Canzoniere del Lazio

Name: Canzoniere del Lazio – Lassa stà la me creatura
Item: Lassa stà la me creatura
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Lassa stà la me creatura

1974 (Intingo)

Italian folk, folk jazz, progressive folk

by Federico Romagnoli

Traditional Italian music is among the most varied in the world, which is precisely why the neglect surrounding the work of so many artists who gave it its lustre is more disheartening than ever. There are historic names who have been waiting for a proper, organised reissue of their catalogue for half a century now, and given that physical formats are losing relevance with every passing day, it's not out of the question that some of them never will get one.

This second album by Canzoniere del Lazio, for instance, came out in 1974 and was reissued only once, in 1978, before vanishing from the Italian market for forty years, sinking into total obscurity. Fortunately, the record was rescued in 2018, when a Super Audio CD reissue appeared on Fonè, an independent label usually devoted to classical music, run by sound engineer Giulio Cesare Ricci. Musicologist Gerardo Casiello restored the sound from the original tapes and oversaw the edition. Countless other masterpieces of Italian folk are still waiting for equally careful and deserved treatment.

But it's Canzoniere del Lazio who are the focus of this piece: the group was formed in Rome in 1972, orbiting around the circle of Alessandro Portelli, a university lecturer at La Sapienza and a scholar of Italian folk song, who soon put them in touch with Dischi del Sole, one of the most important labels in the field. The original line-up featured Piero Brega (vocals, guitar, tambourine), Francesco Giannattasio (organetto, tambourine, backing vocals), Carlo Silotto (guitar, violin, backing vocals) and Sara Modigliani (vocals, flute, tambourine): four young musicians, part students, part activists, all immersed in the Italian folk revival scene, which leaned almost entirely to the left.

Their debut album, "Quando nascesti tune", came out in 1973 and contained no fewer than fifteen folk songs from central-southern Italy, some of them mere fragments. The arrangements were faithful to tradition, proof of the musicians' intellectual rigour and documented approach.

Modigliani soon left the band, though she remained within that circle (from 1975 she taught flute at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio), and within a year the line-up had absorbed Luigi Cinque (sax, clarinet, percussion, backing vocals), Pasquale Minieri (bass, electric guitar, backing vocals), Gianni Nebbiosi (saxophone, percussion, backing vocals) and Giorgio Vivaldi (drums, percussion, marranzano, backing vocals). The group was now a septet, and the new arrivals brought a background spanning rock and jazz: their arrival upended the band's original sound.

It was at that point that they caught the attention of singer-songwriter Ricky Gianco, founder of Intingo, a small label that lasted just five years (1973-1978) but gave Canzoniere del Lazio the chance to make "Lassa stà la me creatura": recorded in ten days in July 1974, it's among the most radical records in the history of Italian folk, and one that would have been unthinkable under the Dischi del Sole banner (not that the label should be painted as reactionary — its role as a custodian of Italian cultural memory was fundamental — but its approach to the material was worlds apart).

The tracks on the album, once again built up from traditional texts and melodies, were explained in liner notes written by the band themselves, which are well worth reading.

The opener is the brief "Antidoto (alla tarantola)", built from two fragments stitched together: the first is a melody played first on violin and then by a duo of saxophones (sopranino and tenor). It comes from the treatise "Phonurgia nova", completed in 1673 by Athanasius Kircher, the German Jesuit who taught for many years at the Collegio Romano. In that work, Kircher argued that music could have therapeutic effects on the human body: among his examples was the melody of an "Antidotum tarantulae", which, played over and over, could supposedly cure someone afflicted with tarantism after a spider bite: "Spreading through the air [...] it reaches the soul and relaxes the muscles, arteries and the innermost fibres of the body, which are also the seat of the spirits."

The second fragment is an ancient liturgical text, collected in a similar form in Danilo Dolci's "Racconti siciliani", invoking the healing of someone bitten or otherwise afflicted by some ailment: it's intoned by Brega, with the others answering in chorus over a tight bed of percussion.

"'Ncominciai a non avè più bene in vita mia (da piccolo fanciullo)" is an Umbrian song of uncertain age, describing the peasant life of the region, in some way marked from the very birth of the individual, whose condition offers no chance of redemption ("Li fasciatori che me ci fasciorno, erano pieni di malinconia, e quella culla dove me ninnorno, legno crudele nun ce si dormiva"). The vocal part follows a two-voice singing style typical of central Italy, laid over an organetto drone, before the track opens out into a long instrumental coda, an unheard-of blend of tammurriata, jazz (the electric bass line, the interplay between tenor and soprano sax) and progressive folk (the acoustic guitar used rhythmically, the piercing violin): if Third Ear Band had ever drawn from Italy's musical well, it might have sounded something like this.

The instrumental "Saltarello de la Tolfa" is credited to Nicola Salvatore, an obscure organetto player from Tolfa, in Lazio, still alive at the time this version was recorded. The band describes it as a dance typical of shepherds from Ciociaria and harvesters from Tolfa, and arrange it into a powerful version underpinned by electric bass, while apologising for using an instrument that, by necessity, was only accessible to a well-off class.

"Processione" is a Passion song typical of Lazio, built on a martial drum rhythm and the incessant whistle of sopranino sax, while for "Su gravellu arrubiu (Il garofano rosso)" the group gives no information on its origins: the arrangement moves between Sardinia (the giant Sardinian guitar dominating the solo part) and Sicily (the marranzano, used to hold down the rhythm), ending with added hand-claps and an electric guitar solo (clean at first, then distorted).

“Lu povero Antonuccio”, a typical song from the Lecce area, is a funeral march for a man dying of heart disease, underpinned by percussive thuds and vigorous strumming of acoustic guitar, while the melody is carried by violin and clarinet. In the chorus, the voice of guest singer Sara Modigliani returns.

“Canti a mete di Barbarano” is a harvest song typical of Barbarano Romano, in the province of Viterbo, in which the farmhands urge their master not to skimp on food and drink: “Padrò, nun me passaò cipolla e ajo, sinnò la mietitura te l’imbrojo […] Padrò, passa er barlozzo, vengo meno” (the “barlozzo” is, of course, the little wine barrel). The first part of the track, in which the chorus is sung, is accompanied by free-form percussion instruments (even Indian tabla turn up), while once the singing fades away, the rhythmic structure takes on a defined, hypnotic shape, over which reed flute, tenor sax and soprillo let loose, in one last marriage with jazz.

The album closes with a brief, frantic “Saltarello”, naturally dominated by Giannattasio’s organetto, the only moment on the record that briefly returns to the philological project of the band’s early days.

Although it never charted, “Lassa stà la me creatura” caused a stir within the folk revival scene for breaking down barriers: some considered it disrespectful, others appreciated the way it brought those songs back to life in hybrid forms, in yet another clash between those who favour academic rigour and those who favour the freedom to update material that had almost been forgotten. The truth is that traditional music needs both approaches: on one hand, to know where to plant its roots, and on the other, to keep them from rotting. Canzoniere del Lazio, at different points in their career, embodied both possibilities at their best. They would go on to change further still, eventually veering into prog proper with “Miradas” (1977).Note – The album cover was created by husband and wife Vanda Spinello and Cesare Monti. The latter, one of the most important graphic designers in the history of the Italian music industry, recounts its genesis in a 2012 piece, on his personal blog.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

04/01/2026

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition