MASSIMILIANO MORABITO racconta ALAN LOMAX, UN AMERICANO NELLA VALLE DEI TRULLI

A journey through music, memory, and ethnographic research.
Massimiliano Morabito takes us on a discovery of Alan Lomax, the legendary "song hunter" who traveled through Southern Italy in the 1950s – including our Itria Valley – to record and preserve the voices of the rural world.

During the meeting, Morabito will discuss his book “Alan Lomax, An American in the Valley of the Trulli” (CGS Edizioni), which reconstructs that extraordinary research adventure and gives back to local communities the stories, faces, and emotions of an authentic Italy.

The son of folklorist John Lomax, Alan began collecting songs for the Library of Congress at a very young age, documenting American and African American folk music and giving a voice to those who had never had one before. In the 1950s, he also arrived in Italy, alongside Diego Carpitella, for what would become one of the greatest ethnomusicological research projects of the 20th century: the Italian Journey (1954–1955). During those months, Lomax traveled across the country – with a Magnecord recorder in hand – capturing the sounds of the rural world, including those of the Itria Valley and Locorotondo, where he encountered singers, sounds, and traditions that still tell the true soul of the region today.

Today, Massimiliano Morabito – a researcher, ethnomusicologist, and accordionist of the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino – brings that heritage back with his book. The volume, with an introduction by Lomax’s daughter, reconstructs the mythical 1954 expedition in Puglia and uncovers the voices of the protagonists of that cultural encounter, enriched by original sound and photographic materials granted by international archives dedicated to Lomax.

Morabito, one of the most active scholars of Apulian musical tradition, weaves the precision of a researcher with the sensitivity of a musician in his work, making this encounter a true "journey into the sound memory" of our land.

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