Exercises

1. Practise reading the words from the text. Learn their Russian equivalents:

to amplify, hymn, improvisation, rhythmic, to originate, percussive(ly), repertoire, rigidity, soloist, vibraphone, vitality

2. Say it in English:

1. Джаз впервые появился в США. 2. В джазе не много правил. 3. Способность играть джаз – редкое качество. 4. Духовые инструменты играют мелодию. 5. Марши составляют основную часть репертуара. 6. Это требует хорошего музыкального слуха и чувства ритма. 7. В отличие от классической музыки, джаз – это музыка исполнителя. 8. Многие придерживаются 12- или 32-тактной структуры. 9. Джаз определяется двумя основными характеристиками… 10. Иногда длительность сольной партии оговаривается заранее. 11. Музыканты импровизируют по очереди. 12. Блюзы состоят из 12 тактов.

3. Explain what is meant by:

1) improvisation; 2) swing (n); 3) march (n); 4) hymn; 5) vibraphone.

4. Answer the questions:

1. How do you personally feel about jazz?

2. Do you agree with Whitney Balliett’s definition of jazz as ‘the sound of surprise’?

The tunes you can’t refuse

From a secret place in southern Italy, where Old World mafia songs were born, comes a CD that celebrates the romance and violence of malavita.

BY LORRAINE ALI

It’s just past midnight, the mafia feast is in full swing and I’m playing a game in my head called Who’s the Boss? It’s not easy to focus while distracted by the smell of roast sausages, the taste of sweet white wine and the sight of a portly man in a tweed cap busting out the accordion. There are 35 guests to choose from at this gathering in the rugged Aspromonte range of southern Italy. They’ve come to celebrate one of three possible things: someone sprung from jail, a newly “made” man or the end of a longstanding vendetta. Then again, it could be a mock feast thrown for journalists in town to report on malavita music: mafia folk tunes written by jailed “family” members, played during traditional feasts – and taboo throughout the rest of Italy. My guide, Francesco Sbano – a native Calabrian, “family” friend and coproducer of a new malavita CD, “La Musica della Mafia” – never explains which joyous event we’re celebrating, nor does he identify the other people seated at the long wood-plank tables...

Trying to nail down facts about local mafia culture is like trying to catch fish in the Ionian sea with your bare hands. People’s stories, like their songs, live somewhere between fact and myth. Il canto di malavita – songs of a life of crime – are filled with raspy-voiced men singing of honour, retribution and incarceration, against the romantic sounds of accordion, lyre and batente guitar. Many of the numbers date back to the mid-1800s and were passed from cell to cell, farm to farm, generation to generation. Other Italians aren’t impressed. As one southern native told me, “Tuscany is known for its antiquity and artifacts, Milan for its fashion industry and Calabria for its criminality and kidnapping.” But now the larger world is discovering underground Calabria. “La Musica della Mafia: Il Canto di Malavita” was released throughout Europe in 2000 by the German pop label PIAS and, in a coup similar to the Buena Vista Social Club’s success, it sold a surprising 60,000 copies. The CD hits US stores next week.

But it’s still not for sale in Italy. According to Peter Cadera, head of PIAS, Italian distributors won’t touch it. Although Calabrians like to say it’s banned, there’s no specific law against the music itself. Section 21 of the Italian Constitution prohibits anything that promotes the mafia, but it’s rarely used to throw musicians behind bars. “The judge and police will be the first to get up and dance”, says a mafia don, a few days after the feast. “It would be impossible for the government to stop the selling of these tapes. How do you cancel part of history?” Malavita has been kept alive on crudely packaged cassettes with titles like “Carceratu: Mamma Pirdunimi” (“Prisoner: Mama Forgive Me”), sold in open markets and the backs of record stores, with simple drawings of sad men behind bars, grieving mamas and bloody, slain traitors. “I use those illustrations for the common man,” says Mimmo Siclari, malavita’s most prolific producer, “so he knows what he’s getting.” Siclari’s been collecting these songs for 30 years and selling them from a vending truck at swap meets.

There are no bloody roses or dead snitches on the tasteful black-and-white cover of “La Musica della Mafia: Il Canto di Malavita”, which is clearly aimed at NRP listeners and music purists. It positions the CD as a rare regional treasure saved from the monocultural crush of MTV. Many of the men who recorded these songs in the 1970s are dead, and the old mountain dialect and mafia code they sang in is nearly obsolete. These lyrics are often brutal – “While the sawn-off shotgun sings/The traitor screams and dies” – but the music is sentimental, the vocals heart-wrenching. At least one group is already opposing the release of the CD here, just as a small but vocal minority opposes HBO’s “The Sopranos”. It makes it appear that all Italians associate themselves with the mafia,” says John Salamone, executive director of the National Italian-American Foundation, “which of course is not true.”

Depending on whom you talk to, the mafia, born around 1860, was either an organized-crime ring that taunted the authorities and terrorized the people or an underground Robin Hood government that protected southern villagers from the land barons and corrupt Italian officials. And these opposing views are still alive and well in Calabria. “If I have my car stolen, I do not go to the police,” says Sbano. “I go to the mafia. They are the ones who will get it back.” Though the southern mafia eventually became notorious for gunrunning and kidnapping…, today’s traditionalists still romanticize the old days and bash the “new mafia“ (established only in the 1970s) for delving into less “honourable” pursuits such as drug dealing and prostitution.

“Malavita music is there to teach young people about respect and honour, and the history of their region,” says a mafia don willing to be interviewed about malavita… “When problems arose in the old society, we’d resolve it with a knife,” he says, taking a drag off his cigarette and exposing a thin scar down the back of his forearm. “Nobody died. It was enough to get a bit of blood – to slice an arm or face. The next day, you would drink wine together.”

The day after the feast in the mountains, we zig-zag down treacherous dirt switchbacks in a minivan, heading toward the santuario Madonna della Montagna in Polsi, five hours away. When we arrive, the priest will greet the musicians with open arms, and they’ll play in the courtyard for an audience made up of eight people, two cows and a pig. Halfway up the mountain, we pick up a tiny, old mystery man who tries to entertain me with his watch: “Buon giorno!” it announces at the push of a button. “Sono le tre e ventuno.” Pepe, the accordion player, hands him a tambourine from the back seat, and the two begin to play an old Calabrian tune. The accordion dances, the tambourine jangles and the old man’s voice touches ancient, primal chords. All of a sudden, I want to cry. Not because I’m queasy and tired, but because the music is beautiful and the weathered man next to me, who speaks a rural dialect that even young Italians don’t understand, seems as endangered as the music itself. It’s an ode to a life, no matter how ruthless or romanticized, that’s gone forever. He hits his watch again for fun, laughs, then sings his way down the rest of the mountain. ■

(from Newsweek)

1. Practise reading the words from the text. Learn their Russian equivalents:

accordion, canopy, forearm, incarceration, mafia, obsolete, patio, to prohibit, taboo, treacherous, vendetta

2. Say how you understand the following word-combinations:

1. nasal voices, a longstanding vendetta, a stucco house, a commanding man, a scary man, raspy-voiced men, underground Calabria, a tasteful cover, a vocal minority, corrupt officials, a prolific producer, an underground Robin Hood government, a weathered man;

2. pop label, open market, gunrunning, a mafia don, old-timer, family;

3. to live somewhere between fact and myth, to sing in mafia code, music purists.

3. Practise the pronunciation of the given place-names. Give their Russian equivalents:

1) the Ionian Sea; 2) Tuscany.

4. VOCABULARY

1) to throw a feast/a party	6) to position sth as
2) to nail sth down (e.g. facts)	7) alive and well (Cf: alive and kicking)
3) retribution	8) to romanticise sth/sb
4) to date back to	9) to greet sb with open arms
5) in a coup	10) queasy

5. Find in the article the English for:

1) ржавый навес; 2) передавались из камеры в камеру, …из поколения в поколение; 3) бросить кого-либо за решетку; 4) убитый предатель;

5) продавать ч-л с машины; 6) мертвый «стукач»; 7) преступная группировка; 8) ода жизни.

6. Interpret the sentences:

1. It’s just past midnight, the mafia feast is in full swing and I’m playing a game in my head called Who’s the Boss? 2. It positions the CD as a rare regional treasure saved from the monocultural crush of MTV. 3. It’s an ode to a life, no matter how ruthless or romanticized, that’s gone forever.

7. Answer the questions:

1) What is ‘mafia music’? What’s your attitude towards its Russian counterpart – “шансон”? Why is it so popular in this country, do you think?

2) “Malavita music is there to teach young people about respect and honour, and the history of their region…” Do you agree with this opinion?

UNIT 4. FROM OPERA TO ROCK OPERA

a) “As the 20th century developed, operatic styles reflected both persistent national approaches and the growing internationalism represented by the atonal and serial techniques. Most modern composers tended to incorporate not only symphonic techniques but also folk, popular, or jazz styles into their works. Opera has always been vocal. The prima donna traditionally has been the pivot of a successful production. In the 20th century, however, emphasis has also been placed on the operatic ensemble, with the conductor, the scenic designer, and the stage director assuming roles at least coequal with the singers. The Italian producer and designer Franco Zeffirelli was one of the leaders of the neo-romantic revival in opera staging and design during the early 1960s. Other influential stage directors include Jonathon Miller, from Great Britain, and Americans Frank Corsaro, Sarah Caldwell, and Peter Sellars.

A growth in multimedia production techniques has paralleled the increase in electronic and synthesizer music by modern composers. While not strictly an opera, Mass (1971), written by Leonard Bernstein, blended operatic elements into a mixed-media format in which dance, electronic music, and novel stage techniques all played a part. Slide projections and film were used to great effect in the New York City Opera Company's productions of A Village Romeo and Juliet (1907) by Frederick Delius and Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City, 1920) by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, both directed by Frank Corsaro. The Center Opera of Minneapolis utilized striking lighting and film effects in Faust Counter Faust, a concoction of original music interspersed with tape recordings of previous Faust operas. Such rock operas as Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) written and composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, emphasized multimedia stage techniques. In both standard theatres and experimental workshops, opera seemed to be regaining the place it had held in the 17th century as a scenic innovator and staging pioneer.”

b) Closely related to the genre of rock-opera is that of musical or musical comedy, i.e. theatrical production in which songs and choruses, instrumental accompaniments and interludes, and often dance are integrated into a dramatic plot. The genre was developed and refined in the United States, particularly in the theaters along Broadway in New York City, during the first half of the 20th century. The musical was influenced by a variety of 19th-century theatrical forms, including operetta, comic opera, pantomime, minstrel show, vaudeville, and burlesque.

c) A rock opera or rock musical is a musical piece in the form of an opera or a musical in a modern rock and roll style rather than more traditional forms. It differs from conventional rock and roll music, which is often a song that is unlinked in plot or story with other songs, but overlaps considerably with concept album or rock musical.

Which of these categories a particular work falls into is largely defined by the intent and self-definition of the work by its creator. The formal distinction may be that the rock opera tells a coherent (if often sketchy) story and a concept album sets a mood or maintains a theme, but some albums share aspects of both of these cases. The rock musical is generally first performed as a theatrical production rather than appearing as an album, has little or no identification with a particular band and a generally stronger air of show business. The categories are flexible, to say the least.

(from Knowledgerush Encyclopedia)