Cantodiscanto

• country:Italy
• region:Napoli
• style(s):Tarantella, World Pop
• label:Visage Music
• type:Quintet
• gender:male, female
• instrumentation:vocal, percussion, string, brass, singer songwriter, guitar
• artist posted by:Medinsud APS

Line up

• Frida Forlani (voice, citara, battente guitar, little drums)
• Giovanni Calcaterra (doublebass)
• Guido Sodo (classic, portuguese & electric guitars, oud, voice)
• Ivan Valentini (sax)
• Mirco Mungari (frame drums, classic& battente guitar, berimbao)

Links

• Cantodiscanto

Cantodiscanto was born as a folk music group in the eighties, between Naples and Bologna.
The group gained several prizes: Città di Recanati (today called Musicultura), Nuovo Sud and Voce del Gargano (prize to remember the the singer Andrea Sacco from Carpino).
In Italy it took part, among others, in Carpino Folk Festival, Notte della Taranta, Festival di Montalcino - Val d’Orcia, Le vie dei Canti, Finibus Terrae Festival, Festival Sant’Arcangelo dei Teatri (where it was in the final for the De André Award), Festival Ville e Castella, Umbria Jazz, Kals’Art, Teglio Festival Valtellina, Fest Festival for Emergency, and Bè – Percorsi Artistici.
Abroad, Cantodiscanto was twice in Portugal, where it partecipated in the Festival Sete sòis sete luas and in the French sequel of the same festival.
Cantodiscanto was a guest also in Capo Verde and in Spain, where it’s broadcasted on the National Radio (RNE), and again in France.
Among cinema-radio-tv partecipations: the docu-film Busker's, produced by RAI; the short film Chora; the Tv programs Radio Tre - Il terzo anello musica, Lampi, Mediterraneo, Tournée, Fahreneit e File Urbani on Radio 3; some productions and serials on Rai 2 e Rai 3, among which the fiction La nuova squadra Spaccanapoli.
Abroad, the group was a guest in the Swiss Television and the radio broadcasting station Catalunya Musica.

Guido Sodo – Neapolitan, graduated in classic guitar and in Electronic Music – Applied Music cum laude, is interested from many years in Early and Folk music of Southern Italy. Founder of Cantodiscanto, he also composes for Theatre and Cinema. As far as restored silent films, he has played his original scores in Italy, USA, France, Israel, Spain, Argentina, Tunisia. As far as the Theatre, he worked with Teatro Stabile Mercadante of Naples, as coordinator of music and musician in Zingari by Viviani directed by Davide Iodice, with Nino D’Angelo, as composer and musician in ‘A Sciaveca by Mimmo Borrelli directed by Davide Iodice, in Il fiore inesistente by Vittorio Franceschi, in L’inatteso by Fabrice Melquiot with Anna Amadori. Was Maestro concertatore for Orchestra dello Scorpione at Festival dello Scorpione in Taranto, and recently was composer and musician in Euridice e Orfeo by Valeria Parrella, directed by D. Iodice with Michele Riondino e Federica Fracassi. In this year recorded with Decca in the Cd Italia with the Opera Tenor Juan Diego Florez as player and arranger. He performed as soloist singer in the Orpheo III (Berio-Monteverdi) at the Philarmonie de Paris.
Frida Forlani – Known first as popular singer with social commitment she is graduated at Scuola per Artisti del Teatro Comunale di Bologna with M.° Fulvio Angius, she was soloist of Canzoniere delle Lame of Bologna and she explored several musical paths, meeting Early, Baroc and Contemporary Music. Among her collaborations: singer in La Tempesta directed by Glauco Mauri; the partecipation in the CD Macramé by Ivano Fossati; the partecipation in the TV program (Rai3) Taxi by Lucio Dalla and Survival. For the children, she composes, together with Janna Cariali, authoress of the TV program Melevisione (RAI3 and RAI Yo Yo), tales and nursery rhymes.
Mirco Mungari – From Calabria, he started with the study of classic guitar. Then he approached ethnomusicology, studying several folk instruments from his Region and the different techniques of frame drums of South Italy. At the same time he studied the practice of Arabic and Turkish Ottoman classic music deepening maqam and modal systems, the technique on oud and percussion instruments attending stages and classes with Aleksandar Karlic, Adel Shams ed Din, Fabio and Diego Resta, and Medieval and Renaissance percussions with Pedro Estevan.
Gianni Calcaterra – Graduated in doublebass at Conservatorio di Lucca, he teaches and plays in concert, principally the Synphonic and Operistic repertoire, working at the same time with several ensembles and Theatres. He was first Didattic Assistant in Spoleto at the Theatre “A.Belli”, then Teacher and Tutor. From 1988 he teaches instrument, musical theory and solfége in several schools in Bologna.
Ivan Valentini – Graduated in sax and jazz music, for more than twenty years has leaded groups and projects with which he proposes his music, moving in the sphere of improvisation end interaction with other expressive forms. He has played in Orchestras conducted by Henry Threadgill, Mathias Ruegg, Bruno Tommaso and has collaborated – among the others – with: Franco D’Andrea, Steve Bernstein, Enrico Rava, Tito Mangialajo, Lorena Fontana, Attilio Zanchi, Massimo Manzi, Alberto Capelli. He further collaborated with the singer Vinicio Capossela e with the american choreographer Teri Weikel.

Discography
- Nuove Tendenze della Canzone d'Autore V, BMG-Ariola (CD compilation Premio Città di Recanati), 1994. - Cercando la terra, Ermitage, 1997.
- Medinsud, Forrest Hills - Harmony Music, 2001.
- Pizzica la Tarantula, il Manifesto, 2011.
- Malmediterraneo, Forrest Hills, 2003. (In world music charts europe – WMCE -, featuring Faisal Taher, Gabin Dabire and Lao Kouyate.
- Altreterre, il Manifesto, 2003.
- free Cd, fRoots Magazine, 2004.
- Pizzica la Tarantula 2, Stampa Alternativa, 2004.
- Cercando la terra (second edition and remastering), Ermitage, 2006.
- Tutto il mondo è paese, Associazione Culturale Medinsud, 2010, distr. Materiali sonori
- Todo el mundo a cantar, , Associazione Culturale Medinsud, 2014, distr. Materiali sonori (included in the first selection for best dialect album 2015 for the Targa Tenco Prize)
- Pandemusica, Visage Music, 2022 (feat. Maria Anadon, Marco Cappelli, Mirco Mungari, Maurizio Piancastelli, Elio Pugliese, Fernando Jorge Silva, Fabio Sodano, Stelutis Choir, Faisal Taher, Andrea Taravelli, Riccardo Tesi, Davide Zaccaria, Simone Zanchini)

Cantodiscanto comes out with the new cd Pandemusica (Visage Music editions), conceived in the period of the pandemic, and which draws inspiration from it, both in terms of lyrics and working methods.

The group collaborated with many old and new fellow travelers, who gave their contribution also recording at distance, when it was impossible to meet together.

Along with the basic quintet - Guido Sodo (guitars and voice), Frida Forlani (voice), Ivan Valentini (sax), Giovanni Calcaterra (doublebass) Paolo Caruso (drums, berimbau, santoor) - the vocalist Maria Anadon, with the celloist Davide Zaccaria and the guitarra portuguesa player Fernando Jorge Silva joined the project from Lisbon; from New York Marco Cappelli on electric guitar; from Tuscany Riccardo Tesi on organetto, from Sicily the Palestinian singer Faisal Taher, the ney and balaban player Fabio Sodano and from the near Romagna Simone Zanchini on accordeon.
From the neighbourhoods of Bologna Maurizio Piancastelli (flicorn), Andrea Taravelli (fretless bass) , Elio Pugliese (accordeon), Mirco Mungari (frame drums), and the Stelutis Choir directed by Silvia Vacchi complete the team.

The music is a kind of ethnic-acustic style, recalling the portuguese fado, Brasil and Early and Folk Southern Italy and Mediterranean music. Compositions are by Guido Sodo, Ivan Valentini, Paolo Caruso, Frida Forlani and Faisal Taher.

As far as the lyrics, the group goes on with its multi-cultural style: there are some lyrics in Portuguese, due to collaboration with the Italian writer and journalist resident in Lisbon Marcello Sacco who freely drew inspiration from Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, an arab song by Faisal Taher and some stuff from Naples and Campania Folk Repertoire.

There is the usual use of Neapolitan, the mother tongue of Guido Sodo, who wrote the rest of the lyrics, but this time he used Italian in several passages, even in the invented archaic form of the song that gives its name to the CD.

This song metaphorically compares the desire for making this new cd with the (work of an ancient bakery) preparation of bread in an old oven, where men and women are called, announcing the freshly baked bread. Last but not least, there is a song, written by Janna Carioli, about violence against the women, that unfortunately increased during the lock-down period. This song and a couple of others were conceived before pandemic, for example Aria dei fiori, written for a theathral show a few years ago, using fragments of medical records of psychiatric patients as lyrics, suggesting us that our own lives have become drammatically complicated because of Covid, mostly for the weakest, that risk being overwhelmed by events.

One of the songs, Dimentica is a peculiar rap with an original tambourine rhythm and it deals with frustration suffered by everyone during the pandemic. It seemed especially meaningful to us, that is why we decided to close the track list with a radio edit shorter version of Dimentica, which means “forget” and we didn’t want anyone to forget it.