Jan 29, 2011

"Smarnamisa! Resia Valley Music" (1997)


Resia Valley is a very small municipality-region lying in North Italy near the borders with Slovenia and Austria. Resian people, who nowadays are numbered in about a thousand, have slavic origins and speak a very idiomatic slavic dialect ("rozajanski"), strongly influenced by archaic  lingual elements. Located between the two peninsulas (the balkan and the italian), but in fact isolated due to its surrounded by mountains alpine position, Resia has, in spite of its size, a rich folkloric history with unique customs and traditions.
"Smarnamisa!" compilation, an Avant Records release, is a rare document of traditional resian music created by fiddle ("citara"), cello ("bunkula"), "percussive'' feet, vocals, narrations etc.
Perhaps attractive mainly to ones with traditional folk tastes or ethno-musicological interests, but valuable and sympathetic as valuable and sympathetic a voice of an unseen dot of the world can be.
Smarnamisa! (feb 2013 updated)

Jan 23, 2011

UNE ANCHE PASSE "Port D' Attache" (FRA, 1995)


Traditional musics from Italy, South France, Spain, jewish diaspora... plus compositions of Nino Rota, George Brassens and others... revitalised idiosyncratically by the south french reed & brass Une Anche Passe orchestra.

"Port D'Attache" is the second "mare nostrum" trip for an ensemble that trusts the "essences" of multicultural folk mediterranean "air" to build its own borderless sound language.


Port D' Attache 

CHARLES TYLER "Mid Western Drifter" (FRA, 1992)

 a drifter at the end of the road...

Swansong of the underappreciated jazzman, who, shortly before death, comes for last time out of the final years invisibility to sum up his pathway in life and art.

Recorded in France, where Tyler lived since 80s, and released on Bleu Regard label.

Charles Tyler - words, saxophone 
Didier Levallet - bass
Curtis Clark - piano

Charles Lacy Tyler (1941 - 1992)