AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Amanda Pascali is an academic with a new album. "Roses And Basil" grew from her ethnomusicology research. On it, she minds the history of southern and central Europe to create something new.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAKE UP, BABY! (E VUI DURMITI ANCORA)")
AMANDA PASCALI: (Singing) The sun has shown his face behind the valley. But darling...
The song "E Vui Durmiti Ancora" - it's one of Sicily's first serenatas. And the serenata is essentially a serenade where traditionally, a man would go to the balcony or the window of a woman that he wants to marry, sing this song, profess his love and hope that she wants to marry him, that she is returning those feelings of love. However, the woman does not come out. And the guy, bless his heart - he thinks that she's still sleeping. And my modern version kind of looks back on that and poses the questions - you know, is she really sleeping, or is she just leaving him on read?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAKE UP, BABY! (E VUI DURMITI ANCORA)")
PASCALI: (Singing) So wake up, baby. No time for sleeping. It's time you wake up, and you say you love me. Till then I'll wait for you until you want me. With tired eyes, my angel, say you love me. Don't leave me with these...
RASCOE: "Roses And Basil," the title of your album - like, it seems like a really lovely, fragrant mix. What do "Roses And Basil" mean to you?
PASCALI: It comes from a translation that I did of a very ancient lullaby called "La Siminzina." It's translated from Sicilian, which is an ancient language, but it's also a UNESCO-classified endangered language. And I started a project a few years ago to translate and kind of share these beautiful songs with people all around the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF AMANDA PASCALI SONG, "CLEOPATRA")
RASCOE: Your new album - it's described as kind of modern takes on Mediterranean tunes with some Balkan and Latin influences. Why that particular mix?
PASCALI: I started translating the Sicilian songs a few years ago when I won a Fulbright fellowship to Southern Italy to document these songs. I myself am very mixed from, you know, a mixed Mediterranean and European background. I grew up around a lot of different cultures. I was born in New York City, but I grew up in Houston. All of these influences kind of converged in the music that I make now, which I like to call immigrant American folk music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CLEOPATRA")
PASCALI: (Singing) My blood's from the desert, underground 2000 B.C. Oh, I come from the streets where Flushing Avenue meets Second Street.
It's not really authentic to any one part of the world, but it's authentic to the liminal space of migration, the space in which many of us feel too foreign for here, too foreign for home and never enough for both.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CLEOPATRA")
PASCALI: (Singing) Cleopatra, they call me. Looks like a walking [inaudible]. Oh, Cleopatra.
RASCOE: I read that you wanted to create a new world through this album. What is this world that you feel like you created?
PASCALI: I am Gen Z. I call on my my Gen Z followers, my friends, to be proud of who they are and where they come from. And so the space that I feel I've created is a space where everybody can be who they are without apologies, where we can all exist, no matter how weird we seem to other people, how out of place we seem to other people, because music is a tool for that.
RASCOE: You know, you were born in New York City then moved to Texas. Do you have a particular song, like, that was inspired by your life in Texas? Like, maybe Amuri?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AMURI")
PASCALI: (Singing in Sicilian).
I definitely feel like there's a lot of Texas on "Amuri" because it begins with a piece of ancient Sicilian prose. (Speaking Sicilian), and then erupts into this cumbia.
(SOUNDBITE OF AMANDA PASCALI SONG, "AMURI")
PASCALI: Latin music is all around us in Texas. It's so inspiring to me how that spice is celebrated by people around the world.
RASCOE: What is the prose that you're kind of drawing on there?
PASCALI: An ancient Sicilian love poem in which the narrator is saying, my love, my love, what have you made me do? Or what have you done? You've sent me into craziness. And although this poem was written so, so, so many years ago - it's ancient - it still feels like something people would say today.
RASCOE: Well, I say it every day, you know (laughter)?
PASCALI: Right, right. I'm madly in love. What is happening to me? And to the point of father, I've forgotten the Hail Mary, which back then was really kind of scandalous. But in the modern day, I've kind of rewritten those lyrics. You know, I've forgotten my own name. I've forgotten who I am.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AMURI")
PASCALI: (Singing) Amuri, Amuri. I'm in too deep. I can't eat, can't sleep.I've forgotten everything that once had made sense to me. I'm born again, might as well give in to a truth I never knew, that my whole world began with you. Amuri, Amuri.
RASCOE: You know, it sounds like a lot of what you're getting at with this album is kind of the connectivity between cultures and how, you know, we kind of tell these different stories. There may be cultural differences, but, you know, the kind of searching for love and family and all of that remains the same, right? Like, there's these things, these universal, like, human things.
PASCALI: Yes, yeah, definitely. And I think that it goes back to the very essence of what makes us human, which are, you know, feelings, emotions, and, of course, art.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROSES AND BASIL (LA SIMINZINA)")
PASCALI: (Singing) My angel, sweet dreams. Soon, your papa will come, it seems. And he'll bring you the roses and basil, the roots and the hazel, saffron and thyme. And...
There are also songs about my childhood, about my sisters, about being the oldest daughter in an immigrant family and, of course, about my parents, about their story. My parents sacrificed a lot for me to have the life that I do. And now I'm singing and playing music on a stage because of what they did for me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROSES AND BASIL (LA SIMINZINA)")
PASCALI: (Singing in non-English language).
RASCOE: That's Amanda Pascali. Her new album is "Roses And Basil." Thank you so much for joining us.
PASCALI: Thank you so much, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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