Album DescriptionPiemonte and Valle D'aosta Songs of love and war, marriage and jail, emigration and alms seeking, ballads and sung debates, dances performed by accordions, tambourine, and brass band: this CD includes a generous selection of historic and sometimes astonishing original field recordings from Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta in northeastern Italy, made almost 50 years ago. Italian Treasury In 1954, Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella set out on a yearlong voyage of discovery that resulted in an exhaustive documentation of Italian folk music. "It was a mythic time. None of us suspected that that world - made of music, songs, poverty, joy, desperation, custom, violence, injustice, love, dialect, and poetry, formed over the course of millennia - would be swept away in a couple of years . . . by the voodoo of 'progress.'" -Vittorio De Seta. The Alan Lomax Collection The Alan Lomax Collection gathers together the American, European, and Caribbean field recordings, world music compilations, and ballad operas of writer, folklorist, and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella.