We noticed last year that there were a couple gospel music concerts in Ascoli Piceno during the weeks leading up to Christmas. This year there is one concert here in town but there are several occurring in various towns around the province. We decided to attend the one here in town tonight by Joe Pace and the Colorado Mass Choir in the historic Teatro Ventidio Basso, a little Christmas present to ourselves. Gospel music in Italy!?
We have noticed there is a lack of original Italian Christmas music; all of the songs we hear are familiar tunes from America. We only brought a few CD’s of Christmas music and wanted more for the holidays and had to search several stores before we could find any, even the street vendors with the copied music didn’t have them. We finally found a small selection at one store…and of course they were all in English, there were no Italian Christmas songs to be found. I asked a local friend about this and he said there really are no Italian Christmas songs. There is no Italian version of ‘Deck the Halls’, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Little Drummer Boy’ or ‘Jingle Bells’ here: all songs that immediately remind me of Christmas. It is common to hear people sing parts of ‘Jingle Bells’, usually the first few stanzas before they just start humming, I have even seen hosts on national television programs do this, acting like there are only a few stanzas to the song…”Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la…” and repeat.
4 comments:
This was a cute post. It made me smile :)
The concert was interesting...Gospel music and the Gospel message in English to an all Italian crowd in a government sponsored theater.
Cool. Joe Pace. Did they sing just gospel music, or was there Christmas music also. I love their song "Speak Life".
Most of it was gospel, there were a few Christmas tunes. However the Gospel is all about Christmas.
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