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Maltese folk Singers
in a Mediterranean festival |
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by
Dr George Mifsud-Chircop |
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A group of Maltese
folk singers and guitarists participated in
“Poetarcantando nel Mediterraneo – dall’ottava rima
al rap,” the third edition of Vis Musicae 2004,
organized by the Comunità Montana della Presila
Catanzarese (Calabria) and held in the first week of
August. The theme was improvised poetry and singing
in the Mediterranean. Participants came from the
Balearic Islands, Calabria, Corsica, Malta, Murcia,
Sicily, Tuscany, and cultures influenced by
Mediterranean folk music – Madeira and the Canary
Islands.
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Improvised
Poetry Slam – Maltese folk singer voted best
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The
festival focused on the variety and
multiplicity of the most significant poetic
interpretations within some countries of the
Mediterranean and some of its islands. In
the splendid natural scenario of the
Parco Nazionale della Sila in Villaggio
Mancuso (Taverna) this unusual and
fascinating “poetic and musical geography”
was also enriched by meetings, workshops,
seminars, performances, guided visits and
food and wine tasting which proved clearly
the anthropological specifics of the
Mediterranean.
In the teatro dell’ascolto of the
Sila Piccola, French, Italian, Maltese,
Portuguese and Spanish singing-poets
experienced the festive environment where
poetry is traditionally improvised. The
public was invited to participate by
suggesting themes and topics |
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The Maltese group congratulated for
its performance by Prof. Paolo
Scarnecchia (second from right), a
Spanish scholar of folk music (first
from right), and two Sicilian
performers (third and fourth from
right). From left to right: Rita
Pace, Mario Xuereb, Neil Vassallo,
Joe Grech, Ronnie Calleja and Paul
Attard. |
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on which the performers compete in arduous verbal
duels in sung poetry with or without musical
accompaniment.
As aptly remarked by the festival’s artistic
director Prof. Paolo Scarnecchia, “improvised or
extemporised poetry is an art on the periphery of
song and recitation, entertainment and ritual,
history and imagination, reality and fiction and
represents a kind of ‘interface’ between orality and
the written word. With its diverse forms and
expressions - linguistic, metrical and musical – it
is a cultural heritage which links the present with
the past. In the actuality of performance (dialogue,
contrasti, challenge, dispute, contest,
controversy, verbal duel) the linguistic and poetic
life source of the classical and romantic epic and
of the renaissance and baroque literary forms fuses
with the popular wisdom of oral tradition and its
proverbs, witticism, and sayings, keeping alive the
formal and conceptual tension in a real creation in
the making. Improvised song is based on the
dialectic between tradition and innovation,
inherited memory and history, and current news, and
with its continuous development projects itself in
the future.”
The recited song of Corsica and Tuscany, the
exuberant and enthralling song of Murcia in flamenco
rhythm, that of the Canary Islands with Caribbean
vivacity, the varieties of expression of Calabria,
Majorca, Minorca, Malta, and Sicily with their
harsh, sweet, joyful or dramatic tones evinced an
emotional and communicative intensity. Of particular
interest were the two rap exponents (hip hop rhymers
in free style with human beat box), with their
improvisation in Neapolitan dialect and in Italian
and interactive performance, typical of present day
urban oral culture.
The Maltese group, with their lively spirtu pront,
alternated their vocal and musical numbers with the
Sicilian group from Messina. As in the Malta
National Folk Singing Festival since its third
edition in 2000, performances in Parco della Sila
were presented through multimedia projection,
providing a synthesis of the poetry in the language
of the singers and in consecutive translation, thus
integrating the spoken word where one expresses
himself through mimicry and body language, and new
technology, allowing the audience to follow the
themes of the poetic duelling, irrespective of one’s
level of education.
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Improvised
Poetry Slam – Maltese folk singer voted best
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Lello Voce (l-ewwel wieħed
mil-lemin), il-Maestro di Cerimonia
waqt l-għana-poeżija slam, qiegħed
jifraħ lill-għannej Malti Joe Grech
gas-success tiegħu li ġie l-ewwel
wieħed. Jidher ukoll il-Prof. Paolo
Scarnecchia (fl-ewwel wieħed
mil-lemin), id-direttur artistiku
tal-festival. |
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At this
international meeting members of the
audience were invited to judge rhymers or
singers representative of each country. This
culture, originating in the United States
twenty years ago, spreading into Europe and
recently in Italy, consists of a competition
in vocal and musically unaccompanied poetry
in which participants recite their own
verses in public, involving a large number
of people in a strictly timed artistic
three-minute game. The show in this
particular improvised poetry slam was
coordinated by Lello Voce as Maestro di
Cerimonia. An inventive contrast and a
dialogue between traditional discourse and
new artistic idioms was established. The
singers included Gianni Ciolli (who had
participated in last year’s National Folk
Singing Festival in Malta) representing
Tuscany, Paulu Santu Pariggi, Corsica, João
Jesus, Madeira, Joaquín Sanchez,
Murcia, Fernando Murga, |
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the Canary
Islands, and Joe Grech "Ir-Ruxxan" Malta. The
improvised topics ranged from the traditional to the
contemporary, including Berlusconi and Zapatero. The
competition was not easy, but Grech, singing on the
latter at the eliminatory stage and on “countryside”
in the finals, was voted first for his content
(quick improvisation and relevance) and performance
(communicative approach and voice). His quatrains in
Maltese were consecutively translated into Italian.
Also well attended were the seminars and workshops
on the theory and practice of improvisation in
Corsica, Malta, Messina, the Balearic Islands,
Madeira, Portugal, Lebanon, Calabria and Cuba with
the participation of various scholars from different
universities and institutes and of performers of
international repute. The undersigned delivered a
paper on “Linguistic Creativity and Improvisation in
Maltese Folk Music”.
The artistic director of the festival, Prof.
Scarnecchia, supported by three speakers from Malta,
Minorca and the Canary Islands, had set the ball
rolling for setting up the Society of European and
Mediterranean Folk Improvisers. It was founded on 8
August 2004. All participants, including the Maltese
group, gave their full support to the initiative and
this augurs well for the future of improvised
singing poetry.
Food and wine tasting directed by G. Muraca preceded
every evening’s performance. The Maltese group
personally supplied biskuttini tal-lewż
morr (almond biscuits), krustini
(small Maltese rusks), pastini (small |
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sweet
cherry pastry), biskuttini tar-raħal
(village biscuits), ġbejniet tal-bżar
(peppered cheeselets), perlini (sugarcoated
almonds), qubbajt (nougat), għasel
Malti (Maltese honey), inbid tad-djar
(Maltese home-made wine), and ġulepp tal-ħarrub
(carob julep). Rita Pace and Mario Xuereb
sang improvised quatrains on the cultural
festive context of these items.
The Maltese group included improvisers Mario
Xuereb “Iż-Żebbuġi”, Joe Grech “Ir-Ruxxan”,
presenter and improviser Rita Pace “L-Għannejja”,
lead guitarist Ronnie Calleja “Tal-Mosta”,
accompanying guitarist Pawlu Attard “Iż-Żebbuġi”,
and improviser and accompanying guitarist
Neil Vassallo “Tar-Ronnie”. Malta’s
participation was sponsored by the Malta
Council for Culture and the Arts. |
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Maltese performers in an interactive
session of għana and rap music. |
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