Alessandra Belloni

Invocations and work songs, exorcisms and lullabies shared the program of “Rhythm is the Cure” in a chapel of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. With the austere but kinetic combination of voice, hand drums and rustic fiddling, it drew connections between styles separated by time and geography but united by the use of rhythm as a source of strength and spirit.

The musicians on Friday night were Alessandra Belloni, a singer and Neapolitan tambourine specialist who has researched ancient songs from southern Italy that show deep Arabic and African influences; Glen Velez, a virtuoso on frame drums; the percussion family that includes the tambourine and the Irish bodhran; and Siba, the leader of the Brazilian band Mestre Ambrosio, which is steeped in the folk styles of northeastern Brazil. Siba plays the rebeca, a fiddle similar to the rebec, an ancestor of the violin that was played in Europe (including southern Italy).

The three musicians shared and traded songs, nearly all of them driven by tambourine patterns so fast that the drummers’ hands became blurs. The old Italian songs- from fishermen, tobacco pickers, pilgrims and women seeking to expel the evil eye- used triple time rhythms like the tarantella; Ms Belloni sand in an exultant voice, sometimes punctuating her phrases with rhythmic yips.

A strutting Brazilian 4/4 beat carried Siba’s songs, his heartfelt tenor backed by a hoedown drone from his fiddle or the finger-picking of a guitar. Mr. Velez turned to odd time signatures, sometimes pattering one rhythm on a frame drum while tapping another with a rattle strapped to his foot. The songs blazed with an age-old momentum.
- Jon Pareles, for the New York Times

Tarantelle and Canti d’Amore (Naxos World)
- The album title is Italian for “Dances of the Spider and Love Songs.” The story behind it is as fascinating as the music. The tarantella was an ancient southern Italian dance ritual to heal a mental illness called tarantismo, which supposedly afflicted women with depression and hysteria and was believed to be caused by a tarantula bite. The women would dance for days, lost in an erotica and hypnotic trance, to tambourine music performed by other women. Belloni, an authority on her region’s ancient dances and rituals, plays a large tambourine called a Tammorra Napoletana. However her voice- sometimes operatic, sometimes folksy- puts the flesh and blood on songs like the work chant “Fronni d’Alia” and the lullaby “Nia Nia.” Her two originals (“La Notte delle Stelle Cadenti” and “Palomma d’Ammore”) stand up well to the 13 other tunes written centuries ago.
- Michael Koretsky for JAZZIZ (July 2003)

The roots music of Europe, aside from the frequently heard Celtic and Gypsy / Roma sounds, largely have been co-opted for the past three or four centuries by classical composers. True, folk and traditional themes and rhythms have surfaced frequently, from Bach and Beethoven to Bartok and Stravinsky. But serving as the thematic material for compositional development, the elemental qualities rarely retained the original cultural essence.

Fortunately, the growing fascination with world music has made it possible for a number of dedicated artists and historians to find and record music that, in the past, may have existed only in Europe’s few remaining remote villages or in isolated academic archives.

Alessandra Belloni, a singer and percussionist, has been exploring the roots music of southern Italy since 1980, often in association with guitarist John La Barbera and their performing troupe, I Giullari Di Piazza. And her latest recording, “Taranta: Dance of the Ancient Spider “ (Sounds True) is a revelation, filled with sounds from Italy that are not your grandfather’s favorite operatic arias.

The centerpiece of the album is a piece titled “Pizzicarella” (Little Bite), a traditional tarantella from the district of Puglia. And here is where the differences between roots music and its contemporary manifestations immediately become clear.

“People know [the tarantella] as a silly wedding dance,” says Belloni. “But it’s really an ancient purification ritual. It is rooted in the Dionysian rites of ancient Greece and became popular in the Middle Ages as a cure for the black plague.”

…

Belloni includes other traditional numbers from Puglia, medieval songs from the island of Sardegna, and pieces from Calabria, Naples and the Basque region of France. And she explores connections between the traditions of Calabria and Bahia, Brizil- notably in similarities between the celebrations of Calabria’s La Madonna del Mare (The Madonna of the Sea) and Bahia’s Yemanja (Goddess of Love and the Sea)- in her own piece, “Canto di Sant’Irene” (Song of the Mermaids).

The music is utterly fascinating. In addition to its revelatory presentation of Italian roots music, it is timely as well, given the current surge of interest in the healing powers of music.

“I strongly believe in the power of drummming and dancing,” Belloni says. “I also think that in our society there is a need to go back to this primordial way of healing. My wish is to pass this tradition on to women all over the world, helping us to find the strength and courage to free ourselves from our social spider webs and, indeed, to stop weaving them ourselves.”
- Don Heckman for the Los Angeles Times

Get bitten by a tarantula, and Italian tradition suggests you’ll find a cure in the trance dance known as the tarantella. Jittery percussion, wild violin, twanging jaw harp and Alessandra Belloni’s powerful singing on Tarantelle and Canti D’Amore (Naxos World) may well cure what ails you if a paucity of rootsy Mediterranean dance music is your complaint. No mere archivist, Belloni is the real thing, a practitioner of music therapy to ease the emotional pain of men and women who “have known the feeling of being stuck in a spider web.” I know what she means, I was raised a Roman Catholic. She spent decades tracking down this obscure and fading tradition in remote villages in Southern Italy. The songs feel strikingly old and impressively pagan. And Belloni’s wonderful performances are rousing fun. - Bob Tarte for THE BEAT