«Italy is more by the sea than many other Mediterranean countries, washed by waves on three sides. The ancient Romans were not a seafaring people, but they managed to secure the coast and built good ports.»
Predrag Matvejevic, Breviario Mediterraneo
Mauro Durante and his renewed Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino represent a deeply renewed folk music scene; Focu d’amore, also already a discographic project, traverses the usual musical territories of folk tradition but from a new perspective, according to the expressed desire to indicate new paths for traditional music. The group was born thirty-five years ago, so there can be no suspicion regarding the ease and spontaneity of a musical collective that emerged perhaps in response to a recent interest in Salento culture. For this reason, perhaps, without any digression, the precise and perfectly corresponding words of Dario De Marco hold true here: «ancestral pizziche, stripped of their commercial aspect and re-proposed in all their unsettling rhythmic hypnosis, but also lullabies and serenades in griko that become jazz ballads, carefree band pieces, not forgetting the vein of committed folk songs (we laugh bitterly with La quistione meridionale). Visceral».
Born from an idea of the writer Rina Durante in 1975, the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino is the first and oldest group of Salento folk music formed in Puglia; since 2007, the leadership has passed from founder Daniele Durante to his son Mauro, already an established tamburellist and violinist who collaborates with numerous artists, including Piers Faccini, Ibrahim Maalouf, Ballake Sissoko, Stewart Copeland, and La Notte della Taranta, for which he serves as musical assistant to concert master Ludovico Einaudi; the group has released sixteen albums and presented numerous performances in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.
www.canzonieregrecanicosalentino.net
In collaboration with the Fondazione La Notte della Taranta
