Follow the music

It's a cliche to say that Italian life is lived in the streets, and like most cliches about Italy, it's really a cliche that's mostly true as you head south from Florence. But it's also one of those cliches that's basically true, and on this trip the thing that struck me most as a delightful outcome is the way that outdoor culture pulls you back to a time when circumstance and luck had the most to do with what music you heard. Italy's very much not an earbud-heavy country; after the jump, a brief sketch of what's in it for you when you follow the music.

Daniel Cavicchi's Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum details a world before the advent of the phonograph. Digging through diaries and letters from the nineteenth century, he explores a lot of iterations of what it meant to listen to music (depending on your geographic location and class and gender, etc.) but the image that has stuck with me most is that of Americans who, hearing the distant sound of a parade, would drop what they're doing and run across town to find the procession and listen to the music.

It's not a bad approach to take when you're on the road, either! Particularly in Italy, there's a decent chance that you may find a soloist, duo, or full ensemble busking, or perhaps throwing on a full concert for a cafe or a civic organization. In any case, you're likely to find a good-natured crowd and some solid tunes, so... have at it, I think? Below, some brief snippets from my own wandering:

First, Palermo. Ah, I loved Palermo, and there were a few musical encounters I didn't film (or didn't catch good audio from for the purpose of this post). Buskers fiddling and singing at an afternoon cafe, a woman with a cello in a piazza during early evening dinner, and... the one that I did catch for here, the sound of a band grooving as I made my way home from seeing the Italian dub of Top Gun: Maverick and decided to detour for pizza. Once I heard the beat, I detoured from the detour, and man, c'mon, moments like this are why you wanna go places, right?

In Naples, I'd sought out a garden up in the Vomero, and as I wandered I heard choral music floating down from a plateau overhead. I backtracked, found a path up, and stumbled on an early modern music recital, of which I only captured a short bit (frankly, the singing was the good stuff, oh well for this blog post)

In Orvieto, I was bummed to see that my dinner reservation at a trattoria my sister and her husband had loved was right when a concert was going to happen in one of the major piazzas. Until, again, I heard music from across town and decided to scoot. Sure enough, there was a sound check afoot, and I and a few scattered folk loitered to take it in. Serendipity!

After dinner, I made my way back to Orvieto's Duomo, which was nearly dwarfed by a gigantic yellow moon, and yet... there was also a sliver of light coming from the doors, which meant they'd been opened. Wandering closer, I saw signs indicating a free late-night concert, and when I made my way inside, I got a glimpse of the cathedral being used for the kind of sounds it was built to hold. A truly precious memory.

That's about it, except to say that you should always see where music is coming from even if it's prerecorded because sometimes it's going to make you happier than just about anything you can think of. GOODBYE FOREVER (until the next post)!