«Italy is more by the sea than many other Mediterranean countries, washed by waves on three sides. The ancient Romans were not a seafaring people, but they managed to secure the coast and built good ports.»
Predrag Matvejevic, Breviario Mediterraneo
It is very difficult to testify to the present through a voice and music with such archaic flavors: every evolution of time, even in the full experience of listening, requires an explanation of how tradition has been occupied. In the case of Enza Pagliara and her project (also discographic) Frunte de Luna, which aims at the meeting between research on sources and textual rewriting of songs, it is not a submissive and archaeological re-proposition of an accepted past in a neutral way, perhaps under the blackmail of useless philological superstitions, but a recovery that is a hypothesis of knowledge, a will for reactivation, a return to life even in its necessary integrations. Precious in this direction are the arrangements of Antongiulio Galeandro and the sounds of Gianluca Longo and Redi Hasa. Thus, one can only seek, at the threshold of Pagliara’s live performance, which includes, for example, the Pizzica di Torchiarolo and Malachianta or Aquila Bella, Ferito Ferito, and indeed Frunte de Luna, the testimony of a cultural transmission, the physiognomy of a community as diversified as the Mediterranean one, but equally connected in its parts thanks to an invisible energy. An ancient energy, which only the performer (perhaps precisely thanks to further tributes like those to Sicily and Gargano, with Cu ti lu dissi and Rondinella) is capable of transmitting live again in the forms of an irreducible modernity in transformation. Enza Pagliara is a singer, actress, and percussionist; her discographic debut dates back to 2002; she has performed with her archaic Salento voice in the most important theaters in the world.
www.enzapagliara.it
