"Linguamadre: Il Canzoniere di Pasolini" - Duo Bottasso, Davide Ambrogio, Elsa Martin

• artist:Duo Bottasso, Davide Ambrogio, Elsa Martin
• release year:2020
• style(s):Mediterranean, Contemporary
• country:Italy
• formats:Audio File / Digital
• record posted by:Duo Bottasso
• label:Duo Bottasso
• publisher:Duo Bottasso
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Links

• Bandcamp

LinguaMadre is an original production promoted by the most important world music prizes and festivals of Italy (Premio Nazionale Città di Loano per la Musica Tradizionale Italiana, Premio Andrea Parodi di Cagliari and Festival Mare & Miniere) and was born from an idea of the journalist and songwriting expert Enrico De Angelis.

Following the theme of the mother – as one of the main characters of the Italian popular poetry, and as fundamental figure for the transmission of language and culture to a new born – the two musicians brothers Duo Bottasso (Simone and Nicolò on diatonic accordion, violin, trumpet and flute), the Friulan singer Elsa Martin and the singer and multi-instrumentalist Davide Ambrogio from Calabria have given new sound and voice to popular poems and songs collected by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his Canzoniere Italiano (1955). Their first live album “Il Canzoniere di Pasolini” has been released today on Spotify and in all the digital stores.

Linguamadre (mother-tongue in Italian) is a courageous and visionary adventure into Italian traditional poetry and music.The most interesting talents of the Italian world-music scene have reinterpreted Pasolini's work in a very contemporary way, without any philologism, with the modern aesthetics and techniques of those who perform nowadays traditional music, creating original scores in which modern forms melt with a lyrical and evocative atmosphere. Their work has been defined an operation of “creative archaeology” in Italian world-music.

In 1955, when Pasolini published the Canzoniere, Italy was on the threshold of the economic boom and Italian language was starting to prevail on the regional idioms. Pasolini's book is a forerunner journey in Italy through its popular poetry and the multitude and the beauty of its dialects.To select the 800 songs of the Canzoniere Pasolini followed mainly his aesthetics sense and his poetical instinct; even if he loved music he didn’t write musical notes on the book. This has been interpreted by the four artists as an invitation to compose new songs, guided by the emotions suggested by the texts and by their wish of celebrating the beautiful timbers of Italian traditional music and the sounds and accents of regional languages in a contemporary way.

Il Canzoniere di Pasolini is a musical adventure where the voices of Elsa Martin and Davide Ambrogio interact with the trumpet and the flute of Duo Bottasso; the guitar arpeggios transform into lyra riffs; the bellow of the diatonic accordion and the violin pizzicatos become rhythmic pulses, sounding almost like electronic instruments, the drones of the zampogna match with the popular poems chosen: riddles, lullabies, war songs and children motifs. Linguamadre is an encountering between the acoustic sounds of new Italian world-music, songwriting and contemporary music.
The nine tracks of the album have been recorded live with the audience at the “Load District Studio” in Rome, as an hommage to the first folk records where traditional musicians were recorded at the moment of the performance, with sincerity and spontaneity.
The album has been released on Bandcamp during the lockdown, right before the cancellation of the band’s promotion tour; four tracks has been filmed live in studio and can be watched on YouTube. From today the album is officially available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music and all the digital stores.

Elsa Martin | voice, live electronics

Davide Ambrogio | voice, guitar, zampogna, lyra, percussions

Nicolò Bottasso | violin, trumpet

Simone Bottasso | diatonic accordion, flute