- artist:ALFIO ANTICO
- featured artist:A. RONGA, A. MORETTI, AMINE&HAMZA LOTFI
- release year:2005
- style(s):Ethnic
- country:Italy
- formats:CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:ALFAMUSIC - Label & Publishing
- label:ALFAMUSIC & RAITRADE
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Alfio : Tamburines, Vocals
Amedeo Ronga : doublebass
Alessandro Moretti : Accordeon
"When music arises from the earth, it puts order into the chaos and and throws out impurities. Nature talks and things take their place in the world. Before any language, the hand dancing on the drum's skin creates the prodigy of the birth of the sound, like the blacksmith's hand when it hits the iron or the shepherd's one when marks the rhythms of rest and work."
Alfio lived till 18 as a shepherd in the mountains of the sicilian region of Siracusa breathing, in that live surely not without severities, stories and myths of the rural culture. The sound of the 600 bells of his flock, his grandmother playing tamburello to move away the bad spirits of loneliness and fear, the first musical experiences in the big town, the collaborations with musicians and theatre artists of the great italian traditions, made of Alfio Antico a mature and complete artist.
Alfio has more then seventy drums, all made by himself and graved with images of rural divinities, ancient signs of eternal wisdom. In the silences and the vibrating sounds he follows his soul, looking for the faces and eyes of the ancient inhabitants of his land.
With the rhythm and the singing he paints the many faces of time. "I am the drums" he whispers in perfect harmony with the instrument, creating a mystic union between the live skin of his hand and the dead skin of the drum which, tautened on a simple wooden frame, takes a new live singing us stories of love and poetry.
The sicilian musician must be understood considering his personal course, which starts in isolated and sunny sicilian mountains; land with strong contrast, of good and evil, of emotions and feelings which strongly marks like any bordering land.
Then the escape to the "continent", in Florance, which was then a friendly and wonderful container to filled with sounds. In Florance there are many students and workers from Salento, Saredgna, Calabria and Sicilia: for all of them the meeting point was the Lanzi stair, in Signoria square. The music of Salento and this scenario poor of money but rich of stimules, has been the fertil womb of Alfio Antico's new birth. Then the contacts and the collaborations with with great artists of the musical and theatre scene (Eugenio Bennato, Fabrizio De Andrè, Lucio Dalla, Giorgio Albertazzi, Amedeo Amodio among others) made of Alfio the eclectic artist he is today: music, presence, using gestures, mastery and virtuasity.
In his hands the drums creates unexpected sounds, which makes us understand the great resources of such a simple instrument. Alfio adds to it his poetic inspiration, expressed in the language he knows better the others, the sicilian dialect; his natural theatricality is impressive.
A personal research, educated and silent od ancient sonorities, like his name and family name. The creativity of such an ancient popular origin with which he is so deeply familiar. Alfio Antico travels through the magic of his singing and of his drum which carry us to a world populated by nature's forces and spirits of ancestors.
Alfio AnticoTrio
The performance Alfio Antico proposes in his tour "Viaggio in Sicilia" (Trip to Sicily) with Amedeo Ronga (Bass and "Mandoloncello") and Alessandro Moretti ("Fisarmonica") is very interesting. The tour promotes the recently released album - with the same title "Viaggio in Sicilia" - produced by Alfamusic and RaiTrade and distributed by Egea.
In this performance Alfio's music is proposed maintaining intact its ethnic nature and is corrupted with new and original rhythms and colors. Accompaigned by acustic bass and "fisarmonica" - these, also, ethnic instruments which higlights the popular flavour - mixing important classic and jazz elements, Alfio carries on his tradition renewing the sonorities. Alfio Antico tells stories which smell like the sea and the pastures of his land, through a narration which rhythm, marked by the drums, is a "crescendo" of emotions and sensations related to the time of nature and seasons; it's incredible how he can create songs just looking for a few instants at the brief and nervous movements... the rhythms marked by the drum but also by the jingles fixed to the drum's frame, evoking characters and the stories told in the songs in which we can find customs lost in the summer muggy weather and so poetic that they remind us pieces of Giovanni Verga or Luigi Pirandello who both deeply loved their land Sicily. Afio Antico sing the nature he belongs to, a nature made of good things, a mother nature which gives us all the elements to write a true poem. The artist moves on the stage throughout space and time, dealing with many of the things which make men' everyday life, often in an ironic way; it looks like he came out of one of those Magna Grecia jar.