released February 23, 2024
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CREDITS

Acoustic & Electric Violin, hum in part 1— Lisa Miles
Voice— Barbara Crescimanno

Recorded in US (Violins) & Sicily (Voice)
Composition & Mix-- Miles
Mastered in Portugal— Tarannis M. BGenesis, (Black Genesis Records/NU:N)

Cover image: Ponte dei Saraceni (Medieval Saracens bridge, west side of Mount Etna, Sicily)


Background, Barbara Crescimanno:

Founder and coordinator - since 2006 - of the anthropological and ethnocoreutical research group TrizziRiDonna, in which she works as a researcher, singer, percussionist and dancer. Barbara is founder and teaching coordinator - since 2009 - of the Tavola Tonda School of Traditional Music and Dance, with title Professor of Traditional Dances. She collaborates with the Aglaia Laboratory and with the Etnomusicology Department at the University of Palermo. Barbara has studied European dance, Contact Improvisation, contemporary dance. And she conducts a research path - theoretical and practical - on the relationship between music, dance and the sacred feminine, working with anthropology of the sacred, dance-theater and ethnomusicology.

www.tavolatonda.org/index.php?option=com_sppagebuilder&view=page&id=11&lang=en

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ARTIST STATEMENT

A piece conceived by Lisa when she visited Sicily for a second time in June ‘23 for a creative, ancestral, ritualistic exploration and retreat. This was a collective gathering of participants who, like herself, all have Sicilian blood. Led by master teacher Barbara Crescimanno, it was a great experience that fed Lisa’s creative work. The group was brought to sacred and historical sites over 10 days, the places less celebrated by christianity than by devotees of the women saints and martyrs and cave-nymphs that tell the true story of the island’s divinity. At each of these, Barbara taught and guided the group to understand and explore the voices and drum beats and movements of Sicilia, as well as their own.

In particular, this haunting melody sung by Barbara periodically throughout this time together seared into Lisa’s very being above all others. The need to re-create in some sort of homage on acoustic violin was intensely felt. Yet at the same time, a foreknowing that the lullaby would then also transform via electric violin, Lisa’s main compositional mode since 2015. This third electric part of the song became the dream-state, wild and overdriven, dissonant and distorted... with touches of a child playing and running, transformed from the calming balm to something almost nightmarish, but always Mother's voice echoing as anchor.

Lisa carried back to the States a primitive recording of the full group attempting the song, but it was deep-remembered Barbara’s voice that fed Lisa’s constant humming of this tune, in mind even more than over lips. The a-o verse-end, more than anything, denoted this primitive song as magical to Lisa.

The lullaby is age-old, of Saracen (Arabic) origin in its melodic dorian mode, sung by Sicilian mothers oft in the fields of wheat and olive and fruit groves, as they attempted to lull their accompanying daughters to rest and sleep as they finished their days-long work. The Saracens were in Sicily from approx. 877- 1042 and beyond, and their influence felt culturally, in architecture and music and Sicilian food to this day. The Saracen blood of most all Sicilians, whose ancestors co-mingled with so many culturally divergent peoples in the Mediterranean, is a living, intense testament to the unique heritage that is Sicilia.

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DEDICATION & THANKS

Dedicated to Lisa's Mother, Margaret Piccione, who would have turned 95 on release day of Feb. 23rd

Love to Vladi for his great support in my travel to Sicily and this project.

With gratitude to Marco for his assistance at Arci Tavola Tonda.

Thank you to Tarannis for his keen interest in the work and production consult, in addition to the mastering.