The Alan Lomax collection: Italian treasury/The trallaleri of Genoa (1954)

Courtesy of Zirudella.
In 1953, Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella set out on a yearlong voyage of discovery that resulted in an exhaustive documentation of Italian folk music. "It was a mythic time. None of us suspected that that world -- made of music, songs, poverty, joy, desperation, custom, violence, injustice, love, dialect, and poetry, formed over the course of millennia -- would be swept away in a couple of years . . . by the voodoo of 'progress.'" --Vittorio De Seta. 
The longshoremen of Genoa perform in the exciting, full-throated, improvised style known as trallalero, a five-voiced male polyphony found only along the coast of Liguria. The parts (from high to low) being: falsetto, tenor, chitarra ("guitar"), baritone, and bass. Alan Lomax considered the trallalero singers ". . . the most perfect choristers in western Europe."
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01 La partenza
02 The trallalero parts
03 Ma che figura
04 U ruscigno
05 Partiro fora partenza
06 Dammi la man biondina
07 Trallalero
08 A mue dau barcun
09 Se vuoi che m'innamori
10 Il cacciatore
11 Cinque minuti di piacer
12 Quarto a o ma
13 Zena perla du ma
14 In the mood
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1999 • Rounder records 11661
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