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jason on 01/06/2012 at 04:30PM
Spider Trance - Southern Italy's Traditional Music
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is Salento, Italy's foremost traditional music group. They will perform as part of this Sunday's Global Fest at Webster Hall, NYC along with Debo Band, Yemen Blues, and many other incredible artists. CGS made their U.S. debut last year, including the following performance on WFMU's Transpacific Sound Paradise engineered by Davey Jewell and Juan Aboites. At the time, host Rob Weisberg wrote:
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino specializes in the driving rhythms of the pizzica dance and other ancient rhythms on traditional instruments. The pizzica is the local variant of the legendary mystical spider-trance-dance, the tarantella.
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Founded in 1975 at the urging of writer Rina Durante, CGS was the first traditional revival band in Salento. Durante was a major advocate for reviving, preserving and promoting the region's traditions, culture and language. She was the catalyst for a cultural revival, with the band at the center. Yet in all its years (and with 16 albums to its name), Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino never made it to North America. Until now. Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is having its own revival, with leadership handed down from father Daniele Durante to son Mauro, and a new wave of younger musicians playing and singing traditional tunes and originals rooted in tradition. It's a very rare treat to have this superb group live in studio to play and sing - in the dialects of Salentino and the rarer Grecanico - and introduce us to the deep musical, cultural and linguistic roots of the region. |
Among the other Globel Fest performers are the afro-columbian group M.A.K.U. Sound System, the jaw harp master Wang Li, the Bedouin-inspired Yemen Blues, Malian rap group SMOD, and the Debo Band (FMA) -- an Ethiopiques-style ensemble who recently signed to Sub Pop and were recently featured on the FMA by LizB. For more Global Fest sounds, check out NPR Music's Global Fest Stream, curated by our own Rob Weisberg!
andrewcsmith on 05/21/2010 at 09:30AM
Every Heaven is the Best One...
The idea is that about halfway through, Sam Ashley is no longer really playing the drums. Instead, by balancing the two sides of his body, Ashley turns himself into what he describes as a "human VU meter," or a readout of the current state of his spirit possession. In his performance of "Every Heaven is the Best One and Every Hell is the Worst One," Ashley allows himself to become possessed by a particular spirit—one he has developed a relationship with over the years. Ashley's drumming quickly becomes involuntary; as the spirit is exorcised, his movement grows more an more violent until he is free of the spirit and the performance is over. However, this doesn't mean that the spirit possession itself is violent. After the performance, Ashley said that, while the spirit was initially a threatening presence, they are now on good terms. In other words, the spirit doesn't necessarily outright command him to play louder, but they do so together.
Sam Ashley is one of the highlights of ISSUE's Month of the Ecstatic Moment, happening through all of May. Although he is likely best-known as a member of Robert Ashley's opera ensemble (in Dust, Celestial Excursions, Improvement, and others) Sam has been working for decades as an experimental mystic. His focus is making certain mystical occurances—like spirit possession, or trance more generally—audible acts. The idea is that by making these events audible, a view will be opened to "things that occur in-between the 'real world' and something else."
Here's a video of the performance, and an audio recording is below.
Sam Ashley - Every Heaven is the Best One and Every Hell is the Worst One from issueprojectroom on Vimeo.