The project to record the songs in this collection was born, not as a studied intellectual exercise, but in a moment charged with emotion. The funeral of a mutual friend brought the artists unexpectedly together. And on this sad occasion in the church, hearing singer Antonio Cerfedas voice for the first time guitarist Alessandro Bongi was immediately struck to the heart, as if by a well-aimed arrow. This CD owes its inspiration to an intuition born of that moment. Alessandro sought to hear other songs written by Antonio over the years, works hed tucked away in a drawer. The singers subject: his hometown Ugento  his Ugento - ancient bourg not far from the southernmost tip of the Salentine peninsular. Antonios voice is unique, the expression of an innate talent. Not merely singer-songwriter, he is a singer-storyteller. In his songs the timehonoured and time-worn Southern Italian tradition of the cantastorie is adopted and revitalised: improvised, inspired, renewed and enriched. Antonio succeeds in painting portraits of the Ugentine characters he has found most striking, shedding light on their unique human dignity. His words raise a smile when with his verbal licence he gently mocks a bourgeois society taking itself too seriously. They also give food for thought as he treats such thorny subjects as environmental pollution and illegal immigration with characteristic irony. Alessandro Bongi is the tailor, the refined weaver of notes, as he has been described. With skill he weaves a fabric of sound that is equal to the storytellers poetry. Cross-stitching the threads of varied musical genres, he raises the idiom of folksong to a level of sophistication that draws it closer to classical composition. Alessandro drew in a varied group of musicians from throughout Italy and Switzerland to participate in the project in a spirit of joyful celebration. The positive energy radiating from these songs is tangible. Their sharp observation of reality cues profound reflection on the human condition. Ugento is a microcosm, and, if we think about it, every one of us could have come across Abdù and u Masi