(In the spirit of Fiamma Fumana)

After some soul searching, I decided that my contribution towards celebrating 150 years of Italian national unity would be directed towards encouraging my beloved country to be a wee bit less parochial. We boast an ancient and rich culture that grew by a continuous exchanges with other cultures and other peoples – from the Chinese explorations of the Polo family to the London studies of the Count of Cavour, in many ways the artifex of Italian unity. In the present, difficult phase we tend to be overly preoccupied by our immediate surroundings, and so we risk losing sight of the incredible wealth of cultural and human resources just across the border; not to mention those who live here with us, but we still don’t really recognize as local ones.

And so, with small group of Milanese from all over the world we decided to organize a party to celebrate the diversity of our country and our city. We called it Vuka, which means “Arise!” or “Awaken!” in the Zulu language; and we are going to throw it tomorrow, Tuesday March 22nd at 10 p.m. sharp, at Casa del Pane di Corso di Porta Venezia 63 (map). We designed it as a club night for dancing to the sound of the most cutting-edge clubs of Lagos, Karachi and Barletta; and where the Milanese of any origin are welcome and respected. Join Medhin (Milano–Asmara), Nadia (Stockholm), Dan (Johannesburg), Davide (Verona-Sydney-Osaka) and myself to dance away to the world’s beat in a space where everyone’s welcome, and our many differences of living out Milano power up the party.

You are all invited! Wherever you are from, wherever your heart is, if you are here and you are contributing your smarts and energy to our common adventure you are at home with us. To learn more (and get a feel for the music we are going to dance to) visit our Facebook page. Thanks to the African Film Festival for hosting us in its space.

This is no time for giving speeches. I wish to thank everyone who sang, played, danced, listened, believed. I will never forget you. I still believe in the vision of Italy’s traditional music as living matter, to be danced in clubs, played in the proverbial garages and kept near to our hearts. I am certain that this music will stay with me, and maybe one day I will feel that my contribution is needed again. Saturday, at BCC, I will perform with a naked heart. That’s all folks.

From mother to daugther – the movie is back! We have two previews on our schedule. FF (a representation) and the Mondine di Novi choir (full lineup) will participate in both.

Saturday 16th at 6.00 p.m. we’ll be at Cineteca di Milano (Spazio Oberdan). The entrance is free, but you need to reserve (+39 346.95.82.555). Thursday 28th at 8.00 p.m. we’ll be at Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris. Everyone is invited, we’ll celebrate together the small miracle of being there and remembering, yet again.

Nel 2008 si è chiuso un ciclo importante per i Fiamma Fumana. Abbiamo realizzato, dopo quattro anni di lavoro, il sogno di portare le mondine in tour con noi in America; e abbiamo presentato il film Di madre in  figlia ai festival del cinema di Toronto e Torino. Rimane da fare un po’ di lavoro promozionale sul film, ma fondamentalmente quell’avventura si conclude, è tempo di guardare avanti.

Abbiamo intenzione di cominciare un ciclo nuovo in un modo bellissimo: guardandoci intorno per cercare persone nuove da conoscere, con cui avere scambi e collaborare. Come sempre, siamo particolarmente interessati a musiciste donne, soprattutto a violiniste, fisarmoniciste, suonatrici di piva, zampogna e cornamuse varie, ghironda etc.; ma in realtà vorremmo tenerci aperti a proposte da ragazze che suonano anche altri strumenti – e perfino, perché no, da musicisti maschi! – purché in qualche modo rapportabili al nostro mondo. Se siete interessate, proponetevi lasciando un commento a questo blog o cercando Paolo Perego, Roberta Carrieri o MissyJay sui vari social network; se non lo siete, vi siamo molto grati se fate girare la notizia.

“The Mondine choir blows Torino Film Festival away”. You’re telling me, buddy. I was close to tears, again.

One year later we are back in Shiprock, New Mexico, guests of our friend Mark Amo (director of the Performing Arts Center). Shiprock is in the Navajo Nation terrritory, and pretty much all the students of the local high school are Navajo. The school boasts a choir, and last year its director Bonnie Lee invited us to attend one of their rehearsals. That resulted in a strange mutual sympathy, guarded on their part, perhaps a little distracted on ours, as strangers passing through. This year they wrote us: the choir has been studying two of our songs, Angiolina and Mariuleina, which in the album we sing together with the Choir of mondine di Novi. Can they come and sing them with us? Sure, I reply. A choir of 46 Navajo teenagers singing in the Emilian dialect? That does not happen every day to me.

I talk to Bonnie Lee: I really want to do Bella Ciao world version with this choir, as we did wikth many artists from all over the world. Have you got a Navajo song to sing for that number? Bonnie Lee, hesitates, that’s pushing it too far. I won’t have it: we are guests here, the Diné (this is their word for themselves, it was the Spaniards calling them Navajos) langage should be heard in this concert. Some of the boys nod in agreement, and then it’s decided. I’d like a traditional melody, but the only thing they can sing is a hymn, “Amazing Grace”, translated into Diné.

So we do it: alongside Italian and the Emilian dialect, the guttural and ASPIRATI sounds of the Diné language resonate on the stage. The audience – almost all native – is really happy. Roberta calls on the applause: “The Chieftains Choir!” Cheers. I echo her: “The Navajo Nation!”. More cheering. We thank them in Diné: “Akh’ie hé!”. The boys give me bear hugs and slap my back.

The next day, over lunch, we discuss it with Keith, who works with Mark at the Performing Arts Centre (but Mark is white, Keith is native). I understand that music, for native Americans, is not as important a cultural marker as it is for us Europeans: for them it has a mostly ceremonial function, so the idea of performing it in a theater is a foreign one to them, as would be for us that of celebrating a Mass before an audience, for money.

“It seems to me the main identity marker to you is rather the language, Keith. Shame that the kids do not speak it much.”

“Many do speak it in the family, bu they are embarassed to speak it in front of their friends.”

“I understand this, but I think it is wrong. In Italy dialects are almost gone for the same reason. My grandparents would refuse to speak dialect to us, they wanted us to grow up as Italians, with no local identity. Today I regret not speaking it better, not having heard and memorized more old stories. As a grown up I have started to use dialect again as an intimate language: if I talk to you in dialect, it means you are my friend.”

Keith is clearly intrigued. He tells me about native music: apparently some young people are cautiously experimenting incremental innovations on drum technique (“In some ceremonies the young would use not a single drum, but two or even three, of different sizes giving different sounds; also, they hit the drum on the edges, or slide their hands on it to obtain different notes”). I answer that innovation is necessary for the tradition to be alive, but great respect for the music must be there as well. To make sure I am being respectful when I do something new with the music, I talk to mondine, who are like the elders of our tribe. If they like it, I will stand up for my music even against hell’s storm troops, and no one is going to tell me bullshit like “real trad music does not use grooves”.

Keith is warming up to the idea. “We, too, ask the elders for their advice when we do something new. If they approve you, you feel very strong: if your integrity is being questioned they will come out and say, we approved what he did, we told him to it that way. With that backing, you can’t really go wrong.

As he speaks, he slips into Diné: he says a sentence in Diné, then he translates it into English for me, then another one in Diné, then English again. I am so absorbed in what he says that I don’t get the implications of him using his native language so freely with an obviously non-native person and a relative stranger. I do not want to embarass him, so I put it down as a joke as I am going to wash my hands:

You are talking to me in Diné, so this means you are my friend, right?

When I’m back, Mark is paying the bill, time to move on. Keith shakes my hand and speaks to ne in Diné. He does not translate. This time I understand his offer of friendship right away, and I want to reciprocate. I manage to find a few sentences in dialect. “A gh’è chès c’ag tornàm a vèder, Keith. Stè bèin, Dio a’t bendéssa!”

Few times like today has it been clearer to me why world music means so much to me. It helps to track new trails for people to meet and understand each other, helped – not hindered, whatever Sam Huntington might say – by their cultural differences. Maybe it’s the light of the autumn sun on the desert, or the sound of the Diné language, or the two days spent in a place where native Americans are a majority, but I feel a little like Keith and I are scouts who have just found a trail. And it looks promising.