Sicily: Navigating Responses to Global Cultural Patterns

Abstract

The persistence in Sicily until the late 1950s of a socio-economic structure firmly entrenched in the pre-industrial age, was to allow its ancient musical practices to remain in use, tied simply to circumstances of everyday life (from lullabies to funeral laments) and calendar feasts (devotional songs). Though today, on the one hand, there is a progressive decline of songs allied to rural way of life and disappearing traditional works (peasants, carters, sulfur-and-salt miners, fishermen, etc.) there is, on the other hand, a noticeably perennial quality associated to songs tied to ritual contexts (Christmas, Easter and local celebrations of patron saints), that still point out an evidence of “local resistance” to the spreading of behaviours suggested by the “global cultural patterns”. This contribution will be framed by a critique of Sicilian song in its wider context, one that will seek to scientifically address the revival of popular song and its relationship to tourism, commercialisation and the market (via the emigrant diaspora).