Italian Folk Music (Not Recemended)

At the back end of last year I got my hands on the self-titled debut album by the Italian band Guano Padano. It’s a record that’s heavily influenced by their fellow countryman Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, along with Tex-Mex Americana and surf guitar. I don’t own any other Italian music. I don’t really know any other Italian music. Sure they have the whole opera thing going on, which I will never get into for as long as I live. And they have their own pop music that’s stuck in 1980s cheese, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a music scene going on there. Well I didn’t see any places where bands might play when I was recently in Italy. Okay so I was in Cagliari, maybe there are places for bands to play in the bigger cities like Milan, Rome and Turin.

But I did see some kind of Italian folk music when I was there. Well I had it forced upon me. I was sitting with my girlfriend outside a restaurant having a beer. When this little man with a oversized accordion came up to our table and began to play away. Now when I say play I mean play very badly. It was like he’d only picked it up for the first time that day. The accordion is like the bagpipes, you can be a very skilled player, but no matter how well you can play the instrument it still sounds like a dreadful racket. And this small little Italian bloke was making an awful racket and more some. I said “no thanks” but he didn’t hear me or ignored me. He kept on playing and smiling away. Again I said no thanks but he was really going for it and was in the accordion zone. After about a minute which felt like five I gave in and handed him a Euro. Mostly so that he would go away and take his noise elsewhere but partly because he was making a lot of effort for a small bit of change. Plus my girlfriend seemed to find him amusing. Or maybe she was finding my awkwardness amusing.

I’m still listening to Guano Padano and I love Ennio Morricone’s film scores but I don’t think that I will be buying a CD of Italian accordion folk music anytime soon.