In the past, in the small community of Colledoro, singing accompanied agricultural work and it was an instrument of dialogue, of conflict and easing of tension in social relations. People sang to alleviate the fatigue, or to transmit information from one field to another about the evening appointments and the venues of parties and farmyard dances, but also to date and even to argue in a ritualized way which was controlled by means of the verse, the irony, and the extemporaneousness of the message.

This particular form of communication channelled through the harvest song called sturnillë is created through an improvisational process developed inside the metrical pattern of a hendecasyllable. Little space is left to melodic variation, which is limited to embellishments (acciaccature, microtonal oscillations, glissandi), but the verbal content is often invented at the time with the help of  mnemonic techniques of a “formulaic style”, in which “mnemonic patterns” are used and from time to time adapted to the circumstances and the need to respond to the previous singer according to a logical concatenation of the strophes, in a continuous alternation of provocations, answers and allusions.

The need to cover great distances formed powerful and penetrating voices, which were not lost with time. The “old-fashioned” voices of Domenica Russi and Angelo De Dominicis (‘Ngiulinë) depend on this multi-layered technique learnt during youth, having absorbed the style through listening to the old people of the time. Some genealogies of singing and playing were thus reconnected, giving prominence to some forgotten performers like the old Ilario Ventilii, with whom Angelo spent his days enchanted by the stories that the songs put in musical form, a living repository of a great musical memory; or like the musician Giuseppe Russi (Giose), called lu padreternë [God Almighty], from whom his son Pierino Russi learned most of his songs (suonate). Through their music the families of singers and families of musicians shared a common culture of singing and communication, the expression of a territory characterized by farming, even in the inland areas near the mountains, scattered with farms and a few houses inhabited by tenants and owners, large families committed to   the cultivation of the fields, in a system of mutual exchange, help and coexistence.