Taranta with a bite by Lou Carlozo
They call the music of Ludovico Einaudi “global soul,” which gives the man mighty big sandals to fill. “Global” invites comparisons to peerless world music artists, while “soul” conjures visions of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Erykah Badu. Yet Einaudi’s commitment to paving a unique path is beyond question; he’s a self-styled composer, conductor and pianist — with an emphasis on the style part. Now comes Einaudi with “The Taranta Project” (Ponderosa Music). The disc updates the centuries-old trancedance of Southern Italy by connecting it with West African and Turkish traditions. As a musical form, the taranta draws its sonic potion from the tarantula spiders often found in Italian fields. Their bite could lead to madness or a mortal wound, which according to folklore could only be cured by the trance-like dance known as the tarantella. Geographically speaking, taranta has its origins in Salento — on the heel of Italy’s boot — and Einaudi’s album had its birth in concerts he directed there in 2010 and 2011. After an astounding draw of 100,000 people, he toured the project over the next year, recording live and eventually in the studio. Einaudi’s project connects to a force that’s deep in history and the human psyche itself. The tarantella has roots in Greek antiquity and the tragedies of Euripides, with stories of women entering a healing ecstasy that bordered on mania — known in Italian legend as tarantismo. Yet there’s no denying the modern aspect of this release. “The Taranta Project” was mixed at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, and includes some incredible talents backing up Einaudi. They include Justin Adams (electric guitar) and Juldeh Camara (one-string ritti fiddle and vocals), who together released the acclaimed Chicago-meets-Africa disc “Tell No Lies” for Gabriel’s Real World label in 2009. The massive challenge, as Einaudi explains it, was to take hours and hours of material and condense it down to the final product. “After I put the musicians together, the big work after the rehearsals and the concerts was to select just an hour of it for the album. I wanted to stay close to the reality of the music without changing too much, to put myself into the music of taranta.” Much like those who practiced the tarantella over centuries, Einaudi had to undergo a process of surrendering to the trance, then blanketing listeners in its musical mystery. That’s apparent right from the opening of the title track, which awakens in a single-note guitar drone as drums and a mist of violins coat the background in fog. The female vocalists may sing in Italian, but you’d swear you’ve landed in southern Italy by way of Istanbul on a blues-folk jet stream. (See full review.) The track features Einaudi on piano, along with Adams, Camara and 13 other musicians playing a mix of rustic instruments, strings and synthesizers. The repetitive textures that imbue “The Taranta Project” give it a hypnotic quality, which infects and injects Einaudi’s musicians and listeners alike with pretty poison. That’s no surprise given Einaudi’s background and ambition — he’s touched in the past on genres from jazz to opera to rock — and his skill in joining the epic and the intimate in surprising, affecting ways.
THE TARANTA PROJECT Ludovico Einaudi Steeped in the rich soil of Southern Italy, “The Taranta Project” doesn’t so much sprout as erupt. The instrumental introduction dawns with equal parts avalanche (the sub-sonic rumble of bass) and adventure (galloping snare, trilling bouzouki and summerwind strings). It then melts into the title track, which pits furious violins against the gritty pulse of Justin Adams’ electric guitar. The use of a tremulous female vocal trio proves spot-on; early masters of the tarantella dance (and healing rituals) were women. Elsewhere, “Nazzu Nazzu” drenches the listener in African flutes and strings, shambling Middle East rhythm, Italian folk melody, and a wash of delta blues. Seldom do such diverse currents spill into a uniform sonic sea. While too much trance music goes down like cold oatmeal ad nauseam, “The Taranta Project” makes clever use of melodies that intersect and intertwine. Rapid-fire arpeggios hold fast to one note, acting as springboards for slower melodies that climb or dip with seesaw tension: the listener descends into a spiral of fever dreams. On “Core Meu,” a male vocal enveloped in reverb — as though shouted from a minaret — gives way to folk acoustic textures and the hypnotic thump of a four-note bass bedrock. Where in the world are we? Turkey? Calabria? Mississippi? How about epicenter of Einaudi’s fertile musical turf? Planted there, nowhere and everywhere is home deep home. Available at www.amazon.com