. At the
while Alex Vann’s mandolin weaves in and
originals. Nine very full pages of discographi-
heart of the music is Neapolitan traditional
around everything in a virtuoso performance
cal and bibliographical notes are provided
music sung in the local dialect, but it is filtered
of offbeats and spiky interventions. There’s
for these performances, evenly split between
through a diverse selection of international
more piping influence on Pop (Highland Lad-
black and white performers and, of course,
musical styles and instruments. ‘O Sarracino is
die), for me one of the big highlights, and The
there is a bibliography as an appendix.
a prime example. They have taken a song by
Radio Sky (The Bonny Pit Lad), and even some
the Neapolitan legend Renato Carosone and
You really have to treat this as a multi- Playford (The Lost Heart and Grimstock in A
performed it with instrumentation that
media experience of visual, audio and textual Small Light In The Far West), but it’s all about
includes oud and bouzouki, set it to a reggae-
images combining to provide a portrait of a using the parts as much as a whole tune, and
ton rhythm (that originates from Panama and
time now so far in the past that few living the way the instruments interweave is posi-
Puerto Rico) and also inserted some lyrics in
souls can recall it. Yes, certainly there are still tively thrilling and very big on emotional
Arabic. A further Carosone song is included,
baptismal scenes practised daily in the south, impact: the few occasions when two or more
but sounding very different to the rest of the
and from my new vantage point in southern play in unison are extremely effective.
album as it is performed in a faithful tribute
Virginia, I know full well they are as close as
As for the non-traditional pieces, the
to Carosone’s earlier cross-cultural mixing of
around the corner, but the character is now
influences include (to these ears) Michael
Neapolitan singing with 1950s popular styles.
quite different. This is a slice of history so well
Nyman, Steve Reich and the Penguin Café
presented that it transports you back in time.
The material for the rest of the album is
Orchestra in the use of repetition, slow devel-
either traditional Neapolitan songs or origi-
Well worth investigating by anyone with opment and sparse, lyrical arrangement, but
nal compositions by the band leader Mimmo
an enthusiasm for American folk history; as said above, it’s very hard to tell where the
Maglionico in a Neapolitan-influenced style.
check Dust-To-Digital’s website for more tune comes from, traditional sources or mod-
‘A Puntata uses the tammurriata folk dance
information, samples, and audio tracks. ern ones – both are extended and mutated in
form, but has lyrics that examine mass media
www.dust-digital.com
the same way. Antrobus, Wolves and I Fear
manipulation in relation to the Iraq War. There
You Just As I Fear Ghosts could all be sound-
Paul Vernon
is a lighter theme in the second song Stamme
tracks to visual art, and Captain Say Catastro-
Cchiù Vicina, which combines ethnic pop styles
phe is a jaunty monster of a track. Where Spiro
with a tammurriata rhythm and has a lyric that
compares the pleasure and companionship of
SPIRO
stand out from other practitioners of this type
of music is that it’s all live, without any tapes
a village festival to the isolation of watching Lightbox Real World CDRW172
or loops or effects – both on stage and in
television. Procidana is a traditional song that
recordings the slight shifts and changes build
is performed as a tribute to the singer and
Spiro’s third album, up as the pieces progress, like the moving
actress Concetta Barra, one of the foremost
their debut for Peter parts of a precision watch being constantly
performers of Nepolitan folk music.
Gabriel’s Real World
experimented on and realigned. But it’s in no
By composing new songs that deal with
label, is being accom-
way mechanical: this is one of the most human
contemporary issues, reinventing older mate-
panied by a lot of
variants of minimalism I’ve encountered. As
rial and integrating other musical styles,
advance publicity of the sort that really has to
Mr Warhol put it: “Oh, this is fabulous.”
Maglionico has created a vibrant album that
be justified by the music – and it is tri-
www.realworldrecords.com, distributed
is breathing new life into the dialect and
umphantly so. The previous recordings, inter-
by Proper:
www.properdistribution.com
music of Naples while also paying respect to
esting as they are, don’t anticipate the leap
the tradition and past performers.
into the full-blown acoustic wall of sound of
Ian Kearey
Lightbox, which brings together traditional
www.alfamusic.com, via Egea UK.
sources and minimalist/ futurist composition
Michael Hingston
in an intriguing and exciting manner. If this ROTFRONT
review appears to split the two influences, it’s
only for convenience (and brevity): on the CD
Emigrantski Raggamuffin Essay AY CD 21
VARIOUS ARTISTS
there’s no difference.
Formed in 2003 by Yuriy Gurzhy of the, by all
Take Me To The Water – Immersion
The traditional tunes found and accounts riotous, RussenDisko club night and
Baptism In Vintage Music And
reworked are from the north of England: The Simon Wahorn of HungaroGroover Soundsys-
Photography 1890-1950 Dust-To-Digital
White Hart, Mr. Keys and Altrincham Round tem, Berlin-based nine-piece Rotfront finally
DTD-13
come from John Otford’s Cheshire collection make their debut and what a wild ride it is!
and bring out lush, rounded harmonic varia- They share something of the rockin’ eastern
Dust-To-Digital have
quickly established Spiro
themselves as one of
the most remarkable
reissue companies of
the 21st century. From their initial issue,
Goodbye Babylon, a six-CD set of early Ameri-
can religious folk music packed in a wooden
box with raw cotton, to the recent Art Of
Field Recording set and Black Mirror, the
anthology of early world music on 78s, Lance
Ledbetter’s extraordinary label has proved
itself to be the latest in a line of companies
dedicated to accurately documenting historic
music, and in doing so they join the ranks of
Folkways, Arhoolie, Yazoo, Old Hat and Coun-
ty in providing first-class productions that
bring real understanding to arcane subjects.
Take Me To The Water is as much a book
as a CD: a superby produced 96-page 6” by
9” hardback, featuring dozens of vintage
photos of baptismal scenes taken largely in
rural areas before 1950. Most of these
remarkably pin-sharp images are given a full
page, so that the clarity may be thoroughly
enjoyed. Six pages of introductory text allow
us to see these extraordinary pictures within
the context of the society of the time, and a
full evening with a bottle of wine will trans-
port you completely into a period now long
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