Who we are
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The Bajolese Choir
The Bajolese Choir, that is the choir of Bajo Dora, sprung up in October 1966 and since then has researched and collected the verbal traditions of the people among whom they live.All that the choir sings has been learnt from the local people. All that it has tried to do it has done to let its own People become aware of its own cultural identity. However, we know that what has been done is not enough to guarantee survival for this culture, even though we have dug up many songs (more than one thousand hours of recordings), brought many witnesses to light (in radio and television programmes, social evenings, though literary and audiovisual publications) and documented daily work activity and life. But our feature is the continual experimentation to make the people who live in the Canavese ever more aware of the roots of their verbal culture. Having found folk songs, lets now try to put into the group the voices of our members such as Norma, the Salesi Singers and the spontaneous group, the Margaris, while we are already thinking of a ‘performance’ of the narrative folksongs, a prerogative of the Singers from Loranze and Alpette. It is a continuous being, dynamic within the confines of tradition and the wish to both enjoy ourselves and entertain. Choir component
The Ethnological Centre of the Canavese
The Ethnological Centre of the Canavese was founded in 1975 by the Bajolese Choir which for years had conducted research on the land in and around Bajo, to bring back the popular songs of its own people.
“We began by researching, tape recorder in hand, relations and friends and soon got in touch with other people making enquiries about life in the Canavese before the Industrial Revolution.”
It was this research which brought to light the phenomena and the amount of material which was still to be found which widened the research to the whole of the Canavese.
The work of the Centre hinges upon research done by the choir and is firmly fixed in a well organized, systematic research on the field to acquire and then divulge information on the vast cultural heritage of the Canavese people.
“We wanted to bear homage to our people by bringing back those songs which they used to sing in the evening in the barns or on feast days after a bowls match. We wanted to bear witness to the values of their associative life, understand the sacrifices which they made to keep the mountain and their land alive, by staying in the summer alpine pastures, looking after the woods and working the fields. The songs were their creative moment and they represented the front door which leads into their lives”.
By getting the local authorities interested, but above all thanks to the fertile and generous memories of the many helpers, a collection began, first with a tape recorder and camera, then with a cine camera and cam recorder, the testimony of songs, about feast days, about rituals, about work, about immigration and every things else concerning the people who live in the Canavese.
Thousands of witnesses, hours of recording, images document our work, but above all we are shown the social-cultural life in the modern and old Canavese
After collection the material was given back in the form of cassettes (48 have been made so far), records, books, pamphlets, meetings to enable people or groups of people to come and tell us their personal experiences (“Friday Meetings” have been going on for the last twenty years) and for a period a magazine (People of the Canavese).
All this has enabled the C.E.C. to embark on a close relationship with its own members giving birth to a new cultural conscience to things they already knew.
The Bajolese Choir is also Ambassador of the E.C.C. and its members where they have been invited to sing.
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