Italian Bluegrass: Beppe Gambetta

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

Photos courtesy Yulunga Arts

BEPPE GAMBETTA IS A NATIVE OF GENOVA, ITALY, but the flatpicking guitar hero has become one of the most acclaimed purveyors of what most would consider distinctly American music: bluegrass, country and blues.

While the genesis of those styles comes from the United Kingdom and Africa, Gambetta has researched the Italian influence on bluegrass and country music — and he's come up with some fascinating connections. "Flatpicking is the style that was developed from the style of the fathers of early country music who started to play with a pick," Gambetta said. "But I like to think of this style as a more universal language. I use this language to play my own music, and not just be connecting with bluegrass."

The 52-year-old Gambetta plays at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church in Rockville on Monday night as part of the Institute of Musical Traditions series. We caught up with Gambetta during his recent stint of dates on the West Coast. He talked to us from Oregon while staying at the home of Mason Williams, the guitarist and comedian who made "Classical Gas" such a huge hit in 1968.

» EXPRESS: You grew up and still live in Genova, Italy. How did growing up in such a historic city influence you as a musician?
» GAMBETTA: If you live in a town that has a strong history, you can get different inspiration from in it. In my hometown, the third student of [classical giant] Nicolo Paganini is still alive. Paganini was giving all of his secrets to one child, and this child gave it to another, and here is this third person who got all of secrets and he's 93 years old. I visit him, and he would like me to use just one position on the guitar and, without moving my hand, cover 10 frets, like Paganini would do. Genova is a town that has a nice connection with its past.

» EXPRESS: You started off in the local children's orchestra, studying classical. Then you moved on to electric guitar and Led Zeppelin. How did you make the leap back to acoustic music and bluegrass in particular?
» GAMBETTA: When I was 17, someone brought some material from the United States, and I got to hear Doc Watson, Norman Blake and all of these great players. And I was fascinated by the intensity of this music that didn't have any drums. It was so purely acoustic, and it has so much energy. So I devoted many years to learn this style. I wrote books, and after a while I started to travel. In 1988, I wanted to do something important in this field, so I rented the first digital tape recorder that was possible to get in the American market, and I traveled through the United States and tried to meet with all the great heroes of this music. So I met with Norman Blake, Dan Crary, David Grier, John Jorgenson and so many others. And I recorded with each of them, one tune, and I produced this first album, "Dialogs," which is probably the first ever album recorded on the road with this digital machine. It was one of the great moments of my career, and people start to know about me and respect me. And after I did many other projects.

» EXPRESS: What was harder for you: Singing in English or playing bluegrass music without ever having seen someone actually perform it?
» GAMBETTA: The singing is less difficult to do mistakes than when you talk. It was more intimidating to play this music and never seen a flatpicker, so I had to guess everything and transcribe a lot of music. I wrote several books about flatpicking, and the first books that I wrote were a whole history of flatpicking. I wrote them without seeing a real flatpicker because I was living in Italy. I was just studying on albums. That was really a challenge. But it made me go really deep into this music, because if you don't see the player, it's really to guess everything with your sensibilities.

» EXPRESS: Italy wasn't unified into a single country until 1861, which means each region developed its own distinct form of music, not to mention all the different language dialects. Which forms of Italian folk music have influenced you the most?
» GAMBETTA: Every region has a totally different language. If I go to Milan and I'm in a bar and they speak strongly their own dialect, I barely understand a couple a words. Also, the Genovese dialect is extremely difficult to understand. So this difference, in the period when unified, it created problems because communications and difference between the regions were problematic. But now, it gives a cultural uniqueness to Italy. So among all the different regions, there are great forms of traditional music. Some of them they use the guitar in interesting ways, particularly Sardinia, which is this island. In Sardinia, in some areas, there is a form of guitar that is different from a regular guitar — it's similar to a guitarron in Mexico. It's a bigger guitar, and it's tuned a couple of steps down. It's played with a big pick with some interesting movements that are similar to what in America is called crosspicking: movements in the same direction on groups of strings. So this form of guitar playing was really fascinating to me. I did some studies of the melodies and the techniques, and I incorporated this into my playing.

» EXPRESS: You've always been more than just a player; you've really been a student of folk music from around the world. You made some very interesting discoveries about the influence of Italians and Italian-Americans on country and bluegrass music.
» GAMBETTA: I did some study about … the turn of the last century immigration to the United States. It was really a productive period. It was really interesting to see how Italians and Italian-Americans were a nice part of the melting pot that generated jazz and many other types of great music.

"Traversata" is a very interesting album that we did with David Grisman. We brought back to life certain music from the turn of the [last] century from the great immigration. We listened for months to old, scratchy 78 albums with music from Giovanni Giovale, Rudy Cipolla, Pasquale Taraffo, all of these people. And what came out was a mosaic of many, many little contributions to the melting pot that Italian-Americans gave.

It's interesting to see Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, he found a Neapolitan mandolin in house, and he decided to become a mandolinist because somehow, someone in his house had a Neapolitan mandolin. There are really interesting connections, and there was not too much study of this particular ethnic contribution to the melting pot.

» Saint Mark Presbyterian Church, 10701 Old Georgetown Rd., Rockville; Mon., 7:30 p.m., $14 advance, $17 at door; 301-754-3611.