Even if the Italian composer Valerio Camporini Faggioni recently pushed a new album, titled “Form and Disintegration”, we decided to step back to his previous output “Sud e Magia” (both labeled by Eiga), due to the cultural interconnections and the awesome overlapping of its musical content with Southern Italy folklore, superstition, tradition, religious and magical beliefs, and ethnographic research as well as to its connection to cinema, as its music was the aural part of the movie “Sow the Wind”, a movie by Danilo Caputo, presented at the 71st Berlinale Film Festival. The title itself is a quote from “Magic: A Theory from the South” (original Italian title “Sud e Magia”), an interesting anthropological essay by Ernesto De Martino dating back to 1959, where the author focused on the persistence of many pagan rituals and beliefs in the southern regions of Italy. I can’t but recommend approaching this album, if you missed it, as well as his recent output, which I will try to introduce on this webspace shortly, time permitting!
Chain D.L.K.: Hey Valerio! How are you doing?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
Chain D.L.K.: Quite well, thanks. As a fan of olive trees and also due to my Apulian origins, my curiosity can’t be but attracted by your recent output, but before talking about it, I’d like you to focus on your path until here. Firstly, I read you’re not new to scoring movies. Can you trace back your intersections with the seventh art?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: Hard to say! Since I was a kid, I added music to everything I did. If I was writing an essay for school, I would also write the musical commentary in words, embedded in the text, like ‘and now enter the violins’ — with the know-it-all attitude of a teenager -. Teachers didn’t like this much, perhaps they were right.
Later I realized I liked to mix different media, I also worked with installations for example, and set off to London to study film scoring. However, I didn’t last long, I was still young and critiquing too much the works of the old masters and was thrown out, but that’s actually what you should do when you’re young, reckless, and a bit stupid.
Chain D.L.K.: The previous question relates to the fact ‘Sud and Magia’ is also a kind of soundtrack, even if the title seems to describe the album as something wider, as it shouldn’t include only music, but also studies for ‘Sow the Wind’. Any word about this peculiar aspect of the album?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: The album started its life as the soundtrack of “Sow the Wind”, but as it often happens with film scores, the outcome was a hybrid, a compromise.
The version I released on record serves the music much better in my opinion, and it includes fragments that were left on the cutting room floor during the editing of the movie or that were created when approaching the soundtrack.
Chain D.L.K.: It typically happens that a movie director wants to control any aspect of their release, that makes full sense. Did Danilo Caputo influence music in one way or another? How did you relate to him for the music (and the studies?) of ‘Sud and Magia’?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: Yes he did, we worked quite closely and it’s a long process. Ideas and sketches went back and forth between me and Danilo for more than 6 months before filming even began.
We share a common knowledge of Di Martino’s work, and it’s the second movie we do together, so we know each other a bit I’d say, I think of him as a very dear friend. In general, our objectives for what a soundtrack should be tended to go towards a similar end, so it’s always a process I enjoy.
Chain D.L.K.: The album was named after an essay by Ernesto Di Martino, who deeply studied the strong influence of esoteric beliefs in the ordinary life of many communities of South Italy… how did you get into these studies?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: I studied Anthropology at university and “Sud e Magia” was one of the most fascinating texts I had the luck to read.
Chain D.L.K.: Can you share any background work for any of the tracks included in this album? For instance, you mentioned insects on two occasions to give a title to your tracks. How come?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: It was in the screenplay, that ‘good’ insects are the solution the main character chooses to predate on the ‘bad’ insects that are destroying the olive tree. It’s based on very solid science.
I used sounds that would summon the idea of insects and inserted them rhythmically in an Euclidean grid, a way of forming beats with a circular approach.
Chain D.L.K.: When I listen to an album for the very first time, I generally try to avoid any influence related to the cultural background. I appreciated your music, as it’s evocative, but does it sound weird if I say that the track “Downstream Ascent” made me think of the Japanese fatal ritual of Seppuku? Any word about this fascinating track?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: You must possess fine ears, it wasn’t Seppuku specifically, but yes, it’s related to Japan most definitively. One of our starting points was the music of Toru Takemitsu, and his approach to nature, so that’s probably what you sensed.
In the actual movie soundtrack, most of this aspect of the composition was omitted, but in the record, I brought it back in, as for me, it works a lot better with it.
Chain D.L.K.: I haven’t seen ‘Sow the Wind’ yet, but I guess the Nica you mentioned is a character of the movie, or does it refer to something else?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: Yes! Nica is the main character. She’s a young woman originally from Apulia, who decides to go back to her native village after a period of studies abroad, that’s how the film starts, I won’t spoil it for you any further.
Chain D.L.K.: Apropos of Nica, one of the more entrancing moments of the entire album was reached on ‘Nica as Nike’. What’s its source for inspiration or musical (more or less hidden) references?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: That’s one of those tracks that comes out quickly, without too much thinking, one of those everyone likes immediately.
But more in general as that particular music was used towards the end of the movie, I wanted to tell the story of a somewhat victorious Nica, hence the reference to the Greek goddess of victory Nike.
The old gods were quite strong in Apulia, so it made even more sense.
Chain D.L.K.: If I remember well, Di Martino was quite critical of the “breaking” of the magical dimension of modern culture. Speaking in general, do you think that recovering a connection with the magics would be beneficial or not? What’s the role of music in such a cultural process?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: Yes, if we could outdistance ourselves with the more superstitious aspect of it. I’m not superstitious at all, I’m for science, and I don’t believe in astrology or any of the sorts.
But if we go beyond that and think of magic as reconnecting with the forces of nature and the ecosystem we inhabit, then I couldn’t agree more. That was I believe also the intention of the movie.
To add to that we can say that mainstream music is very distant from its original purpose and even the way we experience music, mostly isolated, is at the opposite spectrum of what a ritualistic experience should be. There’s a lot of work to be done, but the wheel is constantly spinning so perhaps we’ll go back to experiencing music more communally, and in that sense, more magical.
Chain D.L.K.: I saw awesome items played by your ensemble. Any word on them?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: They’re all fantastic musicians, and they all come from different parts of the world.
Filippo De Laura is as gifted a multi-instrumentalist as you would find, he’s from Italy but now lives in the USA (as the other percussionist George Diefenbach).
Veronika is from Georgia. She comes from a very different background than mine and probably thinks my music is strange, but she has a really beautiful sound.
Anna Petrini, despite the name, is fully Swedish and one of the very few Paetzold recover players, was very gracious in agreeing to work with us on this project, I cannot thank her enough.
Chain D.L.K.: Any work in progress?
Valerio Camporini Faggioni: Yes I’m releasing a new record this November, called ‘Form and Disintegration’ on Eiga, through Bandcamp, I hope you’ll find time to listen to it.
I’m also working on another movie but in the best tradition of movie making I cannot tell you anything about it, or I’d have to kill you (yes they are very superstitious).
Visit Valerio Camporini Faggioni on the web:
https://valeriolab.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/valeriolab