Teresa De Sio, one of the most significant interpreters of Neapolitan music has returned to her dialect with A sud! A sud!, a recording and show signalling the revival and re-interpretation of Italian Mediterranean traditions.
Following the international success of the Craj (Tomorrow) project, there will soon be a film, linked above all to the popular music of the Puglia region, in which she shared the stage with Giovanni Lindo Ferretti (playing a northern traveller) and authentic folk singers like Matteo Salvatore, Uccio Aloisi and the group Cantori di Carpino. Teresa is currently presenting a show based on material from her new album in which, to quote a review in La Stampa, “there’s intelligence, heart, poetry, art; there’s joy and sadness, and life and zest for it – southern Italian music is the most beautiful music in the world; if the music you’re listening to is by Teresa”.
Teresa De Sio was not yet twenty when she took the first steps on her artistic path in 1979, with the MusicaNova experience; her appearance with the band led by Carlo D’Angiò and Eugenio Bennato certainly signalled a golden era for the band which blended the language of folk with newly written songs which in those final years of the seventies were so full of strong emotions. Her first solo album appeared in 1980, Sulla Terra Sulla Luna (On Earth, On the Moon). Two years later she released Teresa De Sio, which includes “Voglia ‘e turnà” and “Aumm Aumm”. Surprisingly this record sold over five hundred thousand copies and the year’s success was crowned by an extensive tour together with critical acclaim which praised its poetic and musical qualities. She repeated this success in 1983 with Tre: another five hundred thousand sold and De Sio’s popularity was indisputable. The new tour ended with a concert in front of 30,000 people transmitted live by RAI (seven million viewers). During the following years Teresa was busy with international projects and worked with producers and arrangers of the calibre of Brian Eno, Paul Buckmaster and Michael Brook and collaborated with performers like Stewart Copeland, Fabrizio De André and Fiorella Mannoia. The project La Notte del Dio che Balla (the night of the dancing god) for which Teresa De Sio is also the artistic director, takes place in 2000. It contains the unedited single “Salta salta” previewed nationally at the grand 1st May concert in Piazza San Giovanni in Rome and broadcast live by Rai 3. It’s then produced during the month of July and released at six concerts at the major Italian festivals: more than three hours of live music from the roots of folk to technological contamination.
Today Teresa De Sio has returned to her dialect because she believes that folk music is ecological, music of the peoples of the world which has been passed on for thousands of years can never die. Every object of our age has a limited functionality and lifespan after which it nags us with its useless and obtrusive presence. This music however is “totally biodegradable”, completely edible, it’s “the Lost Harmony which pushes from the depths and tries to flower again”. Folk music enables us even today to communicate that which is currently deemed inane, of no commercial value or not economically viable: real communication with another person, establishing a genuine relationship, the capacity sincerely to express one’s interior world with all the feelings that spring from it.