AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 77
I was first introduced to the vocal group A Filetta by a listener
at one of my own concerts, a poorly attended show in Germany.
To distract the crowd from its own size, my bandmate Aby and I
crammed everyone into a stairwell, then sang Leonard Cohen’s
“Hallelujah” in harmony, a cappella.
Afterward I received an email from a man named Christian: In
a very, very quiet moment, please watch this. A link led to a video
in which a man wearing a gold chain and a black dress shirt, open
at the collar, held a tuning fork to his right ear before dropping
it into his breast pocket. Gray-haired and trim, he moved with
a relaxed, animal athleticism.
When his mouth opened, his eyes shut, as if wired on a shared
circuit. The sound he emitted matched his physical aspect—it
was a boxer’s voice, abraded by time or suffering or both. The
melody was both mournful and urgent, like a funeral song for
someone not quite dead. It featured the tense, fast vocal trills
of tragic Portuguese fado or a muezzin’s call to prayer.
After the first phrase, half a dozen other male voices joined
in; the camera panned across their faces, dark lashes edging
their closed eyes. Some sang in close harmony, some sang long
vowels, like a bed of strings.
I couldn’t understand the words, couldn’t even identify the
language. But I knew I’d never seen such undisguised passion
in the faces of singers making such a religious sound. This was
not a church pew prayer. This was a bathroom floor prayer. I
played it again and again.
Googling, I learned A Filetta is from Corsica, a Mediterranean
island territory of France. The group’s charismatic leader is Jean-
Claude Acquaviva.
I checked the band website, hoping to find U.S. tour dates.
Nothing. I checked again the next summer—no luck. Five years
later, I was still checking, and then found that, to celebrate the