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

This is a very traditional song with a medieval feel from the Appennine Ridge between Emilia and Liguria/Toscana.
This group is called La Piva Dal Carner. ( A piva is a type of Italian bagpipe.)
Drago Rosso:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA8sdbpeM1M

Ligurian Trallalero-Polyphonic a cappella singing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IhQlfNN-eI

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

Le Mondine, a female trio singing "Mamma Mia Dammi Cento Lire"
It was written around the time of the Great Migrations to the New World...The child is asking the mother for 100 Lire to go to America, and the mother is refusing...

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNNeIy8lino
 
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Here is a lovely Pizzica from Puglia with an equally lovely series of video clips. They should buy some air time in the U.S. and use it as a travel commercial! I can personally testify that it doesn't over hype the area. It's a lovely place for a summer vacation, and the musical offerings are great and great fun.


These always get chopped off for me. This is the direct link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI7mC1ZC-uw
 
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This is an achingly beautiful Sicilian song that was used in the Godfather movies (where the lyrics were totally changed.) It's called "Brucia La Terra" or "The Earth Is Burning".

Someone on you tube did a very nice job of creating a video of the original Sicilian song to stills from the movie. Both English and Spanish subtitles appear on screen, so it's more accessible to a wider audience.

Here it is:
This is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbPtwRrhOGI

This is Anthony Corleone singing part of it in Sicilian to his father in The Godfather 3. Again, the English lyrics appear on screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwMOvx8kvSc

This is the song as sung in Sicilian by the lovely AdeLa, although it's not actually meant to be sung by a woman:
Here is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQfEYY6duOY
 
Angela said:
This is an achingly beautiful Sicilian song that was used in the Godfather movies (where the lyrics were totally changed.) It's called "Brucia La Terra" or "The Earth Is Burning".

Someone on you tube did a very nice job of creating a video of the original Sicilian song to stills from the movie. Both English and Spanish subtitles appear on screen, so it's more accessible to a wider audience.

Here it is:
This is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbPtwRrhOGI

This is Anthony Corleone singing part of it in Sicilian to his father in The Godfather 3. Again, the English lyrics appear on screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwMOvx8kvSc

This is the song as sung in Sicilian by the lovely AdeLa, although it's not actually meant to be sung by a woman:
Here is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQfEYY6duOY
Click to expand...

Very nice Angela. Even though its a sad dramatic love story, its the kind of music I can kick back and relax to with a nice glass of wine (red)
 
Angela said:
La Spagnola by Gigliola Cinquenti...the lyrics are a little over the top...I had to tone them down a bit for Anglo audiences...the fame of Spanish women had obviously spread far and wide. :)

Ed. The video is cut in half, so this is the direct link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiNbz2oVm0k


In Spain, I am the prettiest
There I am the queen of love.
Everybody calls me "star"
"Star of living splendor"
Repeat

Holding you tight, so tight
In the ecstasy of love ...
The spanish woman loves like this
Mouth to mouth, night and day
Repeat

With all my ardour, I'll love
a man who is sincere with me
Even early in the morning I'll show you
the vigor of young love
Repeat

Glances that throw arrows,
Glances burning in lust
Kisses that will bring you to paradise
Repeat
Click to expand...

Hearing these songs stir up so many memories :)
 
Maleth said:
Hearing these songs stir up so many memories :)
Click to expand...

Thank you, Maleth. Me too. I'm the Queen of Nostalgia. :) I learned to sing LaSpagnola when I could barely walk, I think. Of course, I didn't really know what the words meant...As for Brucia La Terra...especially paired with those stills...brividi...It amazes me how that movie doesn't age...I think I love it more now than I did the first time I watched it...too bad it's really just fantasy...but then, I often prefer fantasy to reality. :)
 
I'm in a folk music kind of mood so I'm listening to Baraban again. Fuoco e Mitragliatrici (Fire and Machine Guns)
it's a song of protest about World War I. I think it has a lovely melody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q7Z0nj5sx8&list=PLTAkfI74wcQMU5yfHPf5jeGGdQ9ECBo5q

The song dates back to the First World War and is about the soldiers of the Sassari Brigade and how many friends were lost to gain a few meters of miserable earth (two-thirds of their soldiers). It's an unusual song as most of the songs about the war from this period in Italy are patriotic songs glorifying the mission and the battles won. In other places the group says that in the "Four Provinces", i.e. Piacenza, Pavia, Alessandria and Genoa it is played as a waltz with instruments like the flute, accordion and bagpipe. They play it this way in the mountains of Parma as well.

Here is a rough translation: (If one of our Italian members thinks it needs correction, please let me know.)


Let's not talk about this war
That will go on for an eternity
To gain an inch of ground
So many of our brothers are already dead.

Fire and machine guns,
You can hear the cannon shooting
All to conquer the trench:
Savoy goes!

Curses on the Raggi Trench
How many brothers are dead up there?
When will this flagellation end?
Let's not talk about this war anymore.

O Mount St. Michael,
Wet with Italian blood
We tried several times to take it, but always in vain
Gorizia we might take.

From Mount Nero(Black) to Mount Cappuccio
To the heights of Doverdo,
A regiment was destroyed several times:
Until at last no one came back.

Fire and machine guns,
You can hear the cannon shooting,
All to conquer that trench
Savoy goes!
 
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Yetos said:
@ angela

when was young I get my blues when hear such songs,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIB2_bagvqQ&spfreload=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljd7KrBZJMc&spfreload=10

I consider them Italian and 'not' culture,

I think the heart of Italian culture, at least in musika is in south,
N Italy entered the medieval laws and went to classic style and modern European
Click to expand...

They're both very beautiful...thank-you. While I agree the music styles are quite different, or used to be, I can't agree one is more "Italian" than the other. Both can be appreciated on their own merits.

I feel a great affinity for Griko music, partly (but only partly :)) because my husband's ancestors come from a town where they only stopped speaking Griko a few hundred years ago. In the Salento in Italy they have a wonderful festival every summer called the Taranta Festival and they play and dance to many of these songs. I think you'd like it. I certainly do.

Do you know this one? Kalinifta
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S14XCFaRHI

For non Griko speakers, this is my translation from the Italian translation, if you get that....it's much nicer in Italian, because it rhymes, and much nicer still, I'm sure, in Griko.

How sweet this night is, how lovely
And thinking of you I cannot sleep
Here below your window, my love
I'll show you the pain in my heart.

I think always of you
Because you, my soul, I love
And wherever I go, I travel, Istay
I'll carry you in my heart.

Repeat

Good night...I leave you
You sleep while I leave saddened
But wherever I go, or travel
I'll carry you always in my heart.

This may be my favorite though...Aremou Rindineddha

Oh swallows, what seas have you crossed, and where will you arrive, this beautiful season. Sitting by the seaside I look at you with your white breast, your black wings, your back the color of the sea and your tail cleaved in two. You rise a little, then you dip down and brush the water. Who knows what countries, what places you've been? Who knows where you made your nest? If I knew you had passed my town, how many questions I would ask you. But you tell me nothing, no matter how much I ask you. You rise a little, then you dip down, then you brush the water.

One of the posters had this to say: Non abbiate paura rondinelle, andate avanti, spingetevi piu' avanti li' verso la luce, non indugiate, alzatevi in volo, leggere e libere, si' ora ci sara' luce e pace e gioia, non abbiate paura, non indugiate e se potete perdonateci tutti ....


Don't be afraid, swallows, go forward, go toward the light, don't delay, fly high, light and free, in time there will be light and peace and joy, don't be afraid, don't delay, and if you can, forgive us all.·

Ed. I see we crossed paths. :) I too posted Kalinifta.
 
Something that we can add also in Italian culture is the Zampogna, although is limited in North, it is popular I think in central and South,

It has a unigue extra pipe, an extra guide than Aegean tsampuna, but follows the 2 way (chantered) of ancient aggeion dagiyo in Laz, in difference with askaulos, which cognates with Balkanic/Thracian Guida/Gaida or british/Scottish bagpipe which has 1 chantered way

I think Italian zampogna has a unigue sound,
different than Scottish, Agean, Balkan, Black sea ones,

I feel I sould add that,

280px-Zampogna.gif






oups its Christmas carolls !!!!!! :LOL::LOL:
 
Yetos said:
Something that we can add also in Italian culture is the Zampogna, although is limited in North, it is popular I think in central and South,

It has a unigue extra pipe, an extra guide than Aegean tsampuna, but follows the 2 way (chantered) of ancient aggeion dagiyo in Laz, in difference with askaulos, which cognates with Balkanic/Thracian Guida/Gaida or british/Scottish bagpipe which has 1 chantered way

I think Italian zampogna has a unigue sound,
different than Scottish, Agean, Balkan, Black sea ones,

I feel I sould add that,

280px-Zampogna.gif







oups its Christmas carolls !!!!!! :LOL::LOL:
Click to expand...

I don't mind that it's a Christmas carol, but please, no bagpipes...my head is already splitting...my drinking days are over, I think...:)

If you like southern Italian music...Ora Chi Tornu

I like this one too...a tale as old as time...another woman who fell in love with a faithless man and lived to regret it. :grin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZYOlHkE5MY
 
This is a very old folk song about friendship which I heard again this summer. It shows one of the better aspects of human nature. Here it is sung by a group of Alpini. I have provided a rough translation into English. Amici Miei:


Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUefPFVt5Cg

When melancholy strikes you
Remember that there's someone there beside you
Life isn't always poetry
So many questions without answers...

But there is richness in friendship
An eternal treasure
Put aside your sadness
Sing with us, and it will pass


My friends,
Always ready to give me a hand
From near or far
These are my friends
Perhaps few but true,
I'm never alone in my troubles
These are my friends.


When your melancholy returns,
Sing this song along with us
Your sadness will then depart
And you'll find in us your true friends.

At times it only takes a single word

Said to a friend who is down.
A smile can turn a life around
And help someone to carry on.

My friends,
Always ready to lend a hand
From near and far
My friends.
 
A lot of Italian immigrants to the U.K. in the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century came from the area around Barga in the Garfagnana, a region right next door to me in northwest Tuscany. As a result, you can get some great fish and chips, because some of those immigrants returned home. :) The Scottish singer Paolo Nutini traces his ancestry to that area. Anyway, they have some folk music groups who sing and dance to the kind of music I used to occasionally hear in my childhood and heard again this summer.

This one is called "La Muffrina". This dance and the kinds of jigs and reels that are done in what I would call American "square dancing" are very similar. Our Quadriglia is even more similar. These tunes and dances must have been very widely spread throughout Europe.


Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIonLvUQQGA
 
At local sagre, there's usually a DJ for the young, and mazurkas, polkas and waltzes for the older set, often played by musicians using more traditional instruments. They constitute the "folk" or traditional dancing that most people do, even if the music and the dances originated relatively recently and in other places in Europe. It just goes to show how certain cultural influences infiltrated most of Europe, from the quadriglie and jigs to, as I said, polkas, muzurkas and waltzes. I do love circling round the floor to this kind of music. :) It's also nice that many of our local young people still know how to do these dances and participate. Whether that's true everywhere, I don't know.


Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZUiu1KLVjg
 
"Donna Lombarda" as performed by some Tuscan musicians. "Lombard Lady" is one of the oldest Italian songs, if not, indeed, the oldest. This ballad form was probably introduced to Italy during the Middle Ages/early Renaissance from France, and owes something, I think, to the troubadour tradition. There are various versions. Generally, it tells the story of a lady, supposedly from Lombardia, who is persuaded by her lover (a King, in some versions) to kill her husband by gathering the poison of a venomous snake from the garden. She attempts to do so, but her husband recognizes that something is amiss, perhaps, in some versions, alerted by their child, and forces her to drink it herself. So, honor and morality are appeased and justice is meted out. :) It bears some similarity to the Guinevere, Arthur, Launcelot story, but in that case, although the adultery occurs, Guinevere doesn't attempt to kill her husband (although the moral rot destroys the kingdom), and so her punishment is just banishment for life to a nunnery. There is perhaps more similarity to the earlier story of Tristan and Iseult. Poison makes an appearance in some versions where King Mark kills Tristan with a poisoned sword. In most versions, the lovers are neatly absolved of responsibility because their love affair is said to be an uncontrollable compulsion due to a love potion. (Oy vey, hypocrisy anyone? :)) One version does recount that Isolde deliberately gave Tristan a love potion, proving yet again that it's always the fault of weak women! Also, in most versions, both lovers survive.

Anyway, here it is...

Here is the direct link if the visual gets truncated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0JeXH1VULE
 
The beautiful Gigliola Cinquetti singing, "Sunday, Going to Mass", La Domenica, andando alla Messa". (That's pronounced Gee/Yolla, with the accent on the second syllable, by the way. I know that particular combination of letters is difficult for English speakers.) This is the rough translation:

"On Sunday, going to Mass, accompanied by my suitors, I was surprised by my parents,
Now they're sending me to a convent to become a nun, oh yes, yes, no, no!
I'm as innocent as the sun shining on the sea,
I want to say good-bye to love, oh yes, yes, no, no.

Tell me that you love me!
I'm as innocent as the sun
shining on the sea.
I want to say goodbye to love,
Oh yes, yes – oh no, no!

I want to say goodbye to love.

Boys cry, cry,
They've cut my blond hair,
You know how beautiful and curly it was
Boys cry with me!
Oh yes, yes – oh no, no!

Boys cry with me!
Tell me that you love me
I'm as innocent as the sun
that shines on the sea

I want to say goodbye to love,
Oh yes, yes – oh no, no!
I want to say goodbye to love,
Oh yes, yes – oh no, no!

A very nice tune set to a dance beat that tells a rather sad story. Things have definitely changed for the better in some ways.

 
Tarantella del Gargano, accompanied by 19th century paintings of Italian women.

The music is beautiful, haunting, hypnotic, in a way, and the words very romantic and full of imagery. This is the gist of it...it may not be perfect as it isn't in standard Italian.

This woman..
What can I do to love this woman
I’ll plant a beautiful rose garden
I’ll plant a beautiful rose garden
Full of them, to make her fall in love with me
From precious stones and gold
I'll make a fountain in the middle
From which water flows
From which water flows
And above it a bird will sing
Above it a bird will sing
And say, How beautiful you are
For you I would become a bird,
beautiful lady,
So I could sleep by your side
I fell in love with the way you walk and speak
If you hadn't been so beautiful
I wouldn't have fallen in love
What does this woman want from me
Your mother knows of my love
She will tell you
What does this woman want from me
This woman
What can I do to have this woman
I’ll plant a beautiful rose garden
I’ll plant a beautiful rose garden


It's truncating again.
This is the direct link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crz412sr4bo
 
At weddings, communions etc. my father and his five brothers (after a few glasses of wine :)) would get up and sing the "old" songs while everyone would dance, usually a waltz or a mazurka.

I was very touched to discover that even in 2015 young or "youngish" men in his general part of Italy still sing them. This particular song is a slightly different and very truncated version of one my father and his brothers actually sang. The song they sang was called "Moretto, Moretto". It wasn't about a Moor.:grin: In Italian the word moretto means brunette. In the song the bel giovanotto, or good looking young man, is the Moretto, and the girl is a bella "Bionda".

It goes something like this:

My beautiful young man, my moretto, moretto
Has hair with waves like the sea
From his boat on the waves of the sea he calls to me,
Bionda, bella bionda, come to me
On the waves of the sea and the river
Under the light of the moon
He wants to make love to me
But if there's no sun,
Mamma won't permit it, she won't let me go
If you don't let me go, mamma,
If you don't let me have my moretto,
I'll throw myself on the bed and let myself die,
I'll throw myself on the bed and let myself die
Cruel mother, let myself die for love.

Yeah, yeah...:rolleyes: Such drama! I'm with the mother on this one, at least since I had children of my own, anyway.:LOL: Never trust the really good looking ones. :)

Anyway, this one still has the moretto and the bella bionda, but has very little detail, other than that they want to get married!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynj0e9Ebhoo
 
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