ILARIA CROCIANI
"US GIRLS WON'T PUT ONE ANOTHER AWAY"
SUPPORTED BY THE CITY OF MELBOURNE ARTS GRANTS
April, 2022.
An Original Production by Ilaria Crociani
with the support of the City of Melbourne Quick Arts Grants 2021 (Round 2)
Featuring:
Ilaria Crociani - Voice
Mirko Guerrini- Saxes, Flutes, Accordion, Keyboard
Geoff Huges - Guitars
Ben Robertson - Double Bass
Niko Shäuble - Drums
Nowadays, libraries and bookshops, as well as the internet itself, are (rightfully!) teeming with resources recognising women's contributions around the world and throughout history.
The most significant part of this rich material concentrates on the most famous historical female characters. It is dedicated to celebrating their impactful inputs for improving society or culture.
Unfortunately, far less consideration seems to be reserved for the ordinary, "everyday" women of our past: the young girls, the housewives, the widows, the splinters. Where are they? How can we look at their stories? What can we learn by reflecting on their experiences? Aren't we sure that putting an accent on their personal lives and voices would not assist us in achieving a more accurate and comprehensive analysis and interpretation of our past? And, on a much simpler level, wouldn't it be helpful to every one of us to learn about our predecessors and the difficulties they faced during their times to gain a different - probably more objective - perspective on our current lives?
"US GIRLS WON'T PUT ONE ANOTHER AWAY", produced with the support of the City of Melbourne Quick Arts Grants 2021 (Round 2), is a collection of original songs capturing the utterly fascinating stories of some of the long-forgotten women of Colonial Victoria in the second half of the 19th Century.
Telling the real stories of Little Lon's Madame Fraser and Sara Saqui, singing the dramas of convicts Janet Dibben and Elizabeth Scott in the Old Melbourne Gaol, or remembering the courage of feminists and businesswomen like Brettana Smyth and Alice Anderson, this work is a travel in time to celebrate womanhood. It is a composition of different songs that aim to portray through music less known women from Marvellous Melbourne, to investigate and reflect on the personal challenges women had to face in that long-gone era.
Thanks to Paolo Baracchi for CoAsIt - which offered its support for the original application of the Arts Grant - the work includes also references to the experiences of Italian migrants to Australia, like ballet dancer Enrichetta Righettini. Enrichetta and her family repeatedly traversed the oceans from Italy to Australia and vice-versa, always carrying their stuff in the same wooden trunk that is now a permanent exhibit on display at the Museo Italiano in Carlton.
As the product of a creative process, the songs included in this work are - as musicologist and philosopher Peter Kivy suggests in his book "Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance - "more an interpretation than a quotation" of the real facts that occurred in the lives of the women we want to celebrate. Yet, all the songs included in the collection, as well as the stories used during the show to introduce them, are based on accurate research on historical documents available through the State Library Victoria or the National Library of Australia. We do agree, in fact, with P. Kivy when he explains that "the more faithful we are to the original historical text, the more accurate our understanding of history is likely to be".