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Traditional music Italian Folk/traditional Songs (also in dialects) and Dances

I had really not heard the songs of the Neapolitan "canon" until I came to America, but I soon became a convert. This is a particularly lovely one called "Tu Ca Non Chiagne", You Who Don't Cry!


[TD="align: right"]Tu, Ca Nun Chiagne![/TD]
[TD="align: left"]You Who Don't Cry![/TD]

[TD="align: right"]Comm' č bella 'a muntagna stanotte
Bella accussí, nun ll'aggio vista maje
N'ánema pare, rassignata e stanca
Sott'' a cuperta 'e chesta luna janca

[Refrain]
Tu ca nun chiagne e chiágnere mme faje
Tu, stanotte, addó staje
Voglio a te
Voglio a te
Chist' uocchie te vonno
N'ata vota, vedé

Comm' č calma 'a muntagna stanotte
Cchiů calma 'e mo, non ll'aggio vista maje
E tutto dorme, tutto dorme o more
E i' sulo veglio, pecché veglia ammore
[Refrain][/TD]
[TD="align: left"]How beautiful the mountain is tonight...
I have never seen it more lovely!
It looks like a resigned and tired soul
under the cover of this white moon.

[Chorus]
You who do not cry and make me cry,
where are you tonight?
I want you!
I want you!
See how these eyes want you
one more time!

How calm the moon is tonight...
calmer than I have ever seen it before!
And everything sleeps, everything sleeps or dies.
Only I am awake, because Love is awake!
[Chorus][/TD]

http://3-tenors.blogspot.com/2011/03/tu-ca-nun-chiagne-you-who-dont-cry.html

Their quality, structure and musicality means that they are very suited to trained, operatic voices, and so many of them have been performed by famous opera singers like Caruso, Pavarotti, Domingo and others.

I also like them when performed by the likes of the gorgeous Salvatore DaVinci. :)

A direct link if it truncates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMgkVksm-j4
 
It seems as if it's been raining for days...So, the Neapolitan song "Chiove". My favorite version, I think, is the live and very authentic performance by Massimo Ranieri.

Even while ill, you sing
You are dying and still you sing
While for day's it's been raining

The air grows cold
The sky grows dark
And in this cold you
Alone, you sing and die

Who are you?
You're a songbird
Who are you?
You're love

You're the love which
Even in death
Sings new songs
Jesus, how it rains

Like the Madonna
You sing a lullaby
For the angel on the cross
Who wants to hear your voice

This lovely voice
Sings in the night
You, saint like
Die alone, all alone.


Direct link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWlyUkOuTxg
 
Heading north again, here are I Girasoli. One of the singers looks like the long lost twin of British actor David McCallum. :) Everyone supposedly has one, right? *

The song is a very touching one called the "Waltz of the Pensioners" or Waltz of the old people, I suppose you could say. I heard it a lot this summer, and danced to it too, along with some very elderly relatives in their late seventies and eighties and more. The old women, in particular, seem to live for ever.

I'm typing this as I listen, so it's a rough translation, but...

One looks forward to retirement for years
Yet when it arrives
One would like to subtract some of those years
But one can't.
One is happy but
One feels a little old.
Still, what does it matter
If one still has one's health?

The waltz of the pensioners
Who have worked so hard.
They're happy
And they're not too tired (or old) to dance with all of you.

While dancing, one forgets one's age:
Life just has a different flavor.
Only a few things are necessary for happiness:
Good health and serenity.
Beautiful grandchildren bring such joy
And banish sad thoughts
And every morning one looks to the sky
Still hoping for a good destiny
And a nice glass of wine cheers one up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg_uVf5ZRVA

*David McCallum:
http://images.buddytv.com/btv_2_2116_1_434_593_0_/david-mccallum-photo.jpg
 
This is Ma Se Ghe Pensu ("If I think about it")the "Inno" or Anthem of Genova, and so I include it although it was written in the 1920s. It could be called the Emigrants' Lament. The context is that it is sung by an immigrant from Genova who in his old age is overcome by a longing to go "home". It was written and is sung in the dialect of Genova. I've seen it posted with "Italian" subtitles on screen. :) As I get older, and despite the fact that although I'm part eastern Ligurian I'm not Genovese, the chorus always "gets" me, if you know what I mean, because it could have been written about La Spezia.

Anyway, here it is as sung by Mina (in dialect although she wasn't Genovese) with some beautiful visuals of Genova. I've also included a link to it being performed in Genova to Genovesi.

The translation is from the internet. The song has it's own Wiki entry! "If I think about it"
He left with no money
Thirty years or more he'd been away
He fought to save some money
To be able to come back one day
and build a house with its backyard
with the creeper, the winery and the wine,
the cot hanging on the trees as a bed,
on which to lie night and day.
But his son used to tell him: "Don't even think about it,
what do you want to do in Genoa?!"

But if I think about it, I can see the sea,
I see my mountains, and Nunziata Square,
I see the Righi and I'm shaking my heart,
I see the Lanterna, the Cava,[5] and there the pier...
I see Genoa illuminated in the night,
there I see Foce [6] and I hear the sea breaking
and so again I think of coming back
to rest my bones where my grandma rests.


A long time passed, maybe too long;
his son insisted: "We're fine right here,
where do you wanna go, dad?.. we'll think about it later,
the trip, the sea, you're old, it's not worth it!"
"Oh no, oh no! I still feel really good,
I've had enough, I can't take it anymore,
I'm tired of hearing "señor", "carramba",
I want to go back again...
You were born and speak Spanish,
but I was born Genoese...I won't give up!"

But if I think about it, there I see the sea,
I see my mountains, and Nunziata Square,
I see the Righi and I'm shaking my heart,
I see the Lanterna, the Cava, and there the pier...
I see Genoa illuminated in the night,
there I see Foce and I hear the sea breaking
and so again I think of coming back
to rest my bones where my grandma rests.

With a few things he left
and he made his nest again in Genoa.
​
Direct link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-TtLYmiwyY

Here it is as performed locally in Genova. It starts at about 1:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH4qzSo-krk
 
Another Ligurian song...it came to mind because on the haggis thread we were talking about cima ripiena, a very Ligurian dish. I didn't know whether to put it here or in the "Italian Songs" thread. It's in dialect, though, and by the great Fabrizio deAndre, who brought "folk songs" into the twentieth century for us, so I'll post it here.

This is my no doubt inadequate translation. Any dialect speaker who wishes to correct it please do so.

The general subtext is that De Andre was a great champion of the poor of Genoa. In "The Cima" he is describing a woman of that world, with all her superstitions, preparing the cima with all the care, precision, and patience required to follow this ancient tradition, a technique which is so emblematic of these people who transform their poor ingredients into works of art, and her worry that it will open up while boiling, and thus her creation will be spoiled. It also goes to show that after all that work, it's not she who will be enjoying it, but those who have the money to pay for it.

The cima

When you wake in the morning to the indigo
Light which has one foot in the earth and the other in the sea
You admire your reflection in the mirror of a pan
And the sun looks at itself in the mirror of the dew.

You will put the broom in a corner
So that if the witch slips into the kitchen from the hood
She'll be busy counting the straw(?)
While the cima is filled and sewn.*

Clear skies, dark earth
Tender meat do not turn dark
Nor become hard

Nice mattress, pillow, full of the gifts of God
Baptized (simmered) in aromatic herbs (actually, preboggion, which frugal Ligurians gather in the fields and use in ravioli and other foods)
With two large needles straight on tiptoe
From above to below you will quickly ***** it**

Air of an old moon, light fog
The cleric who loses his head and the donkey his path
Smell of the sea mixed with light marjoram
What else to do, what else to give to the sky

Clear skies,dark earth
Tender meat do not become dark
Do not become hard

And in the name of Mary
All the devils from this pot
Go away

Then the waiters come to take it
They leave you only the smoke as sign of your craft
It is for the bachelor the first stab
Eat eat eat you do not know who will eat it

Clear skies dark earth
tender meat do not turn dark
do not turn hard
and in the name of Mary
all the devils from this pot
go away

*I'm not sure I've got this right. We have a superstition where if you put the broom in the corner the witch or unwanted person goes away, but I've never heard of being able to control the witch by doing it. Maybe I've translated it wrong, perhaps?

Anyway, the music is really lovely, and deAndre is wonderful as always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg3-RNNxayA


**Oh, for goodness sakes', with all the filth on the internet, we can no longer use this perfectly normal English verb??!! PUNCTURE it then.
 
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Passione, part of the Neapolitan canon, by the great operatic tenor Franco Corelli.

​
[h=2]Passion[/h] The further you are from me
the closer I feel you.
Who knows in, this very moment
what you are thinking of, what you are doing

I have you in my veins
a sweet poison
How heavy is this cross
that I’m dragging for you!

I want you, I think of you, I’m calling you
I see you, I sense you, I dream of you
It’s a year,
do you believe it’s a year
that my eyes can't
find peace anymore?

And I walk and walk
but I don’t know where to go.
I’m drunk all the time
but I never drink wine.
I’ve made a vow
to our Lady of the Snows
if this fever of mine goes away
I’ll give Her gold and pearls
I want you, I think of you, I’m calling you
I see you, I sense you, I dream of you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGX-XFaeSF0
 
"Forbidden Music"...The translation into English appears on screen. I always say that I have no desire to have lived in a prior era, but honestly, male/female relationships are so messed up today, maybe they got some things right in the past.

Anyway, this song is supposed to capture the feelings of a girl or young woman upon being serenaded by a handsome young man, and her desire to sing the song herself as well.

No grab and grope here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzdCj1TACVg

 
A lovely and graceful tamurriata danced by two lovely young women. It seems that as soon as spring arrives I start thinking of summer, the Salento, and Sorrento.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy8XxO8ugaA (in case the video truncates)

 
A Pizzica this time...Pizzica di San Vito, as danced by a young couple. Usually, the girls are better, but in this case while the girl is good, the young man is better. Quite good as a total performance, anyway. It's as if they're taking turns at being the matador and the bull. At other times it's an attempt at hypnosis.The second video is just of people dancing in the piazza. That's what I love about this celebration. It's not just the festival, or the performances in town after town; it's that after a nice meal you can stroll through the streets and chance upon a crowd just dancing and having fun when the little local performance is over. No drugs or alcohol necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTYMs6sEncA ( in case the first video truncates)

Pizzica in piazza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ByBSpfQBTU
 
Up north to my part of the country, Parma: I Scariolant by the Corale Verdi of Parma. We're very big on multi-part choral singing. My father was one of seven brothers, enough of them to form their own little choral group. Some of my fondest memories are of them getting up at weddings, communions, etc. to sing, and they didn't just sing old folk songs or the popular music of the thirties and forties and into the present; they each knew almost all of our operas by heart. They were quite wonderful.

Scariolanti can be translated as "wheelbarrow men". After unification, many poor men were set to work draining marshy areas of the Po Valley, building levees, ditches and canals all by hand. After a back breaking day many of them would push their wheelbarrows home to often far distant villages, only to make the return trip early in the morning. Others were housed in camps. In addition to the horror of the work itself, they came down with malaria. These men weren't land owners, even if the property was small, or tenant farmers of the type who formed such a large part of the population in the Lunigiana, and even more so in Toscana proper. The break up of the large estates took longer here. They were or became rootless, with no stake in the social order, a new type of rural proletariat.

So, this song is sort of a social protest song and experiences like those memorialized in this song partly explain why this area was always "red" or anarchist and communist.

Has anyone ever seen the old movie "How Green Was My Valley" about the miners of Wales? This reminds me of parts of that movie when the miners sing together.

Here is the direct link to the video. This particular chorus sometimes gives performances while dressed in antique peasant clothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv18ezZTamg

 
This is from another northern Italian folk group, Le Mondine. The mondine were the female equivalent of the scariolanti. They were poor women who worked in the rice fields of the north. Many of their songs were also songs of social protest, if you will.

Anyway, this group is named after them. I always like listening to them when I'm feeling nostalgic, and not only because of all the old songs they sing, songs I remember my grandparents singing and that they still sing at sagre. It's also because just looking at them reminds me of my own, in a way.

The link is to a song called "La Lavanderina", or the laundry girl. We had one of these stone troughs on each of my family's properties. A little stream or brook was trained to flow downstream into it. The clothes were soaped there. The soap was murder on the hands. If people didn't have their own stream and trough, one was usually built near the river for women to use. After the linens and clothes were soaped in the trough they were rinsed in the river and were then laid on the rocks to dry and be bleached by the sun. In my mother's time some of the poorer women still did that, carrying the big baskets on their heads as they walked up and down.

In her grandparents time some of the peasants used a still older method, the conca, for washing whites. It was a huge earthenware pot, cone shaped but reversed, waist high, with a diameter of about three feet at the top. There was a hole at the bottom. The laundry was placed in the conca, then covered with a thick canvas cloth. On top of that were placed ashes from the fireplace mixed with egg shells, citrus peels, twigs of rosemary or lavender. Boiling water was poured into it over and over again. Then they had to be brought to a stream or a stone trough for rinsing. Think of the labor involved, but my mother said no whites ever got whiter.

HD_269.jpg


Anyway, here is "The Lavanderina": In the fresh, morning air the pretty lavandaia goes singing down the hill to the stream. How many clothes she washed those eternally long days, with swollen, painful hands...but when the day ended, home she went to be greeted by a kiss...

This is the direct link, since it seems to be truncating for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkWcktJfMa4

 
Well, it's May, and it's time for some "sympathetic magic" or Cantagmaggio-literally, "Sing May".

Maggiorini at home in the Maremma, Toscana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq9AOR2dypM

It gives me some hope for the future if the children are learning these old songs.

Back around Genova in Liguria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MMYcGJ56UQ

Sad they have to use print outs of the lyrics, but they're trying to bring it back, at least.

The small town of Terni in Umbria, not a particularly picturesque place, is staging a little parade these last two years. Not very traditional, as it starts off with a parade of floats,pretty girls riding on the back of Vespas, and in certain videos modern music is blaring! I think they should also reconsider the baskets of leaves on the girls' heads! I don't care how pretty or young you are, it's not a good look. Goodness, it's too much Carmen Miranda-like for me! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fiu961ZN-E
 
"La Biondina", "The Little Blonde" obviously, by the Genova group "I Giovani Canterini Sant'Olcese al Porto. It's a trallalero.

Bless them, most of them definitely aren't "giovane" or young anymore, although a couple of youngsters have been added to the group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvm3dMeHmyU

 
The Saltarello Marchigiano. It's sort of a cross between an Irish jig and an American reel, perhaps? It derives, like them, from Medieval dances.

The male dancer is quite light on his feet for being such a big guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nUYB0ibqI8

 
While it's still May...Era de Maggio

In my opinion, there's no beating the Neapolitan "canon" for romantic, passionate love songs. Their structure also means they're very appropriate for operatically trained voices, and so this one, like many others, has been "covered" by them. In this case, Tito Schipa has done a nice version, as has Bocelli, and of course Pavarotti.

I like it best in a more naturalistic style, here by Roberto Murolo. The translation is from the internet. In this case, the Neapolitan dialect defeated me, as it defeats a lot of non-Neapolitan Italians. That's why there's quite a few versions on line with Italian subtitles. :)

It was May

It was May and into your lap fell
strands and strands of red cherries.
The air was fresh and all through the garden
lingered the scent of roses.
It was May, and I do not forget, not I,
we sang a duet together.
The more time passes, the more I remember,
the air was fresh and the song sweet.


And you were saying, "Love of my heart, love of my heart!
love of my heart you are going far away,
you are leaving me and I will count the hours.
Who knows when you will return?"
I replied, "I will return
when the roses bloom.
If this flower blooms in May,
then in May I will be here.
If this flower blooms in May,
then in May I will be here."


And they bloomed, and now, as once before,
we sing together the old theme;
time passes and the Earth turns,
but our true love, no, it does not change.
With you, my beauty, I fell in love,
if you remember, in front of the fountain:
the water within it never dries up
and a wound of love never heals.


It never heals, because if healed
it had, oh joy of mine,
in the midst of this perfumed air
I would not be looking at you!
And I say to you: "Love of my heart, love of my heart!
love of my heart you have returned to me...
May has returned and I have returned:
do with me what you will!
May has returned and I have returned:
do with me what you will!""





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8bQ9gHHh28

 
While supposedly preparing a light lunch, Le Mondine sing "La Bella Fioraia", the beautiful flower girl.

I give my friends a heart attack whenever they see me cutting vegetables that way or using my handy mezzaluna. As for when I slice bread by holding it against my chest and slicing toward me, as I still do occasionally, lordy, lordy! They are obviously lacking in small motor coordination! Who needs high tech gadgets? :) I do not, however, wear a straw hat indoors, and the costumes are too tacky for words. I never knew an Italian woman of that era to wear such boldly colored clothes. They look like they're made out of plastic tablecloths, which always, for some unknown reason, have hideous patterns.

"When the April sun comes out,
with its resplendent warmth,
from the mountains she descended,
a woman with her flowers.

She would arrive in the piazza,
sit herself down, and start to sing.
How sweet her song:
Dear people, I'm here,
please buy my flowers,
what beautiful colors
these violets and roses
blooms from our flowered
and perfumed fields.
They can bloom even in your heart,
a field of love
that will bring you
much happiness.

Then one day the flower girl
of the piazza married.
We never saw her again.
She's up there in her mountains,
closer to the sun.
All that remains is the sweet memory
of her gentility and her song.

Repeat of song.

I typed as I listened, so my excuses; it's not very good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMSk00qWDcE

 
A tribute to my oracle :grin:

 
Maleth is getting in touch with his sicilian background. He should try the square pizza, it's the best! I would put double (triple) cheese on it, extra BBQ sauce, and buffalo chicken on top. Extra cheese is a must, I swear I was a mouse in my previous existance and I pigged out on kraft singles when I was like 5.
 
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