Here's an overly rare zampogna / ciaramella recording from 1927, made in New York at the Victor recording studios.
Unfortunately it took just as long to find out who these musicians are, as it generally takes to find a good rendering of Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro" these days (blame that specifically on the fact that all these opera singers have bad wobble vibratos). The pipers are credited on most albums as simply "Antonio della Basilicata", or the Antonios of Basilicata. However, that's not enough in my opinion. Just as most pipers playing the drones on old records are not credited, these pipers are... well, semi-credited, except for one rare source I found.
The zampogna player is Alfredo Cibelli, most known as an operatic tenor and instrumentalist, on a 5-palmi zampogna a chiave (chanters in octaves, double reeds) in the key of A major, along with Antonio Cibelli on a soprano ciaramella, together with Antonio Papariello playing a type of ciaramella that is known in the Lucanian dialect as "Cucchia" (two very limited ciaramellas played by a single player, primarily used only for rhythm accompaniment). Alfredo's pipes sound to be made by Carmine Trimarco (1864 - 1953), given their unique Lucanian type of tone quality to them, particularly on the bass chanter. Keep in mind this was WAAAAAAAAAY before the Forastiero Brothers (essentially the Cecilia Bartoli of zampogna makers, so famous you can hardly talk about zampognas without mentioning them). Vincenzo Forastiero, the older of the two brothers, was born only in 1919 and sadly passed away in early 2018. Antonio, the younger brother, was born 1929 and still alive, but retired). So because Trimarco taught the two brothers to make instruments, Trimarco is most likely the make. Occasionally Alfredo's bass chanter cuts in and out (stops sounding sometimes), due to its higher pressure required to make it vibrate. Also, as with all zampogna recordings that have awful worthless sopranina drones, I've reduced his sopranina on the right channel and kept the original on the left channel. This particular sopranina plays the note E (just above middle C).
The position of the different instruments is very dislikable. For one thing, alfredo's zampogna and Antonio's lead soprano ciaramella are quite far away, which would mean that Papariello's cucchia is the loudest instrument captured. To me, this is not very good. Since some subscribers of mine are or have been in choirs, I think it's a good idea to describe it this way. It would be like if the sopranos, tenors and basses were at one end of the room, and literally all the altos are crowded around the microphone at the other end of the room! It's terrible!
I recently tended to have countless dreams about me playing the zampogna (WHEN THE HONEST HELL WILL I EVER GET ONE!), my amazing friend Hailey Paige on the ciaramella, and either my fluent-Italian-speaking friend Lindsey W., or maybe my opera-singing friend Merissa, on the Cucchia. I'm sure if you can try to picture this in your head while you listen to it this might enhance the music a little more. Mind you, these ciaramella players do not have much vibrato if any at all, and compared to the zampogna, the ciaramellas' parts don't really sound all that impressive to me. I'm used to ciaramella players that sound as close to Cecilia Bartoli as humanly possible (i.e., the biggest vibrato you can muster), so the two Antonios would equate to opera singers who hav no vibrato in their voice.
Technologically this record is pretty smooth, with no need for ClickRepair.
I'd hate to keep anyone in the dust for rare recordings like this one, so enjoy! I mean, why should zampogna recordings be wrongly kept secrets?
This recording was taken from a track of an out-of-print CD called "The Ace and Deuce of Pipering", which I bought from another piper friend in California (I just had to purchase this album).