So, nice, I can’t wait to see the Mondine again (not to mention Fiamma Fumana, now resting after the American tour)! And the occasion is really mellow, just a party really, the film is done. We only need to walk the red carpet, then off to a dinner with some red Lambrusco. Meanwhile, Davide and Andrea sent me this beautiful “Mondine – Di madre in figlia” trailer.

Repubblica.it, the most important Italian information website, devotes a special to the From mother to daughter project. Good pics, good videos, good vibes. The current version, we think, gets too personalistic on me, but we wrote to our friend Carlotta, the author of the piece, to edit it out. There are also a few minor factual mistakes: of course I am not in Modena City Ramblers anymore, this project is branded Fiamma Fumana!

The mondine, you see, are the elders of our tribe. It’s not just a matter of learning songs from them, however beautiful and important: it’s a general vision that they have to share, vision wich is deeply rooted in the values that make us, Italians, and Emilians in particular, what we are. So, when Antonio asked me what I think about the financial crisis and the bailout issue, I asked myself, what would mondine say? The answer is surprisingly simple and clear-cut: Silva, Lidia, Diva and the others have fought to take the satisfaction of some basic needs, which they perceive as individual rights, away from the private sector (personified by the landlord, standing on the bank of the rice paddy) and into some public sphere: care for the children, health care, pensions. There is no doubt they would much rather borrow the money to buy their home from the government, however faulty, than from Wall Street.

I do not mean to say technicalities are not important: they are, they make a huge difference, on them the Paulson plan – and its European equivalents – are accepted or rejected. But the mondine point of view gives us a perspective, a goal: the mortgage for your home should be with the government. We choose stability over sexy finance, and if this entails a slight loss of performance, so be it. A decent home is an individual right, and you do not mess around with it. Interestingly, you do not even need to be particularly skilled in finance to call this judgment: it saves a lot of brainpower and debate, and it “feels right”. The full interview became a podcast on Apogeonline (in Italian).

Voices of the World was the title of Thursday night’s show at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. It couldn’t have been more appropriate. After the Grace, Hewat and Polwarth trio (Corrina Hewat also acted as Mc), solo singer Mairi Smith, the Bulgarian women’s choir Angelite and the Aberfeldy Gaelic choir directed by Margaret Bennett it fell on to us, Fiamma Fumana and the Choir of Mondine di Novi, to finish it. The show has been good right from the start, thanks to the serene beauty of Gaelic singing, the mysterious harmonies of the Bulgarian girls and Margaret’s Elegiac notes (she touched my heart singing a slow song written for her son Martyn, very great piper and dj, our friend and our rather unorthodox muse: he would be 37 if Hodgkin’s lymphoma had not taken him away three years ago). But when the Mondine set foot on the stage something happened: firstly they sing loud, with a sonic pressure that comes straight from pre-microphonic times and makes them the Who of folk choirs (“volume is power”, indeed): and then we came onstage, with our drum grooves and our instruments, to get the people up and dancing. It ended up in a big party.

MUCH later in the evening, in the hotel’s club, the party was still raging on. The ladies stormed a circle of chairs and sofas and started singing like there was no tomorrow, and there was no way to get them to go to bed. Some fans gave them a copule of bottles of whisky, with they took in stride with the elàn that comes with experience (while getting Paolo, normally a good drinker, seriously drunk) between a rice weeding song and a partisan rebel one. Passers by would stop, clustering in a small crowd, and could not believe it. And neither could I, really: a glance at Diva’s wonderful 84 years, still the most powerful contralto in the choir, who was having the time of her life singing at 4 in the morning in a Glasgow hotel, was enough to tell me that something was happening here. I could feel the pride of being there, and the love that bonds us, grandmothers, mothers and daughters (and sons). And I realized that, depite all the limitations (mine especially, as a musician and composer) we have something to tell the world, we have a good story to pass on and our own little note to add to the great song of planet Earth. Forwards!

To dinner! To dinner! In the best Italian and Emilian tradition, the table is “the” place to meet, renew old friendships and kickoff new projects. And so Fiamma Fumana, Mondine di Novi, Cisco, Giovanni Rubbiani, Davide Ferrario, Andrea Zambelli, Gruppo padano di Piadena, Le pive nel sacco, Correggio Mon Amour, Luciano Gaetani and many others will meet at Fuori Orario for a dinner of (first quality, home made) gnocco fritto (don’t try this at home), Parma ham and Lambrusco. We will talk about ourselves, our common roots: we FF and mondine have tried to communicate them abroad, and found out that the epic of this mall and unimportant corner of the world can be fascinating and emotion-laden for a Mexican or a Canadian. There’s no scheduled concert, but we all will bring instruments along, and we will certainly make some music (dinner with mondine? Try and keep them from singing!). The dinner costs 10 euro, the music is donated by whoever wants to. Bring your own instrument along!

On the From mother to daughter blog there is a post in which we keep a more detailed track of who is coming. Please visit it to see who has confirmed and let us know that your coming and if you are going to make some music with us. YESSS! DINNER WITH MONDINE!!!

Hear, hear. Celtic Connection’s artistic director Donald Shaw wrote asking me to authorize BBC to shoot a video of our show of Wednesday 31st. Always the geenrous type, I granted it . Meanwhile the festival defined the night’s schedule:

7.30pm (20 mins) – Grace Hewat & Polwart (a trio of Scottish voices)
7.50pm (15 mins) – Mairi Smith (solo Gaelic singer from Isle of Lewis)
8.05pm (40 mins) – Bulgarian Women’s Choir, Angelite
8.45pm interval (25 mins)
9.10pm (20 mins) – the Aberfeldy Gaelic Choir (directed by Margaret Bennett)
9.30pm (45 mins) – Coro delle Mondine di Novi with band Fiamma Fumana
10.15pm – there is a thought that all the voices could come together for one song at the end of the night. this may not be possible due to time restraints, but if there is any songs which you think may work as a ‘together’ song, please let me know. But at the same time, please do not worry if there is nothing that comes to mind.

For the ending, we are planning a Bella Ciao led by us, with the insertion of other artists. We did some thing similar in Canada in 2004, with James Graham and Warsaw Village Band, which turned out really well… I have uploaded it onto Last.fm and you can hear it clicking on the “play” button below.

Fiamma Fumana – Bella ciao – Live with Warsaw Village Band and James Graham

It’s nice to wander the Po valley plains and suddenly glimpse this kind of momument, reminding us who we are and where we come from. Thanks to Fabio Vetro for the pictures (there are more) and to Valeria for the post.

Davide Ferrario and Andrea Zambelli, producer and director of “Mondine – From mother to daughter” (the documentary about Mondine di Novi and Fiamma Fumana. I write about this here and here) have decided to move the film premiere from the spring to the Fall 2008. And for a very good reason: there is a lot of very high quality footage, they need extra time to edit it and make a wonderful film, that will make people laugh and cry. So we decided to reform and relaunch the project’s blog: also, we will do several things with the Novi choir from here to the Fall. We have a new domain (mondine.it) and a new group, with my old friend Valeria Carletti as the main blogger and a more recent friend, Freddy Mascheretti, to take care of the relevant technology. We have a guru too, Luca “Vanz” Vanzella of Daimon and Maestrini per caso: he has been so kind as to give us some good advice over dinner (Eritrean restaurant), but of course he bears no responsibility over our modest, utterly unprofessional blogging efforts. And good luck to us! You can find the new blog here./

Great party in Novi: a big meal to celebrate Christmas with mondine. We ate (excellently, as always when these ladies are involved), we sang a lot and we enjoyed sketches of folk theatre (in dialect) by the Gruppo Padano di Piadena, who by the way sing VERY well, they are a sort of male mondine. A nice discovery! Mondine also set up a Christmas-themed theatrical piece of their own titled “If the three Kings were women”: Agnes was particularly unforgettable as the Ox, with a sign saying “mad cow” hanging from her neck. Great stuff. Happy Christmas to all!

She’s not writing about it on the blog (being modest!), but this week Lady J goes back to school. She’s been offered a place as a Ph.D. student at University of Siena: she is going to study Hiistroy of the modernization, with a dissertation about… rice weeders! Which seems a really sensible choice, given the extra privileged access to sources we enjoy. I hope she will interview me too, since I feel like a honorary mondina myself ;’)
Meanwhile, I arrived in Sevilla to attend WOMEX. I’ll write about it in the next few days.