Folk singing company ‘Abruzzo forte e gentile’
In 2013 the Compagnia di Canto Popolare “Abruzzo forte e gentile” was established on the initiative of Licio Di Biase (President), Angelo Valori, Pasquale Veleno and Nicola Di Nardo.

The “Company” aims to safeguard and enhance the popular song of Abruzzo through a reinterpretation of both the author’s songs and those genuinely belonging to the popular tradition and this starting from the considerations contained in a letter that Gabriele D’Annunzio writes on July 18, 1881 to Giselda Zucconi: “I study the popular songs of Abruzzo. What a sublimity of inspiration, Elda! What deep and fascinating melodies! They do not look like products of a man, but the voices of nature itself! No part of Italy has songs so beautiful and so beautifully musical; I’ll send you some. But we should hear them singing from our peasants in the purple sunsets, nor yellow midday silences, in the fatal full moons … What a charm, Elda! Tears come to the eyes and the heart beats in an unknown desire. It’s nature that sings.”

The “Company” will prepare its own program starting from the songs contained in a publication of 1927 entitled “Canzoni popolari abruzzesi” by Albanese in which, among other things, for the first time “Vola Vola” was published, a song recently reread by Francesco De Gregori.

The initiative is also inspired by an article written by Carlo Altobelli and published in “La Tribuna” of April 2, 1888 in which he describes a great event organized in the Convent by Francesco Paolo Michetti in Francavilla and where it reads: “And when all these things and these people you have imagined gathered together there, in Francavilla, it will seem natural that Francesco Paolo Tosti, in one of the brilliant moments of his brilliant career, he thought of starting the tradition of a Popular Song of Abruzzo”.

And again: “In saying goodbye, that nice meeting, almost as a promise to find everyone in place the coming year, wanted to sing the Abruzzo Song, and that, as on the floor of the convent, so in the living room excited and moved. (…) But I forgot to tell you who was the gentle poet who links his name to the Abruzzo Song: Tommaso Bruno”.

The “Company”, therefore, aims to start a new season of traditional music from Abruzzo, through a reinterpretation of traditional sounds, as already started by Angelo Valori and other artists.

Great importance will be attributed to the exaltation of Saltarella (music and dance), because, as Carlo Altobelli writes: “… he crowds around a young man who plays the accordion, weaves the dances, and begins the saltarella, vispa, agile”. The heart of Abruzzo is in these songs and dances.