Canzoniere

The superstars of pizzica are back. Canzoniere (Songbook) is the 19th album from Puglia's famous Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS). The cover art, which features a Coca Cola bottle filled with homemade tomato sauce, provides an apt visual metaphor for the record and its contents. Produced by Joe Mardin (Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston) and recorded in New York and Lecce (in Italy), Canzoniere marks a new chapter for CGS, as ambitious bandleader and violinist Mauro Durante goes about the unenviable task of combining home-grown and international sounds without reducing the power of the original recipe. With multicultural influences present, as well as electronica and hip-hop elements, the album might be a disappointment to many pizzica purists. Judged on its own merit however, this is a record that gets better with every listen, even if I'd have liked the scales to have been tipped slightly more in favour of the local over the global. Tracks such as ‘Moi’ and ‘Lu Giustacofane’ achieve an impressive synthesis between these two extremes, while Giancarlo Paglialunga and Alessia Tondo's distinctive voices retain all of their authentic charm. Brave and bold, Canzoniere is the sound of pizzica opening out to the world like never before.