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ALESSANDRA BELLONI
Tarantata - Dance Of The Ancient Spider (Sounds True)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
If you're interested in World Music, your world is too small until you've heard this remarkable album of music inspired by the southern Italian tradition of tarantella. While the tarantella has been largely consigned to a novelty role at Italian weddings, it's origins are much deeper, stemming from ecstatic ritual dances performed by women to throw of the emotional distress of traditional repression. Those origins have been a subject of considerable study by performer/composer/choreographer/ musicologist Alessandra Belloni and are explained in some depth in the richly annotated and illustrated booklet that accompanies the CD.
The material on the disc was written or adapted and arranged by Belloni for a program presented at the Lincoln Center in New York and includes a variety of chants, processionals and dance music drawn from the southern Italian tradition and related material from African and Latin American sources. The music pays homage to various female deities, Black Madonnas and to the lives of the women whose lives inspired the dances and songs Belloni draws upon. Belloni offers her remarkable voice and her skill on the tambourine. Do not be mistaken. Belloni's tambourine is not a fistfull of jangles in the hands of a pop singer, but a traditional sixteen inch frame drum with jangles that requires considerable strength as well as exceptional rhythmic sense to master. Belloni is among the few contemporary women recognized as masters of the instrument.
Other accompaniment comes from a quintet that features classical guitarist John La Barbera on a range of stringed instruments including chitarra, battente, mandolocello, cuatro and viola caipira, percussionist Glen Velez on frame drums, Steve Gourn on the bansuri flute, Joe Deninzon on violin and Charlie Giordnano on accordion. The impact of the ensemble along with the considerable talent of Alessandra Belloni combines to create an album of music that, once heard, will haunt you until you hear it again. And again.
Track List:
Pizzacarella * Ave Mama e Deu * Ballo Tondo * Ave Maria di Montserrat * Canto di Sant'Irene * Sola Sola * Agur Iziarko * Canto della Madonna di Montserrato * Fimmene Fimmene * Tarantella di Sannicandro * Tu Bella * Tarantella alla Carpinese * Tarantella di San Michele * Canto della Luna * Inno al Brasile
© 2000 - Shaun Dale