Seth Portenlanger – Hiroshima Lollipop
What’s the last truly great folk song that’s been written, and who sang it? While some might be subscribed to the Jesse Welles folk-news account, most others will shrug to tell you to buy a very early Bob Dylan album and skip out on the film adaptation.
It’s true that artists tend to dream about being in a different place, at another time. It’s true that many great artists wrote about historical events that had happened decades or centuries before their birth. Not Seth Portenlanger.
But how many of those were smart enough to recognise that they were living through historic times? How many of them possessed the skill or the bravery to write the songs that others would be inspired by for decades or centuries?
Seth Portenlanger’s “Hiroshima Lollipop,” is an unapologetic old-time story told through the medium of folk music. It’s also a modern tale, one about violence and destruction. Who wrote the latest great folk number? Portenlanger hopes it will be him. The songwriter is treating both traditional folk music and the bombs falling on people’s heads like things that simply can’t be ignored.
Amanda Pascali – Wake Up, Baby! (E Vui Durmiti Ancora)
If you want to know the future, your best bet is to go back. You don’t need to learn to read the tea leaves, find fate in a deck of cards, or meditate your way into a hallucinatory vision of what’s likely to happen.
What you might need to do is listen. The old stories and songs carry with them the wisdom of centuries. They’re the places in which those who’ve lived through experiences much like the ones you’re having right now put their truths. That’s something that Amanda Pascali has learned.
Far away from mass tourism or the lazy, unfair, and unflattering description of some of its inhabitants, Sicily keeps the wounds of its history fresh and its hopes as vital as ever. Stray away from the spots recommended by your tourist guidebook and you might find some truth.
Amanda Pascali, a singer who has reconnected with her Sicilian roots, has found plenty of those predictions in the old music of the island. Using her dramatic singing style and a natural interest in songwriting that doesn’t flinch from darker subject material, she has integrated Southern Italian music into her very own works. “Wake Up, Baby! (E Vui Durmiti Ancora)” ends up being a gorgeous, modern lullaby, but one inspired by people who’ve seen it all and put it into song.
