Omschrijving:With their sixth album, Barbapedana celebrate 30 years of musical and cultural activity. “Ghetto Klezmorim”, which means ‘Musicians of the Ghetto’, features the most significative songs of the wide repertoire of such historical band from the area of Treviso (the beautiful countryside area above Venice), playing together since 1978.A name, Barbapedana, not casually chosen: barbapedanas were the local story-tellers that, moving from village to village, had been giving their contribution to the perpetuation of the ancient oral tradition for centuries.Exactly what are doing these skilful musicians, always committed in a careful rediscovery of the local and Balcan musical traditions. “Ghetto Klezmorim” features music mostly belonging to the klezmer tradition of Eastern Europe and of the Roma gypsies… stirring rhythms and yearning songs, cheerfulness and melancholy alternate, reflecting the diverse moods of the human soul.«We felt the need», say Barbapedana, «to tell something in our own way and in a constructive, positive and creative manner, without dramatization, but conscious of today’s situation, with regards to the difficult cohabitation of different cultures in Italy and throughout the world. We wished in fact to remind, with music and chants belonging to oppressed and discriminated peoples, how everything happening today is very similar to what happened yesterday, to that long period of intolerance, obscurantism and violence against the ‘diverse’, represented in those years especially by the Jewish people, that ended with the aberration of racial laws and concentration camps and with the infamous Shoah.Under this point of view we wished to present this new work through an influential and wise introduction by someone who had experienced on his skin these discriminations and violence. We then decided to ask Amos Luzzatto, former president of the Italian Jewish Communities, who we had the pleasure to meet and the honour to welcome in one of our concerts».Amos Luzzatto writes: “A message of hope and, in spite of everything, of trust comes from the chants featured in this cd. They originate from the mouths of the destitute, still representing an unvaluable gift for everybody, whether and why they look for freedom, equal rights and justice. These chants are for all those who firmly believe that the human society may reach these goals, provided that it wants to…”The Ghetto of the title, symbolically represented on the artwork by the historical Jewish ghetto of Venice, the place where Amos Luzzatto comes from and obvious local reference, reminds us how these places of emargination, where a population that was considered troublesome and diverse has been physically segregated, are still there to remind us that these things really happened and that the duty of us all is not letting them happen again.In the vast klezmer and Balcan musical scene, Barbapedana clearly stand out.“Ghetto Klezmorim” is infectious from its start and contains a series of absolutely unmissable pearls. No need to know the yiddish language: this music speaks directly to your heart and feet.Busiest on stage having performed over 700 concerts throughout Italy and in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Romania, the Netherlands, Cape Verde and Mexico, in order to properly celebrate their thirtieth anniversary, Barbapedana will perform in Tunisia in December 2008 on the stage of the worldwide famous Festival of the Desert.
