With the deliberation n° 116 of 23 November 2012, the Town Council of Alcamo, approved the steering motion, with the Councillor professor Antonio Fundarò as the first signatory and proposer, named "Institution Museum of Music Fausto Cannone". On 23 January 2014 the Municipal Administration approved the deliberation relating to the foundation of the "Museum of the Multiethnic Musical Instruments", later inaugurated in July of the same year. Initially the museum was set in two rooms of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Alcamo inside the Ex Collegio dei Gesuiti, in Piazza Ciullo. The museum was born thanks to the perseverance of Fausto Cannone : thanks to his generous donation, they could realize in Alcamo the first ethnical musical Museum existing in Sicily.
Fausto Cannone
The museum was opened thanks to Fausto Cannone's perseverance and desire of this artist to leave a sign of love to his town: Cannone, who died last September, went round the world for 30 years: he got the most strange and original musical instruments, string and wind ones, which are all working and bought in their original countries. At last, this exceptional patrimony, maybe unique in its genre, has its final seat. Fausto Cannone had received several requests, even by the Palazzo Steri from Palermo, but he preferred to donate these precious instruments to his hometown. He wanted to dedicate this museum to his father Gaspare Cannone who was a journalist, literary critic, anarchist and antifascist: He lived in the United States for many years, but due to his stands in favour of Sacco and Vanzetti, he was arrested and then forced to get back to Italy.
Description and instruments
The Museum hosts 202 instruments coming from Thailand to Tibet, from New Guinea al South America, from Polynesia to China, from Australia to Argentina, from South Africa to several European countries. Most of them are poor instruments, made with parts of plants and animals, but there are also valuable craft products. Among the instruments you can see at the museum there are: flutes, cymbals, drums, bagpipes, accordions, trumpets violins, guitars, mandolins, harmonicas. Here is the list:
crotalok: a three strings instrument from Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean; it is the first of the collection.
xylophone: played in the buddhist monasteries during their services; the frame is carved in a single block of ebony, representing three dragons, with small tablets of various length.
Nanga : with a wooden oval box, wholly closed with skin and with a solid handle inserted, with a side series of tuning pegs which serve to stretch the strings made of guts or fibers.
On the nanga they sing and recite slow melodies praising the leaders’ feats
Qanun, Egypt: instrument with 78 strings, similar to a trapezoidalcitara
Berimbau or urmwngo : a string musical instrument from Africa, which was spread in Brasil after the importation of African slaves during colonialism. Today it is part of the tradition of music of Latin America; it is made up of a wooden bow which stretches a metal string. A dry and hollow pumpkin operates like a sound box. Two models
Zither, Austria; string instrument: its strings are stretched over a resonator like in the psaltery. Two models
Kantele, Finland; instrument with 5 strings, linked by a wooden handle dug to the body and opened in the lower part.
Gusle, : popular instrument with a single string used in Balkans, deriving from the byzantine lyra.
