“The Curannera (Curannérə in Tarantino dialect), once considered by the commoner populace to be a healer, was a woman of the people who practiced folk or traditional medicine able to cure anything from sore throats to headaches, to set dislocations, and to regulate any irregularities in the life stages of a woman. Through a variety of methods, often simultaneously and quite frequently she would turn to natural science by employing herbs, stones, and amulets. The Curannera used elements of nature in ritualistic practices to soothe the healing of the soul and spirit, for this reason, she is an inspiring muse for Yarákä. “She represents for us the perfect bridge between heaven and earth and seemingly distant cultures’’ as Gianni Sciambarruto explains while revealing the research and writing path the Tarantino trio delved into and took on in their new recording project to be released on Friday, April 28th for the Zero Nove Nove record label.
Yarákä’s repertoire is steeped in rituals: each song recounts the exorcism of evil from the soul or of a fear that blocks the flow of energy, finding healing through an ancestral song, as happens in other southern traditions in America. The importance of the "Curandera", a figure who has learned to take care of herself and others, highlights the connection that exists with the shamanic world where the figure of a woman is also present. She is often of Andean origin and serves the same purpose: a presence who lives in contact with the earth and respects the forces of nature, which in turn respect her in her integrity of spirit.
Eight songs including original compositions and some from the tradition re-arranged. The musical journey of Yarákä winds its way throughout all of Southern Italy starting from the old city of Taranto, the backdrop to the storytelling of the ensemble's origins and research work carried out with the intention of rediscovering and uplifting the traditions of the past. A journey that departs from one's own land, which uses invocation, or a call or summons as an anthropological phenomenon is something, in fact, which fascinated the trio, leading them to dig into the primordial to find the junction point between primordial cultures and ethnic groups. Taranto, like all seaside cities, is historically a meeting point between distant places. Through their music, Yarákä wishes to pay homage to the long history of the city founded by the Spartans, and to the significant role it played during the Magna Grecia period. The rediscovery of the Tarantino dialect, which inherently possesses a unique musical rhythmicity, represents the backbone of the ensemble and the uniqueness of their journey, as well as a tool to spread the ideals and the millenary history of the City of the two seas in a genuine fashion.
Yarákä thereby expresses a strong attachment to those ancient traditions of which traces of them risk being lost over time. They are the spokespersons for the sensitivity awakening process of the human soul. “In a historical period in which - continues Virginia Pavone - many values are increasingly crumbling, it is difficult to love oneself; by practicing love towards others and towards life, one understands exactly what love is and how to be able to love to heal from the wounds that each of us carries within, by healing them, as the Curannera taught us”.
For their research, Yaràkä tapped into bibliographic collections of a historical-critical etymological type and into an oral investigation to obtain documents relating to the ritualistic uses and customs of the past. “Coming from small townships, – says Simone Carrino – we as Yarákä place a great deal of importance on the values of “minimalist or pared down” ways of living found in communities that are predominantly farming where music accompanied, and marked, moments of a life lived in close contact with nature. Our research, therefore, also becomes a sort of internalization of this world, which spoke in simple expressions, so that we may hand it back to ours, in customized, tailored clothing that is not, however, misshapen”.