Officina Zoé
Terra

A strange land, Salento. A seaside place yet culturally anchored to the land, more farmer than sailor. A land of passage, a crossroads of cultures in ancient times, yet in the contemporary era an isolated extension of Italy: it has no important ports, leads nowhere, its economy is of little importance to the rest of Italy. Rivalries between these Italian Greeks and the northern "Slavs" (the people from Bari). This beautiful land has seen tremendous tourist expansion, which is great for restaurateurs but less so for native bathers.

Music, however, is another thing. In the last decade, it has reached incredible popularity thanks to the famous—or notorious, given the participation of the mass—Notte della Taranta. Salento's music has a lush variety that, in Italy, can only be found in Neapolitan music. And this album has one of the best interpretations of this music that I have ever heard, without veering from the fundamental tenets: no electric instruments; no lyrics in Italian, but only in Salentino and Griko; no reworking of famous songs in a "pizzica" style, as many others have done, even with excellent results.

The album can only open with the most famous pizzica, Santu Paulu, a healing song, choral, frantic and very fast, which according to history was danced by women driven mad by the heat in the fields of August or was used to "sweat away" the poison caused by the Taranta's bite. After this, we move on to a song dedicated to a slightly annoying woman ("Vulia sapire ci la faci ca si puntusa/o puramente ca la poti fare"). After an instrumental piece, we move on to Nia, nia, nia, the most beautiful song on the album, an intense lullaby in Griko, probably thousands of years old. Over a slow violin, the song of a poor mother intertwines, hoping and almost praying for happiness and wealth for her children.

The pace picks up again in the next song, Canuscu na carusa, the first with a male voice, which extols the virtues of the "carusa" the singer is in love with. Lu rusciu dellu mare is another desperate song, involving Turkish and Spanish invasions, class differences, and an impossible love ("Iddha se ndae alla Spagna e ieu in Turchia/la fija de lu re è la zita mia"). One of the most famous songs beyond the Salento borders, certainly worth more than a listen, with a slow part reminiscent of classic Greek songs that swells like the sea, with a Spanish-like rhythm in the middle, and the woman's voice—speaking from a man's perspective—rising full of anger and frustration.

After the drum-beaten song against feudal oppression in Fimmene, fimmene and another version of Santu Paulu, we move on to La turtura, sung from the perspective of a woman who wants to break the chains of a feudal society.

The album closes with another classic, La pizzicarella, less aggressive than Santu Paulu, about a girl who asks a swallow to carry her message of love ("Quantu t’amau t’amau lu core miu/mo nu te ama cchiui se nde scerrau").

A record very much tied to the land and the sea, that manages to clearly and purely convey the voices of Salento's peasants hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years after the origin of these songs.