Malta rediscovers its lost voices

A forgotten part of our local socio-political history – and almost erased from local memory – is the early recording of folk and popular music from Malta in the early years of the 1930s. Founding member of traditional Maltese folklore ensemble Etnika, Andrew Alamango has embarked on a project aimed at gathering information, cataloguing and documenting this phenomenon by collecting and digitising the records with the aim of making them publicly accessible for research and posterity.

Alamango maintains that “the whole idea stemmed primarily from a sense of deprivation – being deprived of access to a heritage of music, which somehow I imagined must have been around but was told was lost. So now it’s available!”

The activity of recording music as a means of documenting, selling and distributing can be traced back to the early 20th century, when record companies were in extreme competition to mass produce and sell records.

The recording of Maltese music was initiated in early 1931 and was stimulated by the fact that gramophone machines became more accessible and marketable. This encouraged local agents to take on the new enterprise of recording local artistes and selling their records for local consumption. By then, gramophones and records had become all the rage, but when the Maltese heard their own music and language played back to them it was a curious self-reflection of their own culture and society.

Most of the recordings of Maltese music were recorded in overseas studios, which were affiliated with the major labels. Sending musicians overseas to record and selling their records became a lucrative business. The journals of the day attest to the popularity of these ‘Dischi Maltin’ and regularly advertised the arrival of the new listings of records. These titles were published on the main labels including Zonophone, HMV, Pathe records, Polyphon and Odeon.

Alamango comments about the lack of awareness of these records, prior to this project: “It’s very clear that actually very few people knew of these records before their recent release. This is not to say that nobody had ever thought about it before, but it was hard to conceive of such an idea, when actually there were few or no references to these records in our history or documents. It is very sad that these things, including the socio-political history of our own country was never taught to us – and I believe it still isn’t taught.”

From the late 1920s, local stores in Sliema, Valletta, Cospicua, Hamrun and Gozo sold American and English records and a good portion of Italian opera and operetta. The exposure to this culture of classical and popular culture influenced local composers and artists of the day, and the imported culture filled the dance halls in Valletta and Sliema, with orchestras churning out waltzes, tangos and fox-trots for entertainment of the population. Alamango believes that the discovery of this material could even impact the scene today: “This material, could, if taken seriously and disseminated well, have a serious impact on folk music and its interpretation as well as the function of the Maltese language in music. It could help revamp the criteria of popular music today.”

Meanwhile, the Valletta agents of P. Carabott Musical Establishment of Merchants street and Anthony D’Amato of St. John Street, Valletta, continued to contract musicians and groups for the recording of local music. Carabott issued a catalogue in 1931 with a total of 50 records, which were recorded locally under Odeon label.

D’Amato, whose shop still stands, was agent for His Master’s Voice, also known as the Gramophone Company. Entering into a deal with the Middlesex based company meant he would send groups of musicians to record in the HMV studios in Milan over a period of two years, recording Carlo Satariano, Emmanuele Cilia and Domenico Busuttil amongst others.

The production and sale of Maltese 78rpm records created quite a stir and did not go unnoticed by other strata of society, who commented with disdain towards the quality of this ‘popular’ music.

So one would ask, ‘why was the phenomenon so short-lived?’ and why was the story forgotten? The unprecedented re-release of a selection of these records in the early 1960s on 45rpm vinyl’s, ensured the continuity of a few of these tunes for a couple of decades more, otherwise, the story of recording Maltese music in the interwar period had been well buried.

Alamango goes on to recall some of his most exciting finds. “The hunt for records was an exciting investigation all round – from realising the extent of the recordings, to the stories of people, and finding actual records I’d never seen before, the whole project was and still is exciting and extraordinary in findings.

Highlights of the project included listening to a rare example of high pitched chant (Għana fil-għoli) by Is-Semenza, to discovering the original studio recording sheets of the HMV studio in Milan, finding the masters of some records at EMI, discovering pictures of musicians and being able to put a face to a musician, learning anecdotes about the musicians and the recording sessions, and getting in touch with families 80 years after the recordings – you can’t imagine their reaction!”

As part of the National Memory Project, the music was transferred to digital from the 80-year old relics, and will soon be available for public reference in a publication called ‘Malta’s Lost Voices’. This same library constitutes the first step in the setting up the National Sound archives.

The project has been funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, and endorsed by the National Archives.
Alamango is grateful for their support, stating “Clearly all parties and the population have benefitted here and have gained credibility, locally and internationally. The first step in the creation of sound archives and preserving for posterity are dignified things to do and the authorities deserve the praise for this.”

What’s more interesting is that in this project reaches far further than our islands. “There is massive interest form the research and archive institutions, some music publishers of classical and world music, as well as a lot of interest from discographers, musicologists, collectors and ethnomusicologists worldwide.”

More information on http://www.filflarecords.com/.