Published
Tristonia (Lamento funebre)
The recordings on this album focus obsessively on the mystery of death and the sacraments, on the light of the spirit and the divine that descends and conquers souls. But tarantism here carries more than folklore – it carries the weight of social and political meaning. The album moves from lullabies to children’s rhymes, from festival songs to songs of direct denunciation, addressing the atavic wounds of the Meridione: emigration, unemployment, the brutalities that strip bare the lives of the poor and oppressed. Nine compositions built on obsessive, hypnotic rhythms played on the humble instruments of Southern tradition – the cupo cupo, beaten guitar, frame drums – layered with voices that shift between incantation and direct political witness. Behind the tight and insistent percussion, the colours of the squares and the scratchy string arrangements emerge. The magical sound of the bagpipes drifts through village alleys, carried on voices that remember a peasant world that no longer exists materially but persists in collective memory.