A Taste of Traditional Music in Southern Europe
(This article appeared in the 2013 summer issue of the New Franklin Register)
My main interest in music since I was a teenager was American traditional music. Over the years that passion has extended to traditional music everywhere. For me, there is nothing more exciting in this age of lost traditions than to hear the remnants of it in unexpected places at unexpected moments. I recently returned from six weeks in Europe and my first sampling of traditional music on my journey was not from an unexpected place. It came from a fado club in the Alfama district of Lisbon. My sister, who now calls Lisbon her home, treated me to dinner at this club as an early birthday present. Fado originated in the early eighteen hundreds in the neighborhood where sat down to eat. The name of the music translates to “fate” in English. It’s a haunting song tradition, often composed in a minor key and supported by two or more traditional stringed instruments. My first exposure to fado was at Town Hall in New York, a concert by an artist named Misia and I have been a devotee to the music ever since. I don’t speak a lick of Portuguese, but anyone who has listened to a fado singer doesn’t need to know the translation of the lyric to hear the tragedy and drama in the music. Fado is the art of the singer and each one is thought of as a singular champion of the form, almost as if it were a competition. On this night, there were three singers, taking the stage one at a time. Two of the singers had waited on us earlier in the evening. In the states, you often find musicians and artists working as waiters, but not on the same night in the place where they just served your dinner. Something fado about about that, I would say. Life is a struggle. And that’s where art comes from.
Two weeks later I was in Barcelona for a few days. On my last morning there, I took one more walk around the labyrinth of the medieval Gothic Quarter. As I was about to head back to my hotel to do some final packing, I heard the sound of some sort of band wafting from around the corner of the narrow street on which I was walking. It had a familiarity, yet was distinctive in a way I had never heard. A couple of hundred feet later I found myself at a square where Barcelonians where dancing in several circles of a dozen or more, accompanied by musicians in two rows, brass in back and reed players in front, and one stand up bass. This, I came to find out, was cobla, an eleven piece ensemble (always just eleven) playing to the Catalan tradition of the Sardana, the dance I was witnessing. The dance is not all that technical and anyone, Catalan or otherwise, is invited to join in. But what really grabbed me was this music. It was joyful and slightly regal, invoking the festivity of a peasant fair. The reed instruments were of a particular variety I had never seen nor heard. Four double reed instruments known as shawms and five brass instruments, more familiar looking, and a bass. But the most enchanting and fascinating of the instruments was the flabiol, a short, small whistle, or flute, if you prefer, which, in its tiny fashion, leads the band. The flabiolist also holds a tiny drum in the hand that is not holding the flute, setting the tempo for the rest of the much larger instruments. Each dance starts with the flabiol playing solo a few bars (to announce the dance) and tapping on the drum with a small wand to set the tempo of the piece the band is about to play, and of course the pace at which the dancers will prance. By this sound and spectacle I was completely, to use the technical term, blown away! I found my face strained with a huge uncontrollable smile and I became completely entranced by the flabiolist, who happened to be a small slender and young woman whose skills were remarkable. It became immediately clear to me that the technique of the instrument could not have been easy to master. On some of the pieces, I swore I heard both eighth notes and sixty-fourth notes coming from her flabiol simultaneously, much like skilled harmonica players produce chords at the same time they play the melody. Barcelona is a remarkable city, but if you miss the cobla while you are there, you have not fully experienced the city.
In Naples two weeks later, I sat eating one of the city’s fabulous pizzas at an outdoor seating area, when an accordion player approached the tables busking for change. He was playing the melody of the Italian folksong, Bella Ciao, and after a short while the staff of the restaurant shooed him away. In Italy, the tune seems ubiquitous and maybe to some Italians, worn, but I love the tune and am especially attached to it because of the song’s origin, an Italian textile strike in the mid-nineteenth century. I heard other accordionists playing the song, as well. The tune rolled around in my head the entire time I was in Italy. It’s perfect for the accordion, an instrument, I am not ashamed to say, I quite like as much for its huge variety of music styles around the globe than anything else. The song was revised in the first half of the twentieth century with new lyrics which express the passion of an Italian partisan fighting against fascism. Perhaps, the accordion player was shooed away because of politics. After all, the newly elected prime minister is a member of the political party that is descendant from the party Mussolini ruled during the time of the Nazis. A few years ago Tom Waits recorded an English version of the Bella Ciao with the marvelous Mark Ribot playing a penetrating guitar part. Waits, as is his wont, sang it in such a fashion to make you believe he wrote the song. Google it. If it doesn’t send chills up your spine, I know who you voted for in the last election.
John Paul O'Connor 