The Circolo Gianni Bosio’s sound archive: two fondi of research recordings — the field work of oral historian Alessandro Portelli (1969–present) and ethnomusicologist Valentino Paparelli (1973–1980) — documenting oral history and traditional music research across Rome, Umbria, Terni, and the United States.
The Archivio Sonoro Franco Coggiola brings together the research materials of two of the most significant oral historians and ethnomusicologists associated with the Circolo Gianni Bosio: Alessandro Portelli and Valentino Paparelli. Their fondi, produced across decades of fieldwork from the 1960s to the present, share a method — the interview and the field recording as tools of historical and cultural research — even as they range over partly different geographies, from Resistance- and housing-struggle-era Rome to the Umbrian Valnerina, from the industrial basin of Terni to the United States.
The fondo is catalogued and made available online in ArchivesSpace, following current archival descriptive standards, through the archive’s public portal.
The heart of the archive’s sound holdings, and by far its largest fondo: the research materials produced by oral historian Alessandro Portelli from 1969 to the present. The fondo is organised into a series structure that traces the many research contexts of a multi-decade collecting career, spanning ethnomusicology and oral history alike — among the most significant: Rome (the Resistance, the 1970s housing struggles, migrant music), the traditional music of central Italy, Terni and the Valnerina (traditional music, the labour struggles tied to the city’s steelworks, the Resistance), and the United States (traditional and folk-revival music, the labour struggles of the Appalachian coalfields, the history of the civil rights movement). Two series are catalogued to date: Serie Ardeatine (1997–1999 circa) and Serie Roma e Lazio (1969–1974).
The field recordings made by ethnomusicologist Valentino Paparelli between 1973 and 1980: 81 magnetic tapes and 1,359 sound documents across 199 recording sessions. Almost all of the material concerns Umbria, with particular attention to the Valnerina and the Apennine ridge — the Ternana and Perugina Valnerina, the Ternana basin, the Amerino-Narnese area, the Colfiorito plateau — alongside a few occasional sessions elsewhere (including Lake Trasimeno) and a handful of recordings made outside the region, in Frankfurt, Civita Castellana, Verona, and Rome, with informants originally from Umbrian municipalities. The research favoured traditional ethnomusicological forms — ritual songs, begging songs, ballads, work songs, dances — with steady attention to the passage between traditional peasant expression and urban, working-class culture, and to political and social song. The fieldwork, carried out chiefly between 1973 and 1977 in the Ternana Valnerina, was done in close collaboration with Alessandro Portelli: that collaboration produced the “Gruppo della Valnerina” and the record Sandro Portelli – Valentino Paparelli, La Valnerina Ternana. Una proposta di ricerca-intervento (1972–1975) (I dischi del sole, Milan, 1976). Other notable collaborations involved Giovanna Marini, Paolo Pietrangeli, the Canzoniere del Lazio, and the Circolo Gianni Bosio itself with Ambrogio Sparagna, alongside project-specific work with Tullio Seppilli and Piero Arcangeli, and with Lucilla Galeazzi.
As coordinator of the Circolo Gianni Bosio’s sound archive, remotely since November 2019, I look after the preservation and promotion of the Archivio Franco Coggiola alongside the Circolo’s other sound fondi: preservation planning, metadata and finding-aid creation in ArchivesSpace, and the descriptive work that makes the two fondi searchable and browsable through the archive’s public portal.
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