Protest, emancipation, feminism, and other battles…
… from the Mediterranean to the Mississippi
“The blues became the best way for black slaves to tell their stories, knowing that their stories and experiences would never be written in history books. The blues would ensure that their legacy would not be forgotten.” [Turner]
This is what folk song has done in all cultures, including our own. Oral tradition has given marginalized classes the opportunity to tell their stories, pass them on, and leave a mark.
Oral stories were the vehicle for the creation of the blues, and for African-American women, the opportunity to recount their condition of double discrimination: as black women in American society and as women in their own circle, continually oppressed by the men of their own black community.
But they couldn’t break them!
And the blues was a faithful accomplice in this.
In Italy, too, there was the blues… when the women of Salento told stories of pain and deprivation under the melodic lines of the “taranta,” or the rice weeders of Emilia-Romagna recounted their tribulations and labor exploitation. That, too, was the blues. Many women couldn’t write, but they had the ability to orally recount and sing personal stories that were inextricably linked to universal human events and the great changes of history. For this reason, the path of the blues, as the voice of the people, is the authentic story of the battle for work, love, freedom, feminism, and the self-determination of all people.
Line up
Altrove (aka Ashai Lombardo Arop): voce, chitarra (IG)
Gianmaria Nardone: chitarre, voce (IG)
Alessio Colantonio: tamburi a cornice e percussioni varie (IG – TikTok)