Rescuing Italian folk songs from dusty recordings and lonely libraries might sound like the work of self-absorbed academics, but wait until you hear the way Newpoli does it. Take “Tra-
panarella,” a Neapolitan tarantella from the album “Tempo Antico”: It bounces with enough energy and attitude that you can practically hear your nonna slapping someone with the wooden spoon for dipping into the pasta sauce without permission. It dates to 1957, and it’s actually one of the newer songs tackled by this Boston based group, with five originating in the 16th century. But they’re all delivered with a passion and professionalism that transcend time.

“In the beginning, we were all students at Berklee College of Music,” says Björn Wennås — who, as you might’ve guessed, hails from Sweden. So what’s a Swedish guy doing in a group that plays traditional Italian music? Chalk it up to love: Wennås is married to Newpoli singer Carmen Marsico, a native Italian from Pignola, in the province of Potenza.

And let’s make this clear: Newpoli doesn’t merely perform “Italian music,” a label as broad and non-specific as, say, “American music.” “Rarely do you hear traditional southern Italian music in the U.S., and hear it sung in dialect, with a lot of authentic period instruments,” Wennås says.

As it turns out, tracking down the right period instruments can be very challenging. A few years ago, Wennås and Marsico were traveling in Naples when they found a man who makes ciaramellas. That’s an ancient instrument in the oboe family, with roots that trace back to the Middle East. “It has been used in traditional folk music since the Renaissance,” Wennås says.

So it’s not as if you can pop into a local music store and buy one. “A lot of these people are rural and hard to reach,” Wennås says, adding with a laugh, “Pay- Pal is not accepted everywhere, you know."

But given how authentic and thrilling the music of Newpoli sounds, the effort is well worth it. And that level of industry also applies to finding the songs them-selves. Fortunately, ethnomusicologists in Italy have been on the job.

“In the 1960s and ’70s, a ton of field recordings were made in the south and we got our hand on them,” Wennås says. Yet there’s also a fair amount of combing through books that needs to get done. “For ‘Tempo Antico,’ Carmen did a lot of the detective work finding the Renaissance pieces,” Wennås says.

The result, as heard on the album, is a collection of 13 songs that speak with power and heart to a rich Italian musical heritage, even as the musicians in Newpoli bring their own style and savvy to the proceedings.

“Most people respond to the beautiful, beautiful melodies,” Wennås says. “It’s easy to get lost on the beauty of the songs. But it’s groovier than one might expect. There are influences from the Middle East, Spain, North Africa, and Greece. There’s this huge mix of cultures in the south of Italy, and it all comes through in the music.”