Tenores di Bitti
Tenores di Bitti are an Italian folk group from Bitti, a town on the isle of Sardinia. Founded in 1974, they sing traditional music in a polyphonic vocal style. They have toured in many countries. Some of their albums have been produced by Peter Gabriel, Lester Bowie and Ornette Coleman.
Frank Zappa
During his 1984 tour in Italy, Zappa had a long conversation with journalist Riccardo Giagni about folk music from all over the world and promised him to send him a cassette with Bulgarian music, which was still difficult to find during the Cold War era.
During Zappa's 1988 tour in Italy, his Milanese promotor Claudio Trotta had made a cassette with ethomusicological recordings of traditional Italian music from his own personal collection. When Zappa listened to the tape, he was very impressed with the Sardinian music. In 1990, musicologist Riccardo Giagni gave Zappa an album by Tenores di Bitti, Remunnu è Locu, which he liked so much that he asked Giagni for recordings of the individual notes performed by the individual singers of the Tenores di Bitti. At Zappa's request, Giagni produced a full album with their music. [1] Zappa particularly liked their bass singer, Salvatore Bandinu and sampled his voice in the Synclavier as Uncle Sal. [2]
Frank Zappa provided liner notes to Tenores di Bitti's next album, Intonos (1994), released after Zappa's death. [3]
