Labor is probably along with love the human activity that music, song, has been most concerned with, both the learned and the popular, and in every corner of the world. From music born in slave fields to that of peasant barnyards, to fight songs, to contemporary folk song, to rock and its derivations, to jazz. Even what we call cultured or classical music has dealt with it. Labor and workers were not only the subject of music and song, they were active participants in it, just think of the flourishing of choirs, amateur philharmonic societies, people’s houses and dancing clubs. Song is the most widely used form of making music among workers and about their condition. We live in a time when workers count very little in economic and social life, they have lost income and power, they are more marginal, the same material condition, the complexity of new jobs is little known as if it did not interest them. We do not want to make an anthropological operation, much less a political one, ours is an exquisitely artistic project; to give the right space and role to this theme through the reinterpretation in another key of songs that have dealt with it, from fight and folk songs to songwriting, with the idea that art is the strongest and best way to have identity, to recognize oneself in a community of values and interests. We reread, we arrange, we reinterpret to bring out how labor, the condition of workers are modern issues of our daily lives, more than so much chatter that covers us, knowing that we musicians. First of all, we are workers.

La Spezia International Jazz Festival

Jul 24, 2023

Work Song

La Spezia International Jazz Festival