I don’t know much about the band Terre Del Sud other than they were formed in 2003 when a group of friends with an interest in reproducing traditional music of Southern Italy got together.
I picked that up from their website.
But I feel I know a bit more about them than their basic bio and that’s because I have their 2008 album Terre Del Sud Musiche E Balli Tradizionali. You can pick up the CD from Musicomania or do as I did and get the MP3s from Amazon.
I got it over the weekend and I love it already. Of all the Abruzzo folk or traditional music I’ve heard this collection is my favourite so far. It’s definitely the most accessible.
The album has 14 tracks with 10 from Abruzzo and the other 4 from Puglia, Campania, Sicilia and Calabria. You can listen to some samples here.
My Italian isn’t good enough to understand what they are singing about; but that doesn’t matter. The voices are clear, the tunes are catchy and there are quite a few stand-out tracks.
I particularly like tracks #4, Fronne d’autunne (Abruzzo) and #10 L’amore e’ ‘na pazzia (Abruzzo).
I’ve heard track #11 Vola vola vola (Abruzzo) before on the much more polished album Vola, Vola, Vola – e altri celebri canti d’Abruzzo by Associazione Corale Giuseppe Verdi. I do like the Associazione Corale Giuseppe Verdi collection which I’ve written about before, but I prefer Terre Del Sud. It just feels more natural.
If you aren’t familiar with music from Abruzzo, but would like an introduction this is where I’d start. I’ve listened to plenty of other CDs and although Terre Del Sud is not “from the archives”, I still think it is the album I’ll be recommending from now on.
From their website and their MySpace page, it looks like they have some concerts coming up in Roccamontepiano (CH) on 27th March, and later in the year in Lanciano (CH).
Here they are with an energetic rendition of Sott’a la casa me’ (Abruzzo) and it looks to me that the band and the crowd are having lots of fun.
I hope to get to see them as they sound lively and catchy. My foot has been tapping all through the album.
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Thank you for the information on “Terre del Sud”. They sound like a very lively band! The songs are in “dialetto” abruzzese. I was brought up in England by my Italian parents and grandmother , who always spoke in the dialect of their area (Provincia Teramo), but I always replied in English! We still converse like this today. Half Abruzzese dialect/ half in English. I have to say, it’s almost like a different language, but luckily, around Civitaquana, the locals speak the same dialect, so I can understand it usually.
So it was going to be even harder for me to understand what was being sung – I didn’t stand a chance!
Don’t lose heart! With some patience, and lots of listening (as you are correctly doing)you should catch some of the main common words which do have some resemblance to “Tuscan” Italian. Eg man =L’uomo = l’ominu. It’s a very difficult dialect to write and to read, for that matter. I would love to find some books written in the local dialect as one day, it could become extinct as younger people no longer swant to speak it in the future.
Best of luck!