Customer Reviews

Italian Treasury: Folk Music & Song of Italy

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This is a great CD. It's not a parody of Italy. It's not EPCOT center Italy nor is it The Olive Garden (which is about as Italian as boomerangs and enchiladas). Lomax has collected authentic FOLK music. Folk means PEOPLE and this is music made by real people for the sake of making music, not for selling mass quantities of CDs. It is very authentic. Unfortunately, most of contemporary Italy shuns the traditions of the past in the same way that hip Americans regard our roots music as passe', so I'm glad that these songs are being recorded for prosperity.
For those of you who want something to listen to while eating spaghetti covered in Kraft parmesian cheese there are plenty of cheesy collections of O Sole Mio and "tarantellas for the tourist" out there. But I would recommend checking out the Putumayo collection Italian Music Odyssey. It's a polished collection of good Italian songs by professional musicians, but it's not as gritty as this collection. I also recommend you watch the movie Big Night to understand the differences between real Italian culture and American characaturization of the country. For the real music lover and true italophile, I highly recommend Italian Treasury.

OK. If you are into it, this is realy authentic folk playing and singing. Recorded in 1954 (excelently restored!), gives an overview of many Italian regions, not excluding minorities (Albanians of Calabria and Slavs of Venezia-Giulia), with the traditional music performed by local artists.

Most impressive moment: A capella Calabrian song recorded on a fishing ship, while the crew (20 half-naked, (so the notes say!),fishermen) is raising an undersea net. It is a bawdy song, but strangely beautiful. You can hear squeaking and squeeling of the capstain throughout the song.

Full notes, all texts and translations, and history. Bravo!

No cheap commercial stuff, my friends, but real life material...

i come from italy and i must say it is very authentic. i love it. it sounds just like home. i do not knoww why anybody does not like it. if you want great italian music, i suggest this. it is very lively and happy. i love this cd. it remind me of home.

I agree completely: The ignorance of the average American (and, sadly, the average Italian-American) never ceases to amaze me, either. In a world where the Internet is supposed to make everyone more intelligent and open-minded, where the myriad of books on every conceivable topic in the world that are printed everyday are supposed to make people more sophisticated, why is it that we are more prejudiced, superficial, and close-minded than ever?

This is especially true regarding anything Italian.

The average person out there will have a hell of a time listening to and digesting this collection of authentic Italian folk music (as well as anything else Alan Lomax put out about Italy) because it's not superficial like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Frankie Valli, stuff that reminds the ignorant of the mafia or the Sopranos, or similar garbage.

Nah, you won't hear this stuff in The Olive Garden or Bertucci's ... not by a long shot.

Like the reviewer from Portland pointed out, Alan Lomax was a musical anthropologist, an ethnomusicologist. He was interested in preserving timeless music - sung by generations of Italians for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years - and that was in danger of being lost forever due to the after-effects of World War II, when ethnic things were shunned and Italy was made to suffer ungodly for siding with Germany during the war.

When Lomax made these field recordings, in the 1950's, the Americanization bug really bit Italians and he was lucky to get the music that he got where he got them from. This is a great "sampler" CD in that it covers just about every region from Sicilia to Sardinia.

My personal favorites are the two songs from Lungro, Cosenza, Calabria, "La Serenata" and "La Strina." I'm sorry I never got the chance to email Mr. Lomax when he was alive to tell him how much it touched me to hear music from the village of my great-great-grandmother.

I also love "Saltarella" from the region of Lazio, not too far from Rome. Everytime I listen to it, I can imagine the people he recorded this with leaping to it and thoroughly enjoying themselves. It was also interesting to hear "Lipa Ma Marica" (from the province of Friuli Venezia Giulia) and the fact that it sounds more Slavic than my Frankie Yankovic CD of Polish folk songs.

Even though I can't read music, I deeply appreciate the cultural notes and the depth of the musical knowledge of these songs that Lomax included in the liner notes.

Alan Lomax's contribution to the world of ethnic music can and never will be matched. He did so many people a favor by preserving timeless folks songs - from the Deep South of America, to true rhythm and blues, to jazz, to world music (Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, France, etc.) - music that was around for hundreds of years and in danger of fading away forever.

His collections are for the serious of ethnic music lovers - amateur and professional.

I don't mind admitting that this collection is primarily an historical document, as the folk music and dance traditions that are captured on this CD have been greatly diminished since this recording was made in the mid-1950s.

Oh, but what a document it is! Italy has one of the most robust and diverse musical traditions of any nation in Europe, and it is a joy to hear these Italians perform. Serenades, lullabies, tarantellas, saltarellas, brass bands, you've got it all. The energy and excitement in some of these tracks, especially Zumba Lariula, are infectious. In the Trallalero of Liguria, you can hear the origins of some medieval chant.

There are other collections that represent the modern Italian folk revival, some of which might be more accessible to American ears (Putumayo's Italian Musical Odyssey and The Rough Guide to the Music of Italy are both good choices).

But for real Italian folk music, this CD can't be beat. It is a truly great collection, and a wonderful introduction to the other volumes in the Lomax Italian Treasury collection, each of which focus on a particular regions. Highly recommended.

I have read reviews that claim the singing in this compilation is musically awful( "like cats screaching"...). However, one must take into account the reason Mr. Lomax made these recordings in the first place. He did not travel to Italy as a talent scout hoping to make the next musically artistic "find". What Alan Lomax did was much more profound: he recorded pieces of a nation's life history told by its' people through song and dance, perhaps passed from one generation to another over many centuries.
I am an Italian-American whose ancestors come from the regions of Sicilia,Abruzzo,and Calabria and with more far-reaching roots to the conquerors from Greece as well as the "Spanish" Moors. Listening to this CD was enlightening and exciting for me. I felt I was with my ancestors as they were in the hot sulfur mines, on the smelly fishing boats, sweat dripping as they were turning the olive presses or working the wheat and flax fields. And I could hear my beloved grandmother singing "Nonni Nonna" as I fell asleep on her rocking lap.
I agree that some of the vocals were difficult to listen to at first, until I realized that the main purpose and impact was not the musicality of the song(or lack of it as the case might be), but rather the historical importance of a people about to lose their unique identity to make way for "progress". Upon listening to "Italian Treasury: Folk Music and Song of Italy" one can also hear the varied musical influences from other places and another time(altri tempi). I wonder if the people of Italy realized what a "global" society they had already become when they agreed to a supposedly beneficial progress that only recently is attempting to achieve that very same "globality"(in the name of peace, if for nothing else).

Modern civilization is destroying traditional cultures around the world at an alarming rate; some call this progress, but listening to this remarkable CD from the Alan Lomax collection reminds one of just how much is lost when these ancient forms of musical expression are lost forever. I am not an ethnomusicologist, but I have always had a fascination for the indiginous and folk music idioms. This is one of the main reasons I purchased the recording, that and because I am Italian by heritage. Needless to say this music really spoke to me. In it I could here the echoes of my proud and noble ancestors. Like the people who produced it, the music is passionate, lively, energetic, and earthy. In short a must for anyone searching for a little piece of unspoiled Italian soul.

Jeez, so sorry that actual, authentic Italian folk music doesn't go with your "authentic" Olive Garden appetites!! The ignorance, the insular isolationism of the average American never ceases to amaze. For gosh sakes, are you disappointed that Alan Lomax's recordings of Appalachian folk songs and Delta field hollers don't sound more like Camptown Races??

Lomax was a musical anthropologist, whose avocation was recording the indigenous music of global cultures, of which this recording is an example par excellence. The reviewers on these pages might be more at home with a record by Jerry Vale or, perhaps, a monkey and an organ grinder. Apparently that is what passes for "authentic" Italian music in America's dubious world view.

Well, I don't know what I was expecting when I bought this; something along the lines of "classic Italian tunes," I believe. Well, if you're in search of something to listen to while sharing a bowl of pasta with friends, this isn't it! You'd loose your stomach! The singers are not professionals, the sound quality is very good - so you hear every straining note from the "artists." This would be a good album for an Italian language teacher, to explore dialectical differences within Italy, but beyond educational pursuits, I wouldn't reccommend this album.

Well, as a European traveler, as well as a visitor to Italy, and a lover of all things Italian, I was flabbergasted with this CD. My thoughts are that this CD was created in a backwoods bar, long after most of the patrons were three sheets to the wind. The singing is HORRIBLE and out of tune, and ten out of ten people polled agreed as to the unbelievable badness of this CD. It is screechy, and the tone is of poor quality. A good friend of mine says it sounds like an old toothless woman screeching from her bed, accompanied by crying dogs and cats. I will say, that I am tickled that the seller was good enough to refund 100% of my money. This was the best part of the entire transaction. Buyer beware.