There is a Sicily that no longer exists, but that continues to survive in the recordings, in black and white photographs and in the notes collected along a journey that became fundamental for the history of ethnomusicology. It is the one told by Sicily 1954. The musical journey of Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, the exhibition inaugurated on May 15 at the Italian Institute of Culture of New York which can be visited until May 31.
The exhibition celebrates the work of American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and Italian scholar Diego Carpitella, who in 1954 crossed Sicily to document popular songs, rituals and musical traditions of rural communities. A field survey that has preserved a sound heritage today considered essential to understand Italian popular music and, more generally, the relationship between memory and cultural transmission.
The exhibition, curated by Sergio Bonanzinga and Rosario Perricone, collects photographs, research notebooks, original recordings and archive materials from that trip. But the version presented in New York is not a simple replica of the project exhibited in 2024 in Palermo, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the research.
As Bonanzinga explained during the inauguration, the project was born in fact from a work started together with Perricone for the exhibition hosted in the Hall of Verifiche of the monumental Complex of Steri, seat of the rectory of the University of Palermo. New York is a variant specifically designed for American audiences. A choice that is reflected both in the English translation of panels, captions and textual devices, and in the realization of the unpublished documentary, produced specifically for this edition. The film includes the voice of Alan Lomax himself and returns the direct account of his Sicilian experience.
The opening of the exhibition was accompanied by the greetings of Claudio Pagliara, director of the Italian Institute of Culture, followed by the introduction of Bonanzinga himself and the interventions of Anna Lomax Wood of the Association for Cultural Equity, Jo Ann Cavallo of Columbia University and Joseph Sciorra of John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College.
The initiative is part of the United in Sound programme: America at 250, a festival promoted in collaboration with Carnegie Hall, which represents the second of five musical events organized by the Italian Institute of Culture. A choice linked to the work of Lomax, which helped strengthen the cultural dialogue between Italy and the United States.
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