In the autumn 1989 I happened to meet Carmine Coppola, the famous American director Francis Ford Coppola's father and the author, above other things. of a part of the soundtrack of the trilogy "The Godfather" (1972; Part II, 1974; Part III, 1990). He was in Palermo while were shooting some scenes of the third film and he wanted to meet a folk Sicilian music scholar in order to have some explanations about some musical passages he wanted to use in the soundtrack. These explanations concerned copyright's questions of a funeral bandistic march and a famous Sicilian popular song. We discussed more widely about his artistic share in the realization of the former chapter of "The Godfather" and in particular about the kind of music listened and made by the Sicilian-Americans. Carmine Coppola was a really good musician (first flute in the NBC Symphony Orchestra of New York during the Paganini's period) and as son of Italian emigrants he knew very well the emigrant's world. We had a very interesting discussion during which he stated the philological precision of the musical choices made in the three films that mirrored the real diffusion among the Sicilian emigrants of that kind of songs and instrumental passages.
Opposite I replied I never had heard a peasant singing "Ciuri Ciuri", "Vitti na crozza" or "lu sciccareddu" during my researches in Sicily…
Actually these and similar popular songs put themselves in a mean production, semi cultured, sometimes also written by real singers, that found large room in the repertory of the so called folk groups and I their list of records. From the beginning of the first decades of the XX Century, some forms of the "south" folk music has been adapted to the tastes of an urban public, not at all accustomed to the "roughness" of the peasant's song. This music was also proposed again during shows or broadcasted on the radio. Above all the songs join the evocative power of a text, often a lyrical text, written in dialect, with the efficacy of a charming melody, simple to remember and to reproduce, without those executive complexity that characterize the style of the traditional songs. In practice a business is created through this music popular repertory that in the case of the Neapolitan songs will assume a national or even international character. But in Sicily a Sicilian song written by cultured singers doesn't develop, expect for few cases (I'm thinking especially of Emanuele Calì from Catania) and the repertory of the folk genre remains more or less the same for quite a century. So the more famous songs have had the time to circulate among those social classes who even if they loose gradually the contact with the traditional expressive forms, however don't forgo to the affirmation of their Sicilian identity also through the music. The stylised "tarantellas" and the popular songs in dialect became in some way a part of the tradition how had happened ion the IXX Century with the Sicilian arias and romances, that from the houses of the middle class had gone down to the country "trazzere" and in the courtyards of the popular urban districts (a typical example is the song "Mi votu e mi rivotu", whose musical transcription was put by Giuseppe Pitrè in Folk Sicilian songs, Palermo 1871). In this sense Carmine Coppola was right when he chose to connote musically the rites and the ceremonies that interpose the trilogy "The Godfather" (religious processions, christenings, marriages) with bandistic and folk songs. as a matter of facts the scholars (anthropologists and musicologists) have always considered the folk repertory as an absolute mystification of the authentic tradition. The confusion between music and oral tradition and the repertory of the folk groups, among other things often characterized by an annoying uniformity due to the common use of the same written sources (music albums such as those realized by Frontini, Giacchino, Pastura etc.) has marked in an unfavourable way their whole musical production, without notice the hints and sometimes clearing good contributions too and anyway to consider in the widely background of cultural communication.
these are the reasons because I consider very interesting the new work of Carlo Muratori. so a cultured musician, author of music and texts that have gave back a new dimension to the Sicilian contemporary songs, has been very courageous in measuring himself with a repertory considered of so a lower standard. A lot of these songs seem to be heard for the first time, finally rescued to such a patina of so an unbearable banality come into the heads of the "canterini" of Sicily. Sober arrangements made with string instruments, abolition of accordions and drumming measured voice, sometimes ironic, never obvious. And more over the choice to put together with the songs of the "folk groups" also some valuable songs from the Corpus of Alberto Favara's folk Sicilian music, obviously without any philological prospective but only through a modern interpretative key, so that it's possible to enjoy texts and melodies. In conclusion a meditation's work , well made and cultured, through which we can remember everyone's songs in a subtle but dense way: those songs in which willy-nilly every Sicilian in every part of the world identifies himself.
SERGIO BONAZINGA
Professor of cultural anthropology - University of Palermo.