Climbing the Top 5!!
Our #canzoniere keeps climbing the World Music Charts!! 4th place in theTransglobal World Music Chart and 5th in the World Music Charts Europe!!
Those charts are made monthly by some of the most influential world music critics!
Thank you so much!
and from London a new 4 stars review on The Times and The Sunday Times!!
“The band’s mesmeric pizzica folk style blends into soul ballads and hooky-heavy pop anthems that Durante created with some big hitting New York songwriters. Canzoniere, full of character and colours, does not compromise its gutsy pizzica roots”.
CGS is the more easily pronounced acronym for the dynamic south Italian folk group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. Their leader, the violinist Mauro Durante, is probably the most exciting feature on Ludovico Einaudi’s world-conquering chill-out albums. This is a record also looking for an international audience. The band’s mesmeric pizzica folk style blends into soul ballads and hook-heavy pop anthems that Durante created with some big-hitting New York songwriters. Such projects can yield vapid crossover gloop, but Canzoniere, full of colour and character does not compromise its gutsy pizzica roots.
Of course, Anglo-Saxons will have to conquer their suspicion of listening to anything not sung in the Queen’s English (why no translation of lyrics in the sleeve notes?), but Canoniere is worth the trouble.
see the full article
our new video Taranta featured today on NPR!
“Forty years after its founding, CGS is now in its second generation of members, but they haven’t lost their roots. And they’ve pushed their sound into the 21st century”
by Anastasia Tsioulcas
Italy wasn’t a single nation until about 150 years ago, and there are some really fascinating regions that remain distinct. A case in point: the cultural, artistic and linguistic traditions that ground Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CSG), who come from Salento, on Italy’s “boot heel” in Salento, Puglia. Much of their music is based on the taranta (also known as pizzica), a dance rooted in ancient local trance ritual.
Forty years after its founding, CGS is now in its second generation of members, but they haven’t lost their roots. And they’ve pushed their sound into the 21st century through collaborations with other artists. Their new song “Taranta” finds them working with popular Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, who co-wrote the song with the band’s leader, Mauro Durante.
5th February at the Auditorium Parco della Musica – Rome we will have the honor of receiving the award Blogfoolk Choice – MEI for the Best World Music Album of the year . We will be performing a short set for iWorld organized by ICompany .
“Quaranta” keep hoarding prizes, successes and praises! we are in the shortlist for the Best World Music Albums of 2015 from The Huffington Post!!
here the wonderful words of Martin Lipp:
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino – Quaranta. This ground-breaking group from the heel of the Italian boot marked its 40th anniversary with a fine album of traditional sounds that are made modern not through electrification, but through sophistication and craftsmanship. Beating frame drums and singing soulfully, the group embodies the working-class heart of the music, but makes it plain they are professionals.
by Marty Lipp
“Quaranta del Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino è l’album dell’anno di “Blogfoolk”, perché è il segno di una storia che abbraccia passato e presente della musica salentina, in omaggio a Rina Durante, che fondò il CGS nel 1975, e a chi era al suo fianco nel portare all’attenzione le espressioni tradizionali locali. Non solo, perché “Quaranta” è il segno di chi la traccia dei padri, in senso letterale e figurato, l’ha seguita, cantando il male di vivere contemporaneo con suoni antichi, senza passatismi non scordando la tecnologia del XXI secolo. “Quaranta” è dialogo con autori come Erri De Luca, con musicisti quali Ludovico Einaudi e Piers Faccini, con un produttore internazionale del calibro di Ian Brennan; è coscienza di una cifra artistica di tradizione contemporanea da parte di un ensemble che annovera nell’organico alcuni tra i migliori musicisti pugliesi. “Quaranta” non è autocelebrazione, è andare avanti. Se n’è accorta la stampa mainstream anglo-americana, e anche la nostra, se ne sono accorti i pubblici dei palcoscenici world, dove il CGC ha portato il Salento, mostrando capacità di stare in scena, di fare spettacolo, arte nella quale, purtroppo, gli artisti trad italiani non sempre primeggiano. Lo hanno compreso i critici della Trans Global World Music Chart e quelli di riviste prestigiose di settore come le britanniche “fRoots” e “Songlines”, dove giornalisti non di primo pelo che hanno riconosciuto che il CGS è la punta del fertile tessuto musicale del Salento.
Our Quaranta is among the 10 Best World Music Albums of 2015 according to the prestigious american blog PopMatters:
“With Quaranta, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino has made an outstanding album that feels both of the moment and timeless”
This year I’ve enlisted some writers from beyond the PopMatters universe to compile our best-of list: Cliff Furnald, founder and editor of Rootsworld, the online world music magazine, and two regular Rootsworld contributors, Lee Blackstone and Michael Stone. Michal Shapiro is a New York-based videographer who regularly covers international acts. She contributes not album reviews but videos of three memorable performances from the past year.
Our album picks cover Brazil, Cuba, Cyprus, Gaza, Italy, Mali, Romania, Occitania (southern France), Estonia, and Canada. They demonstrate world music’s “glocality” ― though rooted in particular local idioms (southern Italian pizzica; Cypriot folk music), the recordings also incorporate elements from other traditions and genres (Subcarpaţi’s mix of hiphop, techno, and Romanian folk.) Politics figure strongly in a number of the selections (the “electronic intifada” of the Palestinian collective, Checkpoint 303; the protest songs of Italy’s Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino).
Michal Shapiro’s camera captured New York appearances by Tunisian vocalist Emel Mathlouthi at GlobalFEST 2015 and the Guinean-Canadian duo Fula Flute, at the Jazz Journalists Association Awards 2015 held at the Blue Note jazz club. From Budapest, Shapiro brings us Belem, the folk-fusion duo of Didier Laloy and Kathy Adam, at the WOMEX festival.
Furnald, Stone, and Blackstone each have chosen three albums; my pick rounds out our top ten. The list is in alphabetical order according to the performer’s name, followed by links to Shapiro’s videos.—George de Stefano
The past year was a landmark one for Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (aka CGS), a band from the Salento peninsula of Italy’s southern Puglia region. The road-tested ensemble has attracted a devoted following far beyond their home base, thrilling audiences throughout Italy, Europe, North America, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) with their up-to-date take on pizzica tarantata, a centuries-old folk form that originally was a ritual healing music. The band was founded in 1975 by singer-songwriter Daniele Durante and his cousin Rina; Daniele’s son Mauro, a virtuoso violinist and percussionist, heads the current edition. Quaranta (40) acknowledges the band’s history while the American folk/world music producer Ian Brennan leads them in some new directions. There’s less pizzica than on its predecessor, Pizzica Indiavolata and more contemporary folk music and folk-derived material; there even are Appalachian echoes (“Pu e to rodo t’orio”). Just as noteworthy is the album’s political stance, with protest songs that take on environmental destruction, unemployment and poverty, and immigration, past and present. With Quaranta, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino has made an outstanding album that feels both of the moment and timeless.
— George de Stefano
