Folklore Saltarello

Preserviamo il Saltarello – August 2007

There’s to be folklore music in the piazza at Servigliano, as part of the Festa del’Unità, following a day of talks and discussions as part of the Festa on a left-leaning theme. We hadn’t attended the discussions.

We drive to Servigliano, get there around 9.30pm, being prepared to stay only five minutes if the folklore turns out to be Latin American or somesuch, but no, to our surprise and delight there is a band on stage with a banner that says, ‘Preserviamo il Saltarello’, and we learn from the shaven-headed man fronting the band, who goes on at length in his descriptions between songs in a typically Italian fashion, such that we find ourselves saying, ‘Get on with it Charlie!’, that Saltarello is the traditional folk music of the region.

There are rows of white plastic chairs with impassive-looking people on them, but as the evening wears on the numbers in the square increase, eating pizza in the café, sitting on the metal stepped benches that have been put there for the audience to watch the ferragosto pageants, eating ice creams, and hanging about in groups.

Where are the ex-pats?

We spot Ian, who is wandering around trying to sell raffle tickets for the event, as he has been for some weeks now, but apart from Ian and us, there are no Brits. Where are the Brits? Are the Brits not interested in the traditional music of their adopted home? Or did they just not know about it? But then Ian has been selling raffle tickets to every Brit in sight, which is how we found out about it, so are the Brits not interested? or did they just buy a ticket without listening to what Ian was saying when he sold it to them? Perhaps a bit of both.

A haunting familiarity

The songs have a kind of haunting familiarity about them and we decide that they’re not that distant from English folk music, and there’s folk dancing too, and that has similarities with the English, much of it done with the hands on the hips, and little steps and the man and the woman part dozy-doeing each other.

All that bang, bang, bang

Quite a lot of drumming, which is perhaps not so English, though then again perhaps it is. We listen to a story-song where the drummer stands at the back and holds his tambour high in the air and whacks it on the first beat of every four-beat bar. He’s an academic-looking chap in black waistcoat and small specs, and seems to find it increasingly hard work as the song wears on, or perhaps he’s whacked a hole in his drum, as he keeps looking at it doubtfully.

Telling a story

One of the obviously very traditional songs is by a man playing the ‘organetto’, which is like a small button-accordion or concertina, alongside a very short-of-stature woman coming in on vocals with a kind of shouting voice mid-way through a bar. The song is clearly telling a story, though with the dialect and the shouting voice, we can’t get what it is.

A local joke

One story-song that we do half-understand is based on the town of Rotella, and the man telling the story in the song goes to the other villages round about and comments on what he finds there. We can get the names of the villages but not the detail of what happens in them. Must try and get a transcript.

A long night for the band

We asked Ian if he knew where the band was from and he went and asked the organisers and came back and said they are from Ascoli. So presumably, after they finish at about 1am – we didn’t stay long enough to find out exactly when – they have the hour and a half drive back to Ascoli. How do the Italians stay awake for so long? Most of the band weren’t young.

Saltarello Marchigiano, with organetto and dancer in hat and glasses, from YouTube.

And an organetto player having got married after an appointment with the coiffeur and his new wife showing how the dance is done.