CONCERT NAYS – The women of folk music

NAYS, the term in ancient Greek for a vessel, is the name chosen in 2013 for the project carried out by Anna Ulivieri and Dario Paganin with the valuable contribution of other musicians.

Nays is meant to be understood as the archetype ship, the first with which man began to sail the sea that had separated him from other men who were equal and yet different from him in terms of culture, language, experiences. The sea becomes the mirror in which the temperaments and feelings of the peoples living on its shores are reflected, music is the lingua franca with which to express them. For thousands of years in the Mediterranean and then across the ocean, the journey, the encounter and the exchange of ideas, techniques, instruments, musicians give rise to a myriad of contaminations, preserving in any case the signs that distinguish the different identities.

Original compositions and arrangements, realized with classical and ethnic instruments, leaving room for improvisation and revision, in line with the philosophy that animates traditional and folk music according to which a piece should not be something static, but a creation that transforms and enriches itself with each new performance.

Remarkable in traditional music is the female contribution. In Italy, just to name a few names: Rosa Balistreri, a true Sicilian with a lively life, Fausta Vetere, co-founder of NCCP, Giovanna Marini, eternal singer of tradition, the choirs of mondine unforgettable voices of peasant culture and Caterina Bueno, ethnomusicologist and singer to whom we owe the recovery of many Tuscan songs and to whom NAYS pays tribute in the book-disc Rondò del gusto. At an international level, moreover, who can forget the Chilean Violeta Parra, ideal initiator of the Nueva Cancion Chilena movement which then bore fruit with Victor Jara, Inti Illimani, Quilapayun, Illapu and many others. The Argentine Mercedes Sosa, a giant voice, the American Joan Baez, a crystalline interpreter and guitarist, the South African Miriam Makeba, voice of the fight against apartheid. These and many other women are the heritage of popular culture with their voice and their music their desire to sing against injustice.
Anna Ulivieri – flute, Massimo Signorini – accordion, Dario Paganin – voice and string instruments.