The Association for Cultural Equity, which is the late ethno-musicologist, Alan Lomax’s foundation and repository for his life’s work has just recently released a bunch of his photographs and will soon be releasing recordings online. The Italy photos were taken in 1954 and contain some amazing shots of folk music and instruments.
I have not had a chance to look through all the photos yet as there are hundreds of them, but here are at least two locations that contain bagpipe photos:
That’s a great set!
Am I correct in supposing that in the photo 01 03 1257 (in the first set of photos, that is in the first link) the ciaramella player plays two ciaramellas at the same time??!!Please corect me! Otherwise i will have to jump to the conclusion that the ancient Greek aulos still was surviving in the year of Our Lord 1954. And as far as I’m aware that is something no self-respecting musicologist will admit.
Yuri- Yes you are CORRECT. This is a fairly common practice found in southern Campania and in Basilicata and calabria. They play two pifferos at once. They call it “doppio ciaramella” I’m not sure of the exact relation between the scales of the two pipes, but they harmonize with each other. It’s probably similar to the a-paro chanters. They do the same thing in Southern italy with the cane whistles.
This type of double pipe or whistle playing is still surviving in the year of the lord AD 2009 - I saw it in 2008 when I was as Scapoli (Actually it was a group of guys from that town, Caggiano that were playing this way still!!) and I have modern video and recordings of it as well from other sources. If I find a youtube clip of it, I’ll post it for you.
I did know about the double whistles for a long time, but never came across any mentioning of the double shawms anywhere.
Do you know if the players use just any old ciaramella, or are they specially made for playing with one hand each? I suppose simply closing the fingerholes with wax will work just as well, but perhaps there are some makers catering for the few players still.
In the third vid the guy on the double ciaramella seems to simply play a simple ostinato on both ciaramells. Would that be the norm these days? Also in neither vid do they seem to use circular breathing. That normal?
I believe that they are special ciaramellas made for playing with one hand, but I could be wrong on this. It is possible that they just cover holes with wax. Regarding the tunes you hear in the videos - they seem to sound traditional and normal to me- similar to what I heard in person and what I have heard on other recordings. They do not do circular breathing for this - I have never seen or heard of this. Keep in mind that I have relatively little experience with the doppio ciaramella playing - it’s not nearly as common as playing singly. I know that there are people in the town of Caggiano that play this way (this is in Campania). The Forestiero brothers play doppio ciaramella (This is in Basilicata - Ted Anderson got some pipes from these guys) and I know that they play this way in the Mt. Pollina area which is on the boarder of Northern Calabria and Basilicata (Scroll to the bottom of this page - they look specially made for single handed play http://www.totarella.it/biografia.htm) .
So there you have it, the aulos are alive and kicking in the bowels of southern Italy. Of course, as you know, one could consider the zampogna itself a direct descendant as well.
What’s interesting is the music: lively happy Major stuff. Seems like ancient Roman music is often depicted as being pentatonic with open 5th etc but maybe we have the real ancient Roman stuff preserved by these guys.
Where is Roman music said to be pentatonic? I know Greek isn’t anywhere near, but I never came across Roman music history. Though, thinking about it, the earliest layers of Gregorian chant are contemporary with late Roman times, and while a very few pentatonic melodies do exist in that, they are very rare.
To me the music sounds quintessentially Italian, and because of it can’t be all that old. There is a lot known about Renaissance and older Italian music, and it’s quite different from the modern folk. Granted, that’s not Renaissance folk music, but there is some instrumental music drawing on folk melodies of the time. And tey are quite different in feel. Modern Italian folk melodies to my ear have more of a 19-th c. ring to them.