An exciting journey into music in the third disc of the Apulian composer. 'Maresia' explores fado, arbëreshë culture, tarantella and the Mediterranean.
“In Portuguese, the word 'Maresia' means the sea foam that vaporizes in the air when the wind whips the crest of the waves. It is the sweat of the sea playing as it tries to chase itself. It is a race with open arms embodying a waltzing, tarantella-like gait, which communicates a wingspan sense of expansion and an oceanic joy. Maresia is the incessant mixing of languages, stories, and people of the past, the present, and the future. My song is a dream and maresia”.
Beyond being a presentation, or a programmatic manifesto of composition and inspiration, Fabrizio Piepoli's words are poetry, paths, and visions. His new album Maresia (Zero Nove Nove - Self / Believe) is a Mediterranean itinerary, a project in which his versatility as a multi-instrumentalist and composer, as an author and scholar of musical traditions of the Mediterranean, and as a bewitching interpreter emerges definitively. Ten pieces that perfectly represent Piepoli’s musical horizons - known in particular for his steady collaboration with La Cantiga de la Serena, Raiz, and Radicanto, as well as for other, numerous collaborations – of which he states: “These songs are part of a fluid history that expresses something new each time. I gathered sounds, words, gestures, and memories into my hands, threw them in the air, then they fell back onto me, all mixed up. My past, the part that continues to speak to me even now, I chase after and disintegrate, mixing it with other elements like voices in the streets of a market, and then it reappears again, telling me things I still do not know yet”.
Maresia is a work that explores popular and original songwriter music from Puglia and Southern Italy with a Mediterranean attitude and a meticulous search for sound, which have always been the hallmarks of the musician from Bari. Fabrizio Piepoli's voice is a flowing universe, with a strongly ‘melismatic’ style that allows several notes to be sung to one syllable of text. His light tenor voice allows him to dip down to the low, baritone register sounds while also reaching up to the acute mezzo-soprano ones. He has a sophisticated voice that continuously plays with its own identity, with the masculine and the feminine, and with the East and the West. The battente, or ‘beating’ guitar typical of Southern Italian tradition, the Arab oud, and the Turkish saz, often filtered through effects and loop machines, are the instruments that accompany Fabrizio Piepoli's singing. All this put together with the passionate tale of his roots is what breathes life into a new sound: the TARABTELLA, where Apulian tarantella meets the tarab of the Arab melody, the joy of dance, and the ecstasy of listening. The rhythmic, three-note gait of the tarantella, the rediscovery of Marisa Sannia and Amalia Rodriguez, and the dialogue between the Gargano tarantella and Portuguese fado all animate and define this valuable, intricate album made up of melodic pathways. What further embellishes it is research into the Carpino singers and a love for traditional Arab and Turkish instruments, as well as the Arbëreshë tradition and migration songs.
Languages like musical instruments are permeable creatures. The need for storytelling and narration pushes them to change, to adapt, and to evolve. Piepoli's music goes in search of these sound grafts, essential for expressing his personal vision. Maresia is the symbol of the crossed destinies of people, stories, languages, and songs that have moved and fertilized history, making it hybrid and kaleidoscopic. A past that hovers in the present and inspires the future.
“I gathered sounds, words, gestures, and memories into my hands, threw them in the air, then they fell back
onto me, all mixed up. My past, the one that continues to speak to me today, the one that has the power of
enchanting me and that sings to me is a fluid history that always plays at revealing itself to me and it disorients
me.
I chase after it and disintegrate it, mixing it with other elements like voices in the streets of a market, and
then it reappears again, telling me things I still do not know yet. When we speak to each other, our language
is a foam that the wind diffuses into the air, whipping the crest of the waves. It is a dream and Maresia.
In Portuguese, the word 'Maresia' means the sea foam that vaporizes in the air when the wind whips the
crest of the waves. It is the sweat of the sea playing as it tries to chase itself. It is a race with open arms embodying
a waltzing, tarantella-like gait, which communicates a wingspan sense of expansion and an oceanic
joy. Maresia is the incessant mixing of languages, stories, and people of the past, the present, and the future.”
MELAGRANADA RUJA - This song was written by the Sardinian singer-songwriter Marisa Sannia. Sergio
Endrigo released it in the 1960s. I have discovered his extraordinary repertoire in the Sardinian language in
recent years, which he composed starting from the 90s when his career acquired a twist of ‘songwriter’ and
'world' quality. His songs have a powerful evocative force sung by a voice of a Sardinian woman that is intense
in an earthy telluric-like way, yet very delicate at the same time, one that is proud, archaic, and sensual.
I reduced my arrangement to the essential, burrowing myself into it: the music is entrusted only to the
sound of an Arabic oud, which weaves its melodies around the song.
I wanted this “Pomegranate Red” to sound as seductive as an Arab-Andalusian muwashshah poem, and to
be as epic as an ancient epic hero story set to music. (“The tower has fallen, the house has fallen / the valiant
one is dead, the giant is dead”). This is a sad tale that manages ultimately to lull and comfort (“Mother, let
the evening star cry / I'm cold and sleepy, I have no pain / cover me with earth and sing me a lullaby”).
Marisa Sannia writes; “Poetry is not read with the eyes, it is read with the voice. The eyes help us to decipher
it, the ear to discover its rhythm, but it is the voice that gives us the possibility to recreate it.”
OCCHI DE MONACHELLA - When I began to approach popular music, one of the first pieces that struck me
was a traditional Calabrian one that I listened to in Danilo Montenegro’s version, an extraordinary storyteller,
poet, and Calabrian painter who deserves far more notoriety beyond a close circle of connoisseurs. Together
with people like Enzo Del Re, Matteo Salvatore, and Rosa Balistreri he belongs to that treasured group of
songwriters inextricably linked to popular musical roots.
Danilo Montenegro was a master of the battente guitar, an all-Italian instrument of seventeenth-century origin
from the central-southern area, which is one of the sound pillars of this record. As always, I love writing
something of my own to graft onto these songs, be they traditional or songwriter material, as I did here with
the coda of the song: a choral and festive tarantella where the Arabs use the battente guitar, the Turkish saz,
and the oud as their ropes to weave together.
STELLA D’ORI - This is a Carpinese tarantella in “vëstësanë” style, performed with the historical version of
the Carpinese singer Rocco di Mauro in mind (recorded in Carpino in 1966 by Roberto Leydi and Diego
Carpitella), whose melodic vocal gait is incredibly reminiscent of the Blues.
The reason behind the choice for this combination comes from a story Fernanda Toriello told me, an illustrious
Lusitanist Portuguese studies scholar from Bari, and friend of Amalia Rodrigues. Once she was having
dinner in a restaurant with Amalia after a concert in the town of Daunia, when at a certain point a local folk
group started playing and she, who always appeared very austere on stage but in actuality loved being
around people and having a good time, suddenly got up and began to dance. At the end of the evening, she
said that she would have liked to use that music in her next recording project, but due to various twists and
turns, this never happened.
In this suite of songs, I imagined myself fulfilling Amalia’s wish, by combining the traditions of the Gargano
tarantella and Portuguese fado.
Photo Credits:
(1ff) Fabrizio Piepoli
(by Gabriele Vitale).
