Donato Fumarola - Raccolto a sud (2021)

The battle for the affirmation of a linguistic and literary dignity of the dialect is very long and articulated, but it is dormant in the minds of many who live it as an absolute and decisive question on different levels: identity, social, cultural and political.

In doing so Donato Fumarola , pianist and composer from Puglia, after a long wandering to the sources of his musical origins, collects and composes this research work on the major Apulian dialect poets in the Bari language. Chiara Liuzzi is the interpreter who transforms the word into sound, echo, song in a sonorous alchemy of a universal metalanguage, hidden at times in the ancient Apulian vernacular language with its sounds and colors, evoking atavistic worlds. Nicola Puntilloto clarinets he paves the way by indicating new routes. Melodies, melopias, shreds of waltzes, piano singing, profane prayers, are mixed with improvisational elements in a kaleidoscope of memory, past and forgotten stories that rest during the day and live in the wind at night. Thus the themes of peasant civilization, landscapes, the southern question, the nostalgia for a world of happy poverty are recomposed. Poetry becomes song, vulgar eloquentia becomes the shining sound of the original language of the motherland.

The vernacular journey is undertaken by the fathers of 20th century poetry in Bari with Giuseppe De Benedictis, Antonio Nitti, Nicola Gonnella, with a tribute to Vittorio Bodini to pass to the young Giovanni Laera di Noci and Maria Nardelli from Locorotondo, up to the venerables, Pietro Cats from Ceglie Messapica, Lino Angiuli from Valenzano, Vittorino Curci from Noci. The journey ends with Grazia Stella Elia di Trinitapoli the poetess of the olive trees.