A fairly monumental band for the moment, comprising eighteen members of a vast range of acoustic instruments, Folk Magic Band sprang from the legendary alternative environment of the Folk Studio in Rome, drawing on pan-ethnic motifs of Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society, the spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders, and the orchestrations of the Sun Ra Arkestra, and infused them with a similar internationalist spirit that marked a great deal of Italian music from the 1970s and 80s - Aktuala, Futuro Antico, etc.  - incorporating textures and melodic elements from numerous traditions from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Only a handful of documents are available from their short run, a life recording, a single television appearance, and the LP ‘Jazz Al Folkstudio’. Even from what little was have, it doesn’t take long to grasp how remarkable and singular they were.

Jazz Al Folkstudio belongs to an era in jazz, following John Coltrane’s Ascension and the subsequent efforts of bands like the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Sun Ra’s Arkestra, the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, and Philip Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble, that witnessed a return to larger ensembles, following the dominance of trios, quartets, and quintets that had dominated to be-bop and post-bop eras. Like the aforementioned, Folk Magic Band favoured a thicker and weightier sound, and complex tonal arrangements, nodding toward the work of Charles Mingus, that drew tonal complexity from the interplay of multiple instruments in conversation, rather the broadening of the harmonic palette on the part of individual players.

Comprising five remarkable compositions penned by varying band members, Jazz Al Folkstudio is driving forced of full throttle, joyous spiritual jazz, chugging its way across the album’s two side. Drawing unexpected links between the Italian scene and American counterparts like Organic Music Society and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, with a dash Archie Shepp thrown in for good measure, the band binds the exuberance of bygone dance bands of the 30s and 40s to the outreaches of the avant-garde, bringing both to absolutely thrilling and infectious creative heights.

Gathering a singular, polychromic universe, built upon masterful musicianship and the free, democratic spirit of 60s and 70s counterculture that looking outward toward diverse, far-flung cultures for points of inspiration, Folk Magic Band’s ‘Jazz Al Folkstudio’ is nothing short of a revolution that takes huge steps toward redrafting the history of European jazz in a single go. This first-time vinyl reissue, immaculately reproducing the 1976 edition, joins Black Sweat’s incredible catalog and is impossible to recommend enough. It’s one of those rare records that refuses to leave the turntable after the first needle drop.

 

Antonio infantino, Gruppo Di Tricarico
I Tarantolati

 

The second LP in Black Sweat’s latest batch, ‘I Tarantolati’ the first outing of Antonio Infantino with his band, Il Gruppo Di Tricarico, while very different in its musical approach, belongs to the same wild ferment around Folk Studio in Rome, and was issued by the Folkstudio label the year prior in 1975.

Antonio Infantino was poet and singer, who operated in circles connected to Beat literature and Italian performance and gestural music circles, alongside figures like Sylvano Bussotti, Giuseppe Chiari and Alvin Curran, among others. During his childhood in Matera, he developed a deep attachment to the rural way of life and the sounds that sprang from it, leading him to develop a very specific brand of ethno-folk music connected to his study of the mysterious phenomenon of Tarantism, a form of hysterical behaviour originating in Souther Italy that is thought to be connected to spider bites, and for which dancing is considered to be the only cure, which gave way to specific cultural traditions in Basilicata, Apulia, Sicily.

Interpreting the folk legacies of Tarantism in radically forward-thinking ways, “I Tarantolati” encounters Antonio Infantino and his group, Il Gruppo Di Tricarico, reinvents the traditional repertoire of Basilicata, creating an entirely new and original songbook. Comprising nine astounding compositions, the album delves into a trance inducing form of chanting folk, driven by rhythms on stemmed guitar and diverse percussion, often underscored by hypnotic drones that calls forth images of the ancient world within a decidedly avant-garde meets the psychedelic sound.

An absolute stunner - deep and universally human - the combines revolutionary music, folk, and frenetic drumming to produce something entirely singular in the history of Italian music, Antonio Infantino Ed Il Gruppo Di Tricarico's “I Tarantolati” is absolute gold from the first soundings to that last. Truly amazing and not to be missed.