Invincible Corsica

A search for harmony lures an American musician to this timeless Mediterranean island

- Dessa

A BEAUTIFUL SINGING VOICE is alchemic—you pull a lungful of air through the human-machine and it leaves, like magic, as music on the exhale. I’m a singer, so probably biased, but I don’t believe we’ve yet managed to design an instrument that rivals the reed we’ve got built-in.

I was first introduced to the vocal group A Filetta by a listener at one of my own concerts, a poorly attended show in Germany. To distract the crowd from its own size, my bandmate Aby and I crammed everyone into a stairwell, then sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in harmony.

Afterward I received an email from a man named Christian: In a very, very quiet moment, please watch this. A link led to a video in which a greyhaired, trim man wearing a gold chain and a black dress shirt held a tuning fork to his right ear before dropping it into his breast pocket. When his mouth opened, his eyes shut, as if wired on a shared circuit. The sound he emitted matched his physical aspect—it was a boxer’s voice, abraded by time or suffering or both. His melody was mournful, urgent, like a funeral song for someone not quite dead. It featured the tense, fast vocal trills of tragic Portuguese fado music, or a call to prayer.

Shops and restaurants in Bonifacio, backdropped by the bell tower of the Saint Marie Majeure Church

Then, half a dozen other male voices joined in; the camera panned across their faces, dark lashes edging their closed eyes. Some sang in close harmony, some sang long vowels, like a bed of strings. I couldn’t understand the words, couldn’t identify the language. But I knew I’d never seen such undisguised passion in the faces of singers making such a religious sound. I played it again and again.