The Tenores di Bitti are a

traditional folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

group from

Bitti Bitti ( sc, Bitzi) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Nuoro in the Italian region Sardinia, about north of Cagliari and about north of Nuoro. Bitti borders the municipalities of Alà dei Sardi, Buddusò, Lodè, Lula, Nule, Ona ...

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...

who employ a

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

vocal style, often described as a type of

overtone singing Overtone singing – also known as overtone chanting, harmonic singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and diphonic singing – is a set of singing techniques in which the vocalist manipulates the resonances of the vocal tract, in order to arous ...

, whose

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...

dates back to 3000 BC.Liner notes, ''S'amore 'e mama''. The Tenores di Bitti are considered one of the best and most traditional groups in Sardinia. They extemporize or perform

poems Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...

with each singer taking one of four parts: ''boke'', ''bassu'', ''contra'', or ''mea'oke''. ''Boke'' is the soloist and provides

melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...

, ''bassu'' is the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

and provides the tonic, ''contra'' provides the fifth, and ''mea'oke'' provides the

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

above the fifth, filling out a chord in

just intonation In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals Interval may refer to: Mathematics and physics * Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers ** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...

. There are in Bitti several " a tenore" groups and the most famous are Tenores di Bitti Mialinu Pira and Tenores di Bitti remunnu 'e Locu. Piero Sanna and Daniele Cossellu alternate ''boke'' and ''mesa 'oke'' on different songs while on all songs Tancredi Tucconi and Mario Pira take ''contra'' and ''bassu'' respectively. Their album ''S'amore 'e mama'' includes the ambient noises of the various recording locations in Bitti including churches, streets, canteens, bars, countryside, and "

nuraghe The nuraghe (, ; plural: Logudorese Sardinian , Campidanese Sardinian , Italian ), or also nurhag in English, is the main type of ancient megalithic edifice found in Sardinia, developed during the Nuragic Age between 1900 and 730 B.C. To ...

Recordings

* ''Tenores di Bitti Remunnu 'e Locu: S'amore 'e mama'' Mother's Love" Real World. * ''

Tenores di Bitti "Mialinu Pira" The ( sc, su tenòre, su cuncòrdu, su cuntràttu, su cussèrtu, s'agorropamèntu, su cantu a pròa; it, canto a tenore) is a style of polyphonic folk singing characteristic of the island of Sardinia (Italy's second largest island), particularl ...

: Su monte 'e mesus''. RBS 1998

Sources

External links

Didactic video about the voices of tenore

{{authority control Italian choirs Throat singing Music in Sardinia Real World Records artists Province of Nuoro it:Tenores di Bitti "Mialinu Pira"