http://ereview.org/2010/04/17/kcff-2010-here-there-and-everywhere-part-ii/
SPOTLIGHT:
“After spending a significant amount of time in Southern Italy passing a couple summers with my Italian relatives I knew that I had to tell the real story of traditional Italian culture,” says David Marker, director of Zampogna: The Soul of Southern Italy (Sunday, April 18, 5:30- 7 p.m. at AMC Mainstreet 6).
“Having grown up in the United States I had been exposed to a lot of stereotypical portrayals of what Italy and Italians were like. I knew that I was Italian American, but I wanted to truly know the indigenous culture that my great grandparent’s emigrated from, unfiltered through the mainstream media. As a musician my interests were sparked by the folk music that I had never heard of or even heard mentioned in the United States, other than some old field recordings by Alan Lomax. In the summer of 2007 I spent five weeks in Sicily with my cousins and purchased a zampogna, a traditional Italian bagpipe. The instrument was so unique, almost “other worldly” as if I had brought it into present day from a time machine. The music was so raw and genuine. To me it was the most pure expression of what was truly ‘Italian.’ There was a real beauty in it. I felt proud that it was a part of my cultural past. I brought the instrument back to the United States and began to teach myself how to play it. There are only a small handful of zampogna players here. It is a dying art in Italy. I knew that I had to tell the story of this music and this disappearing traditional culture — not just the culture of the music, but what the music represents, which is an agrarian pastoral culture, a handmade culture in tune with its natural surroundings that values the methodical rhythm of every day life, good and bad. The zampogna was the physical manifestation of this culture, its human expression.”
In this delightfully humble film, we follow an Italian-American as he journeys through the inner sanctum of Italy’s folk music culture. Marker takes us through the deep roots of his ancestry, beginning in his great grandfather’s Sicilian Vineyard. Beyond meeting the endless charming characters that populate his journey, he meets the most profound influence of all: the odd and little-known instrument known as the zampogna. This unique Italian bagpipe becomes a metaphorical manifestation of the music, language, culture and spirit of southern Italy.
Marker felt confident as he embarked upon the film, knowing in his heart this was the right project to embark upon, his search for the primordial beginnings of his heritage drawing him.
“Given my ability to speak Italian, the journey was easier than for most,” says Marker. "The fact that I was familiar with the southern culture and had family there who could help me logistically. And the fact that I was learning to play this instrument and could thus speak this musical ‘language,’ I felt that I was in the best position to introduce this culture, to bridge the gap to an English speaking world, to other Italian-Americans as well.
“I’m so sick of seeing Italian culture boiled down to hollow stereotypes,” Marker continues. “I’m even more put off when I see Italian-Americans buying into them. The tourist trade has worsened this. This is not the culture that Italian-American immigrants came from. They were peasants. They were not frolicking in the Trevi fountain or riding in gondolas in Venice. They were shepherd and farmers in the mountains of southern Italy and Sicily. They were humble people but had the life and vitality in them to produce beautiful and creative music — peasant music, but music that came from the soul and reflected their humanity in the purest form. This is a rarity in not only music but in most art in our modern commercialized world. I wanted to capture this, if not to make a beautiful film, but also to preserve it. And selfishly I wanted an excuse to go live this culture while it is still here, before it vanishes.”
It screened April 16 and repeats on Sunday, April 18 at 5:30 p.m.
The film is a cultural journey of discovery, and Marker based the the “plot” progression of how the Arabian Nights tales function: in effect, a protagonist who is embarking on a geographic progression. “It isn’t always clear where they are geographically but you know that the place is exotic,” he says. “The people you encounter are mysterious often magical. To me music and poetry are in a way the closest thing to ‘magic’ in a real world. I wanted the viewer to be somewhat disoriented and feel somewhat enchanted with who they encounter in the film. There will be new sights and sounds and interesting people. A sense of purpose and discovery. For me the purpose was to ‘follow the trail of the zampogna’ in an effort to understand my ethnic heritage. The zampogna was my key or my window into this traditional lifestyle. The geographic progression was to make it farther north the annual zampogna festival, the climax of the film. To stop along the way and meet the people who live this lifestyle and try to understand why it is dying out.”
Marker was a one-person crew, carrying his camera, HD-camera, and mics on his back, climbing grades in up to 46ºC (114ºF). He spent two weeks sleeping in a hut in his great grandfather’s vinyard during the production. “I had to completely immerse myself into the culture,” Marker reflects. “I lived with the musicians and their families and gained their trust for them to share their intimate music with me. I had never made a film before so I was learning as I went a long. I put a lot of trust in my still photography composition skills to get cinematic shots.”
Marker has had positive response overall from the Italian-American community, and hopes to overcome a cultural barrier with Italians who have a lot of ethnic pride and are skeptical of someone telling them that their general notion of Italy is essentially inaccurate. “There is also sort of this awkwardness when I tell them it’s about Italian music and they have absolutely no idea what that means because traditional Italian music is completely unknown to most Italian Americans,” he says. “That’s Amoré does not count as traditional Italian music!”
The film is playing in New York in September at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute as part of their documentary series and at the World Music and Independent Film Festival in Washington, DC, in August. Marker is currently working on showing the film in Sicily and Calabria as well.
“I want audiences to completely re-examine their notion of what ‘Italy’ means to them,” Marker adds. “I also want the audience to witness what is being lost as we abandon traditional ways of life and move towards a more commercialized industrialized existence where everything we are exposed to has been filtered through a focus group and dumbed-down for mass appeal. You will not find a more pure and genuine expression of humanity than what traditional music like this has to offer. There is a scene in my film where a Calabrian farmer is singing to the pitch of the zampogna being played by his son. It is more of a cry, like he is expelling all of his angst and emotions. Every time I watch this it sends chills down my spine because it’s such a raw and visceral expression of humanity.”
its like a ‘tonic’ to us all…hahahahaha Yes, your makeing perfect sense.