The story behind The Sicilian Jazz Project, the new album from Michael Occhipinti, is as fascinating as the music itself.
Inspired by Sicilian folk and popular music, the local guitarist conceptualized an ambitious idea -- to arrange that repertoire for his jazz group.
Given the complexities inherent in both styles of music and the challenges of marrying two vastly different sounds, it is an understatement to say that this is a cross-cultural collaboration few of us would have dreamed of hearing.
It could have resulted in a hodgepodge, but it does not. The musical mix is exuberant and engaging, and the playing by some of T.O.'s finest musicians is stellar.
In the album's detailed liner notes -- which definitely increased my appreciation for the music -- Occhipinti says his idea was birthed three months after his daughter Beatrice was born.
"Even as I matured into a musician interested in the music of other cultures, somehow the music of Sicily didn't strike me as something I'd ever perform," Occhipinti writes. "Taking my daughter to Sicily changed that and made me want to know more about my own history and identity, and the music was an obvious place to start."
Occhipinti says some of his cousins hooked him up with recordings of local folkloric groups, but it was a copy of Italian Treasury: Sicily that really blew his mind.
Recorded in 1954 by the renowned ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, the album features "the voices and instruments of peasants, fishermen, shepherds, salt and sulphur miners, cart drivers, storytellers and strolling players singing murder ballads, lullabies and songs of love, work, and devotion."
"When I heard the Lomax stuff I liked the fact they were field recordings," Occhipinti says, explaining the songs provided the blueprint for the record. "It was liberating, you're not trapped by any familiar recorded versions of a tune (should you choose to reinterpret them).
"Some of it was familiar but some of it completely shocked me," he adds. "For example, the Arabic and North African quality of the music was surprising. It wasn't the idea I had in my head, the kind of polished tarantella (folk dance music) that I'd heard at weddings."
Occhipinti admits it was a challenge to adapt what he'd heard on the Lomax compilation to a jazz setting.
He says his original idea was to cut an all-instrumental record.
"So much of that (folkloric) music is in 6/8 time or 12/8 time and I thought, 'I can't make an entire record with that feel.' So it was simply a matter of asking myself, 'If I'm not gonna put it in triplet field then what time signature am I gonna put it in?'
For the answer to that question, cue up Jolla.
"It opens with Louis Simao playing the traditional tarantella on the accordion and then we go into a 7/4 funk thing," Occhipinti says.
Being musically adventurous has put The Sicilian Jazz Project in the same boat as Autorickshaw, the local genre-bending Indo-jazz ensemble -- no one knows where to lump them.
"We played a lot of jazz festivals this summer, but we also played at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and a few weeks ago a few of us did a show for the Sicilian Cultural Society," Occhipinti says.
"It was all elderly Sicilians, but we did what we do and they loved it. At the end of the night they said that what knocked them out was they recognized the songs but they also liked the fact we took them places they didn't expect to go."
That, I interject, has got to be the biggest compliment the group will ever receive.
"It is. Without question," he agrees. "It's pretty thrilling. I have to say that I never really thought it would mean so much to me to play in front of people who are from my parents' generation and who would like it."
