MORESCA La
Senza cchiu terra

Fy 8039


Dunya Records
Italia

 

Fresh from the release of the excellent Tarantella storta by Antonello Paliotti (who guests here on three tracks) Dunya Records once again delve into the sounds of southern Italy with a delightful new disc by LA MORESCA, a Campania band with great artistic range. Following in the tracks of their last album Saracenia (rdc 5033) Senza cchiù terra broadens the band’s canvas, adding passion and power to an already impressive musical vision. On this album like the last, fake ‘international’ sounds are pushed aside in favour of a much needed working over of tradition, beginning from the use of dialect, not just for local colour, but as a primary source of inspiration. The call of the homeland is a strong and in no way casual motif. Not by chance is the album’s opening song, the title track Senza cchiù terra dedicated to coloured immigrant seasonal workers constrained for motives of war or famine to leave their native land for our so-called civilised countries, where they are denied basic rights.
The contemporary flavour of some of the lyrics should come as no surprise, seeing that LA MORESCA have always kept in touch with their surrounding reality, never failing to raise their voices in songs of social protest. This is also true of a ballad inspired by the century-old situation in Naples, a city both loved and exploited, seduced yet not abandoned by its myriad cultures and influences. Coexisting with the hard-edged realism, however, are delicately melancholic laments of the love-lorn and unrequited along with songs for the festivals and rituals of the community (such as the dance-music therapy of tarantism evoking an atmosphere at once sacred and erotic). Noticeable on the instrumental tracks is a graceful fusion of styles that opens onto the rest of the Mediterranean without becoming lost in its age-old sea of sounds, styles and influences. Senza cchiù terra would appear to be an album dedicated to people who trying in vain to shape up to current and wholly imaginary models of living lose sight of the things that really count.
The musicians who make up LA MORESCA are both accomplished and inspired, and on this album they have forged a terse, shimmering acoustic sound that brings together the sacred and the profane, moving between interpretive rigour and the joy of music making as pure pleasure.