Many of our visitors to Sicily ask where they can find traditional Sicilian folk music. In this article we unearth some of the influences…
I have to admit, I have always been a bit disappointed by musical culture in Sicily. It is certainly not as rich as some of the of the other Mediterranean islands, and cannot boast traditions as exotic as, for example, the polyphonic Corsican folk singing or the music of the Cretan lyre. As the largest and most populous of the Mediterranean islands, I have to say, I have always found this surprising.
Sicily is known for being the founding school of the sonnet form (during the times of the Normans). In the visual arts, most notably in painting and in architecture, but also in sculture, it has produced some of Italy’s greatest artists – Antonello da Messina, Rosario Gagliardi and Giacomo Serpotta among them, but musically, Sicily is under-represented. I find myself wondering why. It is not that Sicily is short of good musicians. And there are many musical festivals throughout the year. But nevertheless, there are still highlights to be found if you look carefully.
Let us begin, first of all, by mentioning a few Sicilian associations in classical music:
One of the earliest Renaissance composers we read about in Sicily is Sigismondo d’India who was born in Palermo in 1582. But it seems he soon emigrated from the city – and thus set a pattern which has persisted throughout the centuries.
Alessandro Scarlatti (father of Domenico) was born in Palermo (or possibly Trapani) in 1660. However, since he studied in Rome and spent most of the rest of his life in Naples, we assume he contributed little to the musical life of the island. On the other hand, he is a near contemporary of the Palermitano sculptor, Giacomo Serpotta, and it is certainly interesting to draw parallels between the works of the two artists.
The most famous representation of Sicily in classical music is of course, the Cavaliera Rusticana, based on the novel by the Sicilian writer, Giovanni Verga by Pietro Mascagni (premiered in Rome in 1890). However, since Mascagni was from Tuscany and it is doubtful that he ever visited Sicily, the connection with the island really stops with the libretto.
Richard Wagner, was a frequent visitor to Palermo at the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, there is even a street in the city named after him. It is said that his final opera Parsifal (1882) was largely written in Palermo. It is easy to see what attracted Wagner to the city. Apart from health reasons which had brought him to Italy in the first place, opera was likely to be have been extremely popular in the Sicilian capital. Though it wasn’t to be opened until 1897, at the time of Wagner’s stay in Palermo, work on the future opera house was already ongoing.
Perhaps the greatest boast of Sicily’s contribution to classical music is the composer Vincenzo Bellini who was born in Catania 1801 and who was buried in the city’s cathedral in 1835. However, like so many of his compatriots, Bellini left the city of his birth for his studies in Naples at the age of eighteen and probably only returned to Catania once in the whole of the rest of his life.
Besides this short pantheon of composers, the other bequest from Sicily to the world of classical music is the musical form of the same name – the Siciliana. Particularly beloved by Baroque and Classical composers, this was usually a slow movement in a minor key in 12/8 or 6/8 time and often with a lilting rhythm. J.S. Bach used the form several times – most notably in his E-flat flute sonata. The slow movement of Domenico Cimarosa’s oboe concerto is another famous example (albeit that the work is actually an arrangement and compilation of movements from his sonatas made by composer Arthur Benjamin in 1949). However, whether the form actually derived from Sicily is doubtful. More likely, it was a pastoral-sounding movement that was given the name to make it seem more “exotic”.
Indeed, this propensity for Sicily to be an “inspiration” for rustic music rather than the true source of it is a recurring theme.
We should however, mention Luciano Berio’s inclusion of a Sicilian song in his 1964 collection: Folk Songs. A la Femminisca was apparently a song sung by fishermen’s wives in Sicily.
Otherwise, most people’s impression of Sicilian folk-music are the feral groups of bards that thread through the streets of Taormina on a summer’s evening and stopping off to serenade diners at the town’s restaurants.
Seated at table in a restaurant in Taormina, it is common to be serenaded by a band of swashbuckling musicians dressed in white poplin shirts, black cotton trousers with red silk sashes. A lilting 12/8 melody blasts at ear-piercing volume from an innocent looking wooden pipe, whilst a tambourine jangles and an elderly guitarist shuffles through the same three chords on a guitar. Warmed by a day in the sun, after a carafe-full of wine and tasty food, this music is creates sentiments of congeniality and fellowship. It is easy to clap along to and stirs a wish to get up and dance. But one or two tunes are enough. It is not the sort of thing you will buy a CD of and play in your living room at home.
Is this the Sicilian folk music?
Maybe.
These bands usually consist of a high pitched whistle (similar to the sopranino recorder) with guitar and accordion providing an accompaniment and a tambourine for percussion. Two other instruments frequently added to the mix are the jew’s harp and a jug – which can either be blown like a flute, or slapped percussively.
Much of the repertoire of these groups though, hails from the Neapolitan tradition, which perhaps shouldn’t surprise us since Sicily has always had a close connection with Naples.
Perhaps for the real Sicilian folk music we need to look further and there is a fascinating museum of folk instruments in the town of Gesso above Messina which I have written about elsewhere on this blog. Most of the collection consists of aerophones, in particular pipes (pfifari as they are known in Sicilian). Most of these are simple flutes, fashioned from the arundo donax reeds ubiquitous throughout the island and of the kind that would be played by a shepherd. However, there is also an interesting collection of mandolins, accordions, shawms and tambourines. And, curiously perhaps for the unsuspecting visitor – the jew’s harp.
Much has been written about the etymology of the jew’s harp and it seems probable that the name is a derivation of “jaw harp” rather than having anything to do with religion. In practice, it is widespread throughout the world – from Cambodia to Nepal. In Sicily it is referred to as the marranzanu.
However, the other instrument which features prominently in the museum is the zampogna – a traditional shepherd’s bagpipe. This instrument is identical to the one found in Calabria and Southern Greece and consists of a whole goatskin – or sheepskin. In construction and sound it is vastly different from its Scottish cousin. Its name betrays its Greek origins – zampogna deriving from the Greek work sinfonia – meaning “sounding together” (indeed, the origin of our word symphony). In the East of Sicily, it is often also referred to as the ciaramedda – although this may also refer to a particular type of zampogna.
Nowadays, the best time to hear the zampogna is at Christmas, when itinerant chanters still wander the streets of Sicilian towns playing Christmas carols for money. It is a beautiful sound – haunting and mellifluous, not unlike a hurdy-gurdy but more angular and less grating. And if I were asked to pick one example of Sicilian folk music, it would have to be the music of the zampogna.
Notably, all of the instruments that feature in the museum at Gesso are portable. In visits to the homes of aristocrats in Sicily, one is struck by how rare it is to come across a piano, spinet, harpsichord or harp. Organs, of course, exist in the churches, but most of these were constructed and installed by organ makers from the continent rather than indigenous to Sicily.
And one is also struck by the absence of stringed instruments – violins, violas and cellos. And perhaps these are absent at the expense of one musical tradition that still thrives in Sicily: the amateur town band.
Music, it seems, in Sicily, is something that takes place in the street – communally – rather than something performed in private at home.
Comprised mainly of flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, euphoniums and tubas, these town bands still play at religious festivals – mainly saint’s days – throughout the island. And the festival of the Misteri in Trapani, held each year on Good Friday, is a good opportunity to hear them. During the three days of processions, no fewer that 24 bands take place and march through the town simultaneously, very much in the spirit of Charles Ives. It is a moving and beautiful occasion.
The origin of music to accompany these processions probably goes back to the beginnings of Christianity and beyond, but was almost certainly amplified under the five-hundred years rule of the Spanish over the island. Most of the tunes played by the bands today though, were written by composers over the last one hundred and fifty years: Giuseppe Manente and Cesare De Michelis for example.
One of the most interesting musical phenomenons that Sicily has produced in the last century is undoubtedly the singer Rosa Balistreri. Born in Licata in 1927, like many of her generation, Balistreri emigrated from the island in her early twenties and settled in Florence where she worked as a domestic servant. And like many artists, this exile from her homeland served to fuel her artistic voice. Accompanied by simple ostinati on a guitar, her harsh, often gravelly voice, affords urgency to the words of her songs. She returned to live in Palermo in the 1970s and the city life, away from the intellectual poverty of her native southern Sicily, allowed her art to flourish. By the time she died in 1990 she had given voice to the island.
Her tradition today is very much carried on by singers such as Carmen Consoli from Catania and another notable Sicilian on the world music stage in the last thirty years has been Franco Battiato.
I mentioned the trend for composers to migrate away from Sicily. One composer who contradicted this was the great twentieth century American guitarist and composer Ralph Towner who lived in Palermo for much of the 1990s and whose music has arguable derived inspiration from the city.
Finally, we should consider the inspiration that Sicily has provided for cinema and the film scores written for it. I am thinking, in particular, of the music to the first two Godfather movies composed by the Milanese Nino Rota and also of the score to Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso written by the great Ennio Morricone.
Neither of these composers hailed from Sicily and yet, together, these theme tunes have now become the soundtrack to a journey through the island. Interestingly, the themes to both these scores share a similar melodic shape, phrase structure and rhythm. Like a slowly exhaled sigh, they start with an upward leap before gradually descending to their starting place, as if giving musical expression to Sicilian gesture of raising open palms in wonder.
To return to my original question about the comparative dearth of music in Sicily: my conjecture is that the island lived much of the last six hundred years under the rule of Naples and the Spanish and it absorbed their musical traditions, albeit in a watered-down way. Furthermore, whilst in northern Europe, noblemen would often employ a composer and perhaps an orchestra in their court, in Sicily, the noblemen were usually absent and living in Spain. No such patronage of composers existed. But this does not entirely explain the dearth of folk music. Despite their Italian, French and Ottoman rulers, Corsica and Crete – the two islands I began my comparison with – retained their native traditions longer than Sicily. Maybe this was on account of their particularly rugged topography? But my thesis is mere conjecture. I have no evidence on which to base this posturing…
This is, of course, a vastly superficial overview of Music in Sicily and many will point to omissions. But for such an important island boasting such a richness of history, compared to drama, theatre, the visual arts, and even literature, music seems under-represented in Sicily.
To stand by the statement I made earlier, it seems that Sicily is more a source of “inspiration” for music, than a true source of the music itself.
