Tuesday,
March 06, 2007
Italian
The
ANNOTICO Report
One
of the Great Flatpicking Guitar heroes of US
Bluegrass is Self Taught 52-year-old native of
Photo courtesy of Yulunga
Arts
Italian
The Road Express The Washington Post Company
Tuesday March 6, 2007
The 52-year-old BEPPE
GAMBETTA IS A NATIVE OF GENOVA,
what most would consider
distinctly American music: bluegrass, country and blues.
While the genesis of those styles comes from the
EXPRESS: You grew up and still live in
GAMBETTA: If you live in a town that has a strong
history, you can get different inspiration from in it. In my hometown, the
third student of [classical giant] Nicolo Paganini is
still alive. Paganini was giving all of his secrets to one child, and this
child gave it to another, and here is this third person who got all of secrets
and he's 93 years old. I visit him, and he would like me to use just one position
on the guitar and, without moving my hand, cover 10 frets, like Paganini would
do. Genova is a town that has a nice connection with
its past.
EXPRESS: You started off in the local children's orchestra,
studying classical. Then you moved on to electric guitar and Led Zeppelin. How
did you make the leap
back to acoustic music and
bluegrass in particular?
GAMBETTA: When I was 17, someone brought some
material from the
And I was fascinated by the intensity of this
music that didn't have any drums. It was so purely acoustic, and it has so much
energy. So I devoted many years to learn
this style. I wrote books, and
after a while I started to travel. In 1988, I wanted to do something important
in this field, so I rented the first digital tape recorder that
was possible to get in the
American market, and I traveled through the
Blake, Dan Crary, David Grier, John Jorgenson and so many others. And I recorded with each
of them, one tune, and I produced this first album, "Dialogs," which
is probably the first ever
album recorded on the road with this digital machine. It was one of the great
moments of my career, and people start to know about me
and respect me. And after I did many other projects.
EXPRESS: What was harder for you: Singing in
English or playing bluegrass music without ever having seen someone actually
perform it?
GAMBETTA: The singing is less difficult to do
mistakes than when you talk. It was more intimidating to play this music and
never seen a flatpicker, so I had to guess
everything and transcribe a lot of
music. I wrote several books about flatpicking, and
the first books that I wrote were a whole history of flatpicking.
I wrote them
without seeing a real flatpicker because I was living in
because if you don't see the
player, it's really to guess everything with your sensibilities.
EXPRESS:
language dialects. Which forms of
Italian folk music have influenced you the most?
GAMBETTA: Every region has a totally different
language. If I go to
words. Also, the Genovese
dialect is extremely difficult to understand. So this difference, in the period
when unified, it created problems because communications
and difference between the
regions were problematic. But now, it gives a cultural uniqueness to
traditional music.
Some of them they use the guitar in interesting
ways, particularly
from a regular guitar it's similar to a guitarron in
movements that are similar to what
in
fascinating to me. I did some studies
of the melodies and the techniques, and I incorporated this into my playing.
EXPRESS: You've always been more than just a
player; you've really been a student of folk music from around the world. You
made some very interesting
discoveries about the influence of
Italians and Italian-Americans on country and bluegrass music.
GAMBETTA: I did some study about the turn of the last century
immigration to the
how Italians and
Italian-Americans were a nice part of the melting pot that generated jazz and
many other types of great music.
"Traversata"
is a very interesting album that we did with David Grisman.
We brought back to life certain music from the turn of the [last] century from
the great
immigration. We listened for months
to old, scratchy 78 albums with music from Giovanni Giovale,
Rudy Cipolla, Pasquale Taraffo, all of these people. And what
came out was a mosaic of many,
many little contributions to the melting pot that Italian-Americans gave.
It's interesting to see
someone in his house had a
Neapolitan mandolin. There are really interesting connections, and there was
not too much study of this particular ethnic contribution to
the melting pot.
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