Studies in Maltese Popular Music

Philip Ciantar

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000379143
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoría: Ethnomusicology

This book examines the diverse facets of popular music in Malta, paying special attention to g?ana (Malta's folk song), the wind band tradition, and modern popular music. Ciantar provides intriguing discussions and examples of how popular music on this small Mediterranean island country interacts with other aspects of the island's life and culture such as language, religion, history, customs, and politics. Through a series of ethnographic vignettes, the book explores the music as it takes place in bars, at festivals, and during village celebrations, and considers how it is talked about in the local press, at group gatherings, and on social media. The ethnography adopted here is that of a native musician and ethnomusicologist and therefore marries the author's memories with ongoing observations and their evaluation.

1Studies and snippets in Maltese popular music

Popular music-making in Malta has over the years attracted the attention of travellers, foreigners residing in Malta as well as scholars, both local and international, from academic disciplines ranging from ethnomusicology to others such as history, anthropology, linguistics, and literature. Għana has attracted most of this attention, perhaps due to its strong claim as representative of the earliest musical practices on the island. Data and studies concerning popular music in Malta are dispersed in a range of sources, from academic and newspaper articles to legal documents, testimonials, travellers' memoirs, and specialised monographs and journals to mention just a few. Whilst fully fledged studies focus on one or another aspect of Maltese popular music, other material emerges in snippets and is traced to diverse written sources. Although scattered bits of information might initially be thought of as having little value, further reflections may reveal much in terms of what each of the three musical activities dealt with in this book mean in Maltese culture and society and, equally important, how these were ascribed that meaning. A discussion of available literary sources that in one way or another relate to local popular music, whether these are major studies or just minor contributions, is always useful because what derives from them will serve both as a background to the chapters that follow as well as providing further insights and explanation of the why and how of the musical present. This chapter will also contribute additional reflections about details which deserve more attention or which might even have passed unnoticed.

The first section will focus on sources referring to early vernacular music in Malta that go back to medieval times and the broader musical activity that emerges out of these sources when viewed in relation to one another. This section will delve, amongst other things, into the intentions behind the use of the native language (Maltese) over Latin in early locally produced poetry that might have been written to be sung. Other issues treated in this first section focus on early vernacular music-making as a commodity, as well as the connections of music with morality, status, respect, and public order. The second section will focus on both early and more recent writings on għana that shed light, for instance, on its affinity with singing from nearby Italy, its ritualistic quality, as well as its symbolic function in contemporary Maltese life and culture. The third section looks into writings concerning the local wind band tradition and related themes that transpire from a range of academic disciplines such as theatre studies and health sciences. All these diverse interests attest to the centrality of this tradition in Malta and its many links to other domains of Maltese life. The fourth section will concentrate on the growth and diffusion of modern popular music in Malta with special attention to activities in the years preceding World War II up to Malta's 1992 reentry into the Eurovision Song Contest. Each of these sections highlights pathways of musical practices that involve people acting in a series of ‘cumulatively overlapping and criss-crossing social relationships’ (Finnegan 2007: 329) that relate them both to each other as well as, through personal networks, to different institutions and socially ordered spaces and times as implicated by each pathway. In what follows, music emerges in a complex network of world views, interests, intentions, and thinking about music which mould it intrinsically in all senses, starting from the way it is made to how it is transmitted and, eventually, consumed.

Snapshots of early vernacular music-making in Malta

Descriptions of vernacular music activities in Malta can be traced back to the late Middle Ages, mainly through the works of the late Maltese historian Godfrey Wettinger. Findings revealed by Wettinger come from sources such as court testimonies, notarial deeds, and ecclesiastical records. Descriptions from such sources shed light on the musical activity at that time and, by inference, on the earliest contexts in which music was made, transmitted, consumed, and, eventually, perceived and made meaningful. It is worth noting at this stage that in Malta during this early period church music was already active at least at the Mdina (Malta's old city) Cathedral as well as music during outdoor religious events. For instance, Wettinger and Fsadni (1968: 30) note that towards the end of the fifteenth century organists were appointed at the Mdina Cathedral and musicians from nearby Italy were invited to provide music for church processions. In parallel to this, outdoor festive music was performed in spaces close to churches and chapels since such celebrations were related to church events. Music performed during wedding celebrations can also be added to these.

The meagre existing descriptions of music-making from this early period throw light on the highly developed concept of the distinction between church and vernacular music as well as what songs, tunes, and dances were like and where, when, and how these were performed. The space and set-up in which music was held and the occasions on which it was performed would have been important factors in the local development of musical categories. These categories, that have shaped up throughout time, served ‘to condition the production and consumption of music’ (Castelo-Branco 2013: 675) and, by implication, the making and transformation of the music itself to fulfil continuously evolving demands. Most snapshots of this early musical activity evolve in the context of peasantry life with villagers working the lands leased to them by landowners, most of whom resided in Mdina.

The villagers were mostly peasants who never owned more than a very few small fields but who, as owners of such lands, were not beholden to anyone else whether the government or the feudal lords. Others held land owned by one or other of the two or three substantial landholders in the same village, or by one of the infinitely richer landowners who resided at Mdina. Possibly, they also held land owned by the Church. Contact with Mdina was mainly limited to the arranging of land-leases and the sale of the cash crops of cotton and cumin and occasional visits to the notary for such matters as marriage contracts …. The other villagers (raħlin) consisted of a few shepherds (raħħala) and a number of downtrodden farm labourers working for a wage on the estates of the larger proprietors mostly those from Mdina. There were tavern keepers and two or three priests and other church attendants.

(Wettinger 2015a: 9)

In the later Middle Ages, most of the common population in Malta was illiterate. In contrast to this, Latin was the language of culture and learning as well as the language used by the administration, replacing Arabic during Norman rule of the island (c. 1090–1530). Also, during the 15th century, Italian in its Sicilian form was subtly and gradually introduced to the island (Wettinger and Fsadni 1968: 33). Maltese, as a language descended from Sicilian Arabic, was considered as unsuitable as a vehicle of culture and, hence, impossible to transcribe properly in the Latin alphabet (Ibid.).

A poem that emerges from this sociolinguistic context was written in medieval Maltese around the 1480s by Pietro Caxaro, a councillor of the Mdina Università (the Mdina town council). Caxaro was described as ‘orator, poet and philosopher’ (Wettinger and Fsadni 1968: 38). The poem, labelled as cantilena, was discovered by Godfrey Wettinger and Mikiel Fsadni in the notarial records (December 1533–May 1563) of Caxaro's nephew, Brandano. In his poem, the poet laments about his uncompliant heart that had caused him suffering and anguish. In its allegorical and melancholic tone, the poem refers to a house that the poet had long been building but which collapsed as he had built it on the wrong site. The house that the poet referred to could have been his own career or some great ambition that he had staunchly worked to achieve but which, eventually, all vanished out of his hand. The poet laments that he could have avoided this if he had properly judged the situation. Nevertheless, he hopes for another chance to rebuild his house (with reference to his life) on a different site.

It is not yet clear whether this cantilena was written to be recited or sung. Whatever the case, what mostly matters here is that as early as the later Middle Ages the Maltese language was used by the natives to publicly express intense feelings into poetry (Wettinger and Fsadni 1968: 35). This occurred despite the fact that Caxaro, as a member of the Maltese intelligentsia, could have used Latin to elevate his poetry to the language of ‘culture’. Instead, he opted for the native language not only to express himself but also to enable the sharing of his sentiments with native listeners who had no knowledge of any other language except their own. Caxaro's use of Maltese is not only intriguing but also differs from the normal practice in Europe of that time when most cantilenas were written in Latin. In this case though the use of the native language had been given priority even over widespread international practices. Secular or sacred texts of European cantilenas were mostly matched to melodies in duple time and sung with an additional voice doubling the main voice at a higher or lower interval or to instrumental accompaniment. If Caxaro's cantilena was ever sung it could have employed a smooth and lyrical melodic style typical of cantilena melodies of that time. It could have had a predominant vocal top line supported by less complex instrumental accompaniment.

In terms of structure, Caxaro's cantilena makes use of a refrain-like section which, apart from adding more anguish to the tone of the poem, is suggestive of a fitting reiterated melody.¹

My house, it has fallen down, [the one] I have long been a-building.

The workmen [themselves] were not to blame, but it was the clay that gave way.

I found loose clay where I had hoped to find rock;

My house! It has fallen down!

My house! It has pushed down its foundations.

The workmen were not to blame, but the rock gave way.

I found loose clay where I had hoped to find rock;

(as translated in Wettinger and Fsadni 1968: 38)

Most notated music to poetry of medieval vernacular songs from other European countries shows that melody set for the first strophe was evidently intended to be reiterated for all the other strophes as in strophic singing (Forrest Kelly 2011: 24). By parallelism, strophic singing could have been adopted to Caxaro's cantilena if this was ever sung. The composition and singing of cantilenas in Medieval Europe was quite common at that time as it was in both Malta and Gozo. Wettinger refers to court cases mentioning the singing of cantilenas in late 15th-century Malta. One such case refers to a Gozitan cleric who was brought to ecclesiastical justice for addressing a married woman in an imprudent and insolent manner inside a church. Prior to this incident, he was allegedly seen singing loudly and reciting cantilenas during the night in camaraderie with youths in the streets of Gozo (Wettinger 2015b: 139). The testimonials expressed in this case imply a conflict between the man's status as a cleric and his participation in nighttime public singing which was seen by the witnesses as inappropriate. In another instance, Wettinger (2015c: 104) refers to young boys who in the early 16th century were reported to have sung cantilenas in the streets of Mdina. These songs were attributed to Thomasio de Abrami, at that time a grammar school teacher, possibly conversant with the Maltese language or Sicilian Arabic. Accounts such as these demonstrate the practice of group singing in late Medieval Malta which, structurally, could imply reliance on strophic singing to facilitate group participation due to its reiterated melodic nature.

Wettinger (2015d: 45) also refers to players of the lute, trumpets, and fiddles who in 1466 provided music for the wedding of a wealthy couple in Gozo. The wedding was that of Donna Lisa de Vignolo who, according to the norms and customs of that time, remarried too soon after the death of her first husband, the nobleman Antonius de Naso. Donna Lisa was accused by her late husband's relatives in the Maltese Episcopal Court of not waiting for the stipulated 40 days of mourning to pass before celebrating her second wedding (Wettinger 2015d: 41–56). One of the musicians, Salvus de Luchia, who was a lute player, witnessed under oath that he had participated together with other musicians during the said wedding by accompanying the dancing and singing. Music and its related activities during mourning were seen by the late husband's family as an act of disrespect and, therefore, as meriting strong condemnation.

Notarial documents from the 15th century attest to paid musicians providing wedding music. One such example refers to a notarial deed dated October 1467 (Cassar Pullicino and Camilleri 1998: 1). The deed refers to two musicians with the name of Petru Muscatu and Micheli Galdes who had established a three-year partnership to perform together in weddings; however, a few days later the same deed was amended and renewed. The revised version, apart from referring to the two performers as joculari (‘entertainers’), in this context mostly understood as players and singers, was intended to bind each part to always playing together at weddings and, in that way, ensuring that the remuneration they earned would be shared equally. Playing on their own could have implied vying between them for the most advantageous rates for the same service. Vella Bondin (2016: 10) notes that these two musicians ‘were also employed to accompany funerals’. Testimonials such as these provide an intriguing picture of the kind of music-making already thriving in Malta before the arrival of the Order of St John in 1530. Such descriptions show that musical distinctions on the basis of occasion and service were already entrenched in the local music scene. To this, one may add the different perceptions forged around each type of music produced and performed locally, how such perceptions even influenced other attitudes and modes of thinking towards the participation in and the production of different categories of music, and the flexibility adopted by the same musicians in their provision of music for contrasting events.

The practice of poem writing and the transformation of these poems into songs aimed to be sung in streets continued in the 16th century when Malta was under the rule of the Order of St John (1530–1798). In a study that traces the development of Maltese language up to its official recognition in 1964, Carmel Cassar (2001: 260) notes that the impact of the Counter-Reformation became evident in Malta during the presence on the island of Mgr. Pietro Dusina as an apostolic visitor and the setting up of a Roman Inquisition Tribunal in 1574. The attack of Dusina and the Inquisition Tribunal on local ‘popular culture’ was massive (Ibid.). The opposition of Dusina and the Holy See to practices relating to popular customs has sometimes i...