You are cordially invited to join our workshop at Halle and the round table at Humboldt-University!
Wednesday, 23 November 2016 (Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
Thursday, 24 November 2016 (Humboldt-Universität Berlin)
6 pm sine tempore
Am Kupfergraben 5, Raum 501 (building in front of the Pergamon Museum)
https://www.muwi.hu-berlin.de/de/musikwissenschaft/vortraege/v_20161124
Friday, 25 November 2016 (Bulgarian-Orthodox Church Tsar Sv. Boris the Baptist)
Concert together with Ensemble Ison
Liturgical Bulgarian chant dedicated to St Catherine (25 November)
Arbëresh Multipart Song of Ungra and Shën Mërtirit
7 pm
Hermannstr. 84-90 (U-Bahnhof Leinestraße)
12051 Berlin-Neukölln
Abstract
Focus are specific forms of multipart song which is sometimes chosen to perform different genres of canto popolare (stornelli, kalimeret, canti di sdegno, ajrët, vallje, canti nuziali) in Arbëresh (Italo-Albanian) villages of Southern Italy. Documented by field recordings of anthropologists and linguists since the 1950s, it became soon regarded as specific Arbëresh and protected as world heritage.
The public round table and workshop has its focus on current effects of globalisation like the destruction of local diversity during the 21th century, often misunderstood as "diversification" without any regard about the slow development that such a process involves, like individual initiatives which tried to preserve musical and and linguistic competences over the centuries. Italo-Albanian like Italo-Greek culture could only survive thanks of theses initiatives, although Italian history cannot be understood without the presence of Balkan people among its own population since nearly 2000 years. The small linguistic islands which survived have often be misunderstood as linguistic minorities, because they can be found only in isolated rural communities which seem to have no resemblence with the Italian Poleis founded by the Ancient Greeks.
Two singers from the villages Shën Mërtirit and Ungra will present the communication which is the base of multipart improvisation—a rural tradition which was preserved with distinct repertoire for each village.
Bibliography
De Gaudio, I., 1990. „Gli albanesi di Calabria. Canti bivocali delle comunità Arbëreshë (provincia di Cosenza).“ Ricerche etnomusicologiche – Archivio sonoro. Milan: Albatros.
https://www.academia.edu/10276485/
De Gaudio, I., 1993. Analisi delle tecniche polifoniche in un repertorio polivocale di tradizione orale : i vjersh delle comunità albanofone della Calabria, Modena Italia: Mucchi.
Scaldaferri, N., 1994. Musica arbereshe in Basilicata: La tradizione musicale di San Costantino Albanese con riferimenti a quella di San Paolo Albanese, Lecce: Adriatica editrice salentina.
Scaldaferri, N., 2005. Polifonie arbëreshe della Basilicata concerto all’Abbazia di Royaumont, Udine: Nota.
Ricci, A. & Tuzzi, R. hrsg., 2006. Musica arbëreshe in Calabria: Le registrazioni di Diego Carpitela ed Ernesto de Martino (1954), Roma: Squilibri.
Adamo, G., 2008. Social roles, group dynamics and sound structure in multipart vocal performance: the female repertoire for the Good Friday at Cassano allo Ionio (South Italy). In A. Ahmedaja, hrsg. European Voices I. Multipart Singing in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Wien: Böhlau, S. 87–101.
https://www.academia.edu/9248015/
Schillaci, R., 2008. VJESH / SINGING, azulfilm. Available at: http://www.azulfilm.com/vjesh-singing/.
La Vena, V. & Perrellis, V., 2009. Tradita muzikore e Shën Mërtirit 1 Vjershe e ajër, Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana.
Maessen, G. & Gerlach, O., 20. Juni 2013. Oosterse Liturgieën 26 - Liturgische en paraliturgische gezangen van de Arbëreshë. Bonum est. Amsterdam: Concertzender.
http://www.concertzender.nl/programma/bonum-est-622/
Conforti, E., Belluscio, G. & Gerlach, O., 2015. Multipart-Singing in Paraliturgical Music (Kalimere) in the Calabrian Arbëresh Communities of San Benedetto Ullano and San Basile. In L. Tari-Miháltzné & P. Richter, Hgg. Proceedings of the Third Symposium of the ICTM Study Group for Multipart Music 12-16 September 2013 at Budapest, Hungary. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, S. 142–169.
https://www.academia.edu/6743110/
Gerlach, O., 2016. Subalterne Orthodoxie in Süditalien — Über die Feldforschung in den Gemeinden der Italoalbaner (Arbëresh) und Italogriechen (Grikoi). In M. Czernin & M. Pischlöger, hrsg. Geschichte und Theorie der Monodie – Bericht der Internationalen Tagung Wien 2014. Brno: Tribun EU.
https://www.academia.edu/14380091/
Gerlach, O., 2016. “The Italoalbanian Kalimera of the Parco Pollino in Calabria” Paper 09/02/2015 during the Session Greater Europe and the Activity of the IMS Regional Association for the Study of Music in the Balkans of the Eleventh International Congress of South-East European Studies at the Chamber Hall of the Union of Bulgarian Composers, Sofia (to be published in the proceedings)
https://www.academia.edu/18096923/
Gerlach, O., 2016. “Competences in Italo-Albanian Multipart Song during the last 60 Years” Paper 09/30/2016 during the VIII Symposium on Traditional Polyphony at the State Conservatory of Tbilisi, Georgia (26-30 September 2016)
https://www.academia.edu/26978164/
CV
Jessica Novello, born in Germany as daughter parents who grew up in the Arbëresh villages San Martino di Finita and Cerzeto, has been socialised with three languages in Germany. About the age of eight she returned to San Martino where she learnt not only the grammar of her native language, but also the cultural context and its traditional songs and their rituals. She was documented together with her teacher Vincenzo Perrelis by ethnomusicologist Vincenzo La Vena in August 2007. As the local teacher he could contribute actively to this publication, it was a final record of his activities which offered Jessica the opportunity to learn the local repertoire of songs.
Soon she founded an own ensemble called «Shpirti Arbëresh» ("Arbëresh soul") which also continued the collaboration with singers of the older generation. Many locals of her age do no longer like to sing with the language, they understand it, but it feels strange. One of the motives to found the ensemble and an association was Arbëresh multipart song, it consists of more than 30 members who perform in different projects on the occasion of numerous festivals in Italy and abroad.
Saverina Bavasso, born at Lungro, discovered her passion for canto popolare within choir of the local cathedrale San Nicola di Mira, since Lungro is the residence of the Archdiocese of Byzantine Rite. She soon got involved into its research. In 2003, she founded the association «Te pjekurit ka Ungra» in order to discover and preserve the musical tradition of Lungro and became the artistic director of an ensemble which was born out of the initiative. It was present during the Vallje (music and dance festival traditionally held on Tuesday following Easter Monday) at Frascineto, San Basile, San Benedetto Ullano, and Acquaformosa, but also close to Lyon, where is a diaspora community since two generations. During the last years her main focus was the local vjershë, a virtuosly ornamented solo chant which is accompanied by the bagpipe (the Surdulina type of Parco Pollino, called Karramunxa in Arbëresh).
Replies
The round table this evening is on the upper floor of the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar, under the roof.