Here is a rare zampogna recording that was superlatively hidden in the hard-to-find Italian Folklore archive. These recordings are very very rare, and aren't findable on any buyable CD's, which sucks. This is why I'm trying to reach a much wider audience and to bridge the Italian to English-speaking gap with the zampogna, because these are very cool bagpipes that are often overlooked and wrongly kept secret.
This is a zampogna accompanied by a tambourine and some rather ugly singing voices. When it comes to singing along with a zampogna, very often people sing the highest limits of their chest register, which is indicative of these notes not being in their natural vocal range, and they're somewhat forcing their voices to hit these notes. They also have a complete lack of vibrato (i.e., singing "straight tone"), as wel as a very nasally tonal quality to the voice, which is frowned upon in the choral / opera world. Though an unnaturally high pitched range is much more demanding on the voice than a total lack of vibrato is, I still don't know why people have an affinity for singing like this. All I do know is that this style of Lucanian singing is done in a very high pitch because it is intended to be heard outside the home and to reach the ears of the loved one in the alleys, who could respond. These were historically working / farming songs, but this association has fallen out of favor, while the music and vocality are still in use. This singing style, just as a slow old-Denise-Leigh or Julie-Andrews- or Susan-Boyle- or Adele-like wobble vibrato, is very very dangerous and can cause permanent damage to the voice - but I can imagine that singing too high is not quite as overlooked by voice teachers as much as a more seriously problematic wobble vibrato. In other words, this is another way to ruin your voice, as in this particular case your vocal cords are working really hard. If you do this for years, just as the even worse consequences of having slow vibrato are, you'll eventually lose your voice. So, why do pipers' companions love singing like this? This singing style is known as "Skantille" in the Lucanian dialect, or generally Lucana.
The words are in the Lucanian dialect, so I have no idea what they're even talking about because we have very few people left in the world who know any Lucanian. It's the southern dialect of Italian, just as Lucania covers the entirety of Basilicata, the Salerno area of Campania, and part of northern Calabria. Similarly, the pipes are believed to have been made in the Lucania area (by their tone), which is more than likely a Carmine Trimarco instrument, although it can be conjectured that either the Forastiero brothers (in Lauria, Potenza, Basilicata), or perhaps Luigi di Padula (Colliano Hills, Salerno, Campania) may have made this set of pipes. But to further complicate things, like almost all zampognas, the annoying "sopranina" drone is still rearing its ugly head, so I have toned it down on the right channel while keeping the original on the left, as these were originally mono tapes.
The piper is Donato Abbate, who plays a 4.5-palmi zampogna in the key of B. He is accompanied by a man named Rocco Dabraio, singing the verses, and a tambourine player and... I'm being honest, a screamer (WHAT?????) is a relative of his, Paolo Dabraio. To me, whereas Rocco has the vocal dexterity for gracenotes and other cool roulade-like ornamentations in the voice, despite straining his voice at some points - Paolo, by contrast, literally sounds to have the voice of an autistic 2-year-old! I'll tell you that my own mom's voice is worse than this guy! Plus, Paolo only copycats the last part of each verse that Rocco sings, so he really doesn't know how to sing very well. Talk about Lucanian singing if you don't have a Denise Leigh voice! Rocco is not only singing the notes pretty well, but he also sounds to have a fixed smile on his face.
This recording was made by Diego Carpitella in Tricarico, Matera Hills, Basilicata, Lucania, on October 28 1952. Technologically, being that this is a tape recording, it is quite impressive for 1952. However, the tape does somewhat "roll", in a way, in and out of being high-quality and wavers between a high quality and a quality that sounds like the tape is caught on the reels of the player. Further, there are very few cracks in the tape, which is also a commonality among tape recordings. I'm sure those of you who grew up with tape are able to relate to this - particularly Deborah Gibson who recorded on tape, and of course Emma Matthews and Denise Leigh who in her case got a tape recorder when she turned 11, which inspired her to become a coloratura opera singer, and the best one ever for more than a decade! Interestingly, some noticeable cracking can be heard to painful effect on some of Cristina Deutekom's live tapes from 1969, so I'm sure Cristina must have been familiar with this side effect of tape-
