Some albums come into your life at just the right moment. This moment has been a long time coming, and, sitting alone as I so often do now, with crowded parties and noisy restaurants a rare and nervous experience, this music came to me...a world unto itself, both foreign and familiar.
There's something about 'folk' music that speaks to me, whether it's Irish acoustic folk-punk, Croatian post-apocalyptic-folk-sludge-metal, or this album of traditional Italian folk. Starting at the very first song, La Zamarra (The spider), I close my eyes and imagine the feasting hall, the band roaring from the raised corner stage, the singer now crooning, now crying, and the words, as yet untranslated by my ear, speak with perfect clarity to my heart, to my feet, my hips and hands.
I hardly need to understand this music with my mind. It speaks to my ancestors, whether or not they were Italian, Spanish, German or Armenian (and my ancestors were in fact from all those places...). These are love songs, bawdy and bold, sweet and sentimental, real and raw. The sweet melody of a thin whistle, or the cheerful skipping keys notes of the accordion, the comfort of a guitar chord strummed with percussive precision, pulsing and pushing, pulling and playing with my ear, casting me into an imaginary world of laughing smiling people, feasting, dancing, singing and playing in a universe unattached to this present one.
Yet, for all the work my imagination does as it receives this music through my soft, glorious headphones, it is also real, completely real. This band live not so very far away, they play in their own world, despite the present struggles to create a safe place for audiences to gather. Today, that audience gathers in a restaurant in my mind. Today and Yesterday and Tomorrow they play on, and I dance in my lounge room, I sing along to the words I do not understand with my mind, but in my guts, in my heart, in my soul, I understand...
..."Cu balla campa cient'anni"
Those who dance will live one hundred years.
So today, though I dance alone, I know that there will come a day when I will dance with you again.
Sanacori will play for us at the reunion party.
The album can be purchased here :
https://sanacori.bandcamp.com/album/sanacori
