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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Roma di Luna: For the people
Thursday 22 March @ 12:17:17 |
 by NATHAN DEAN
Local folk duo Roma di Luna don't really give a damn about the recording industry. Sure, any Twin Cities indie act worth their salt will throw conversational barbs at Clear Channel from the stage if given the chance, but few have taken as populist and non-commercial an approach to their tuneage as the husband and wife team of Alexei and Channy Moon Casselle. Rather than ply their wares in more traditional music venues with attendant cover charges, the duo opted to begin their musical "career" as Roma di Luna on a corner at the Minneapolis Farmers Market--a spot far more likely to win them devotees among the aging-hippies-in-search-of-hydroponic-tomatoes crowd than movers and shakers on the Twin Cities music scene.
"We knew a guy who did old-time music at the Farmers Market who we thought was really great and he played at our wedding," recalls Alexei. "When we started working on songs together, we knew that was where we wanted to play. We just asked the head honcho if we could play and he pointed over to a corner and said, 'You can play over there; if you guys suck I'll let you know.' So that made us pretty anxious to want to get a decent set of songs together."
"Both of us have always been more fascinated with street performers than the traditional rocker in a club kind of thing," says Channy, a classically-trained violinist. "There's a purity to the street performer thing because it's so far removed from the music industry and trying to sell things."
"It's a wonderful place to play because no one has to stop and watch you unless they want to," adds Alexei. "We've noticed that it's a lot of children who tend to stop and pay attention--even like, toddlers--so they make their parents come along for the ride."
Plenty more have come on board the Roma di Luna bandwagon since those humble beginnings back in the summer of 2004. This fall saw the band take their show from the street corner to the studio with the release of their debut EP, Face of My Friends, seven riveting tracks consisting of little more than a fistful of plaintive minor acoustic guitar chords strummed by Alexei and the gorgeously wounded voice of Channy (eerily similar to Cat Power's Chan Marshall in its lived-in soulfulness) with the occasional high and lonesome violin solo or furtive tambourine shake.
Twin Cities music fans whose previous exposure to the music of Alexei was through his role as an MC with highly regarded hip-hop outfits Oddjobs and Kill the Vultures were certainly caught by surprise. It's not every day that a high-profile local rapper who has toured the nation with Atmosphere decides to pick up an acoustic guitar and go all Woody Guthrie on the masses.
"I started listening to more folk music and classic rock when I was living in New York City with my old group Oddjobs," says Alexei, retelling the story of his unlikely musical evolution. "I borrowed my neighbor's guitar and learned a few chords and started to get into the mindset of, 'OK, here's a whole different world of music that I could be involved with creating that exists outside of hip-hop.' I definitely had those moments of doubt as I started experimenting with playing acoustic music that I would be lynched by some of my hip-hop fan base. Overall though I was completely inspired and moved by the process. Playing the acoustic guitar was so obviously reshaping how I looked at music and wanted to be a part of it that I couldn't even deny it. I couldn't analyze it--I was too busy doing it. It's still at the starting point and still evolving and I don't know where it's going but I know as long as I stay focused on what's moving me I can't really go wrong."
And although many would certainly balk at the thought of citing Chuck D and Townes Van Zandt as musical kin, the members of Roma di Luna feel folk and hip-hop share far more commonalities than differences.
"I think there's always been a really strong connection between the poetry of hip-hop and the language of folk music," says Channy. "They both are kind of directed at oppressed peoples and act as an outlet for the down and out."
"If you look at the subject matter of old school blues and look at the pure beginnings of hip-hop, before people were really trying to profit on it, they're very similar," adds Alexei. "Both are telling stories grounded in the real world. A lot of people think that folk and hip-hop are worlds apart, but I don't really see it that way."
 True to their word, Roma di Luna's songs are bona fide, salt-of-the-earth snapshots of lives in trouble, men and women railing against their God and one another as they struggle with faith, fidelity and fortune. Having gotten their start covering traditional songs from the early 20th century, Roma di Luna manage to transfer the gravitas of those rustic tunes to modern times in their own compositions, most poignantly in the antiwar anthem "Don't Take My Baby to War," a highly political song that works so effectively by being largely devoid of modern signifiers ("He has kissed me goodbye / He has no fear of giving his life / But I carved my heart in his hand / So when they find him they'll know he's mine"). Channy could be singing about Iraq, Vietnam, World War I--in the end it doesn't matter, the destruction wrought by wars is unchanging, and the losses felt by those left behind similarly deep.
As the Twin Cities music scene continues to wake up to the austere musical charms of Roma di Luna--89.3 the Current has been spinning standout cut "These Tears Ain't Mine" with some regularity--the duo don't plan on letting the attention that comes with getting up and performing on actual stages with a cover charge to get in the door shift their musical plan of attack.
"We just want to keep things simple," offers Channy. "The new record we're working on does have some electric guitar and drums and we will be playing some shows in the future with more people on stage, if schedules work out."
"We couldn't be happier with everything that's happened considering we aren't really trying to make a big career out of the group," says Alexei. "The way the songwriting works is if Channy comes to me with an idea, I just try not to step in the way of it. It's probably a good thing that I have really rudimentary skills on the guitar at this point because if I could do crazy solos I might try and throw stuff in there that would mess it up. I basically am at the point of 'this chord sounds good,' so it flows pretty naturally." ||
Roma di Luna perform on Thu., March 29 with Mike Gunther and headlining act the Chris Koza Band at the Varsity Theater. 7:30 p.m. $8. 18+. 1308 4th St. S.E., Minneapolis. 612-604-0222. They play again on Fri., March 30 at the 7th St. Entry with Abzorbr and headlining act Carbon Carousel. 9 p.m. $5. 21+. 701 First Ave. N., Minneapolis. 612-338-8388. For further information on Roma di Luna check out their official website at romadiluna.com.
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