FROM TRADITION TO THE PRESENT DAY: CORSICAN MUSIC, LANDSCAPE AND PEOPLE

What shapes our living musical traditions, and how do we carry them across culture, place, and time?

Jérôme Casalonga is a singer, instrumentalist, composer, scenographer and Director of the National Centre for Musical Creation Voice, Corsica.

When I first heard Jérôme speak about singing, landscape, town planning, social cohesion and music, it felt like sitting down to a great banquet. The poetic, ecological, and human rubbed together, alongside questions of who has the right to sing traditional songs and what it means to keep a tradition alive.

In this conversation, I ask Jérôme not only about his own musical background, but also about how landscape and people have shaped the music of Corsica - and how a tradition lives rather than being held still or suspended. We also explore what it means to sing traditional songs when you are not from that tradition.

Jérôme Casalonga is a singer, composer, and scenographer, and Director of the National Centre for Musical Creation Voice. His work moves between music, theatre and visual art, with a long-standing focus on Corsican and Mediterranean traditions in contemporary creation. 

Founder of musical group Zamballarana and artistic director of the Casa Musicale di Pigna, he has performed on major international stages including the Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Wiener Konzerthaus, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Teatro La Fenice (Venice), and the Festival of Sacred Music of Fès. He is the author of over 150 compositions and has recorded more than 40 albums.