Italian Treasury: Lombardia, from the Alan Lomax Archives

Italian Treasury: Lombardia is the latest release in the
Alan Lomax collection. Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella’s historic 1954
recordings from Lombardy run the gamut of folk styles and traditions – from
jovial wedding and carnival songs to characteristic Italian choral renderings of
classic Child Ballads, the enchanting calls of songbird hunters, and a panpipe
orchestra playing marches, waltzes, and the overture to Verdi’s Rigoletto. In 1954, 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.